Buttery Beauty

I've long nurtured a 'Rosenstadt Zweibrücken' that was almost smothered by a similarly-flowered shrub, my 8 foot tall and wide 'Freisinger Morgenröte' (who makes up these German names anyway?!).  Both have been present in my oldest rose berm for better than 10 years, but the 'Rosenstadt Zweibrücken' disappeared for a couple of years, only to peek out two years ago and struggle a bit since then, caught between the Freisinger and my tall 'Alexander MacKenzie'.  I keep pruning things away so it will get light and survive and it does just that, but no more.

'Rosenstadt Zweibrücken', or KORstasis, is a small remonant pink blend shrub rose of 3 to 5 feet at maturity (mine is about 3 feet tall), that was bred by W. Kordes & Sons in 1989.  The German name roughly means "Rose City"  and Zweibrücken is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Schwarzbach river.  At first glance, you wouldn't think much of the flowers on this shrub; semi-double, only about 2.75" in diameter and without any fragrance, but each individual flower in this clustered rose is a masterpiece of delicacy.  The finely veined pink on the outer petals turns to yellow at the center as if the ample golden stamens were reflected onto the flower.  It seems only moderately healthy in my garden, but since it tries to grow in the shadows of taller roses, I might be more to blame than the rose.  I do have to watch it for blackspot, but again, part of that might be the environmental stress it lives under.

This year, my 'Rosenstadt Zweibrücken' (also known as Spanish Enchantress or Morningrose) surprised me by opening up this perfectly butter yellow bloom next to the regular pink/yellow blend flowers.  At this point, I'm not yet sure if this flower is a sport or just some quirk of the weather, but the unopened buds around it seem yellow as well and you can bet I'll keep an eye on this cane to see if that color holds true.  The world just can't have too many reblooming butter-yellow roses.

Blue Grass Marriages

Sigh....Mrs. ProfessorRoush informed me late last week that my "blue grass" was looking very pretty.  Like many gardeners, deeply engaged into my own vision of the garden, I asked "what blue grass?" wondering if perhaps a long-deceased small clump of blue fescue (Festuca glauca) had miraculously reappeared in my peony bed.  Alas, Mrs. ProfessorRoush had merely noticed and appreciated that the various lavender species were blooming in the rock edging just outside our back door.

It's a broad divide, this chasm between gardening and non-gardening spouses, seemingly as unbreachable as the differences which currently divide the red and blue state mentalities.  Like many such marriages, ours is tested by a constant skirmish between the siren call of the garden and the mundane honey-do chores of changing light bulbs and tightening the screws of kitchen drawer handles.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush has recently offered the preliminary terms of a truce, taking over watering of the windowsill boxes of herbs on the deck and the two containers of annuals near the front door, and I very much appreciated and accepted this initial overture, even though I sometimes notice wilting basil and begonias and am thus compelled to remind her that it is time to water.

Mrs. ProfessorRoush has further offered to help me in mowing and weeding chores, but I have so far rejected both proposals out of hand.  Mowing was rejected for reasonable and practical reasons.  I bag lawn clippings and use them as mulch at this time of the year.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush is unable to repeatedly lift and empty the two 80lb bags, which is actually viewed as a virtue by a gardening husband who sleeps more secure in the knowledge that she would be unable to move and bury a body without help.  There are some parts of my gardening persona that would welcome help with the weeding, but those fools are shouted down by the isolationist gardener in me.  Like the East Germans of the early 1990's, I'm deeply afraid of the consequences of tearing down the Wall.  Comments about our "pretty blue grass" provoke gruesome mental images of a newly-weeded bed, ragweed standing proudly among the uprooted and dehydrating carcasses of irises and daylilies. Oh, the carnage! Oh, the horror!

I am content, at present, simply to accept this unsolicited compliment from a non-gardening spouse and to let the slowly grinding wheels of diplomacy work through the other issues.  As I age, I recognize that I may someday need help lifting the clipping bags myself, and I may also be less reticent about the occasional loss of a few defenseless yarrow.  Aging, however, also carries the dangers of still more conflict.  I might, for instance, expect more help from a similarly aging spouse while Mrs. ProfessorRoush might envision hiring a work force of muscular, sweaty, shirtless young men to trim the roses.  If the latter is my destiny, then I simply welcome the growing gender equality of the workforce and must make sure that I remain in charge of the interview process.

Un-Frühlingsmorgen?

If I have raved over 'Vanguard', it's only fair that I also list my biggest disappointment of the "new-to-me" roses.  If I set aside my concerns over several roses from last year that didn't make it through the drought (and thus may not have been given a fair chance), my most disappointing new rose is 'Frühlingsmorgen'. 

'Frühlingsmorgen' (or "Spring Morning") is a Hybrid Spinosissima bred by Wilhelm Kordes II in 1942.  The large pink and white single flowers are very attractive on any given website, including helpmefind, but my young specimens do not resemble any picture I can find of this rose.  I obtained two 'Frühlingsmorgen' from Heirloom Roses last year and while both have single blooms, the resemblance stops there.

