Napoleon's Hat

I am the proud landlord of one Old Garden rose that you may know better under one of at least 10 aliases, including Crested Provence, Cristata, Crested Moss, R. centifolia cristata, or R. centifolia muscosa 'cristata'.  I knew it first under the more fanciful name of  'Chapeau de Napoleon', a moniker bestowed because some think that the fringed calyces resemble the tri-cornered hats worn by the famous French emperor.  The "proper"appellation, if you want to exhibit the rose in competition, is 'Crested Moss'.  In private conversation, of course, we of the bourgeois or peasantry classes can simply call it "Napoleon's Hat" and every rosarian will know the rose we're talking about.  Well, most of them will, but one should be aware that DNA analysis has shown that 'Crested Moss' is not the same rose as 'Crested Provence'.  As with any number of roses, the fact that they look alike doesn't necessarily mean that they are clones of one original plant.

'Crested Moss' is a once-blooming, medium pink, double-petaled rose that was actually not known when Napoleon was alive, but was a "found rose" discovered some years later (some authorities say as early as 1820, others as late as 1827).  'Crested Moss' is believed to be a sport of Centrifolia muscosa 'communis', the 'Common Moss Rose'.  Most sources, especially those written shortly after its introduction by Vibert in 1828, suggest that it was discovered in 1827 near Fribourg, Switzerland, growing in a monastery wall (or a nunnery wall). 'Crested Moss'  has been used extensively in hybridization by Ralph Moore and those efforts are reprinted on Paul Barden's website in an article by Mr. Moore.  He writes that the rose is usually sterile and does not set seed, but he was once able to collect enough pollen to cross with 'Little Darling', 'Baccara', and 'Queen Elizabeth'.  Ralph Moore noted that since those first attempts, he was never again able to find anthers (pollen) on any plant of 'Crested Moss'. 

In my garden, my two year old plant has the characteristic sparse foliage noted for this rose by Paul Barden, and the reputedly slow-growing plant stands about 2 1/2 feet tall at the time of this writing.  The foliage has grown more dense over the summer since flowering and the bush has achieved a more rounded form with a little judicious pruning.  'Crested Moss' is cane-hardy here in Kansas and it has withstood the current drought very well.  If you choose to grow it, you'll be rewarded annually by the strong damask-type fragrance and the clear pink color of the blooms.  If nothing else, the mossy calyx (a collective term for the sepals of a flower) creates a unique memory for visitors to your garden.  More than once, I've been near a point of failure in my attempts to excite a new