 Mine start as uniform very light pink (no "halo" effect of pink surrounding primrose yellow centers), and they fade very quickly, within hours, to white.  More importantly, even though they are young roses and 2-3 feet tall at this time, the blooms are perhaps one inch in diameter, a far cry from the 4 inch diameter blooms that are supposed to come from this rose.  My specimens also appear less thorny than other website pictures of this rose.


The foliage is healthy, although not very Spinosissima-like.  These roses, whatever they are, were hardy enough without winter protection so I can't complain on that end.  If they didn't start out pink, however, I would think that I had been given more 'Darlow's Enigma'.   
If anyone has any other ideas, I'm happy to hear them.  Perhaps the very moist stigmas of these flowers will aid in the identification.  I expect the female parts of flowers to be moist to collect pollen, but these seem almost overly....sticky.  Gooey.  I don't mean to be a prude, but they are almost embarrassing in an anthropomorphic sort of way (click the photos to blow them up).  I've looked for similar roses on Heirloom's web site and nothing else seems likely there.  I know that sometimes young roses don't resemble their mature forms, so I guess I'll wait this one out, although I've got a year now to wait, since 'Frühlingsmorgen' is a once blooming rose.  Perhaps this rose will yet quiet my worries and have the yellow fall foliage that is characteristic of  'Frühlingsmorgen'.  If I'm very lucky.

Vivacious Vanguard

'Vanguard'

As the first flush of roses dissipates here on the prairie, I've been disappointed by a few "new-to-me" roses and surprised and delighted by several, but there have been none yet that I've been happier with than a little-acclaimed Hybrid Rugosa named 'Vanguard'.

'Vanguard' is a 1932 rose bred by  Glendon A. Stevens, a little-known rosarian from Pennsylvania.  'Vanguard' is a breeding of  a seedling of R. wichuraiana and R. rugosa 'Alba' crossed with the old Hybrid Tea 'Eldorado'.  Although there have been two recent more roses named 'Eldorado',  the parent of 'Vanguard' must have been the orange-blend 1923 Pernetiana Hybrid Tea by Howard and Smith.  'Vanguard' was introduced by Jackson & Perkins and is officially described as salmon-orange, with pink edges.  I can't figure out why the rose is not better known, but perhaps it is because little is written about it and some of that is not positive.  Peter Beales, in Classic Roses, describes it as "a vigorous shrub, rather untypically Rugosa, and well-foliated with glossy, bronze green leaves." Suzy Verrier, in Rosa Rugosa, doesn't say a lot that is complimentary about the rose, claiming it is barely hardy in her climate and has excessive winterkill. In a comment on helpmefind.com, Paul Barden said "it leaves a great deal to be desired, in my opinion."   Osborne sand Powning do list it in Hardy Roses, but hardy to only zone 5.  Helpmefind.com lists it as hardy to 4B.  I can only add that it had no winter die-back at all here in 6A in its first winter.

Truthfully, to my eye, the rose is a blend of pinks, oranges, and yellows, varying with the weather. Flowers seem to be more pink in colder and wetter weather and yellow as the day warms.  The blossoms start out with Hybrid-Tea form, but then open up huge, just huge, about 5 inches across, borne singly or in pairs, and mildly double with about 25 petals.  It has a strong and sweet Rugosa-type fragrance and sparse but sharp thorns.  It is labeled as once blooming by Verrier, with rare rebloom by Paul Barden, but repeat-blooming by Beales and in Hardy Roses.  The websites of Rogue Valley Roses, from which I obtained my rose, and Vintage Roses also both list it as a mild rebloomer, so I do have some hope that Verrier and Barden were, for once, wrong and that I'll see late summer blooms of 'Vanguard'.  Perhaps this rose varies rebloom by the climate.  I don't know yet if 'Vanguard' forms hips, but some Rugosa-type large red hips would be a perfect Fall finish for the rose.

I think 'Vanguard' is going to become a very large rose here in Kansas, living up to its reported 10 foot height in the references.  My one-year-old specimen is already almost 5 foot tall, much taller than the 7 other roses planted in that bed at the same time.  It has a nice vase-like structure at this age and I can already see several new canes starting for next year.

One of the biggest assets of this rose is surely going to be the mildly-rugose light green and completely disease free foliage. In fact, when a local professional horticulturist toured my garden looking for peonies to divide for the KSU rose garden, this rose's foliage caught his eye quickly and he had to stroll over to examine it closer.  'Vanguard' is reported to be rust susceptible, which could be an issue in some climates, but I've never seen rust on any rose in my garden. 

'Vanguard' won the ARS Dr. W. Van Fleet Medal in 1933 and the David Fuerstenberg Prize (ARS) in 1934.  It may not win any awards in your garden, but it has the "best of show in its first year" award from me this Summer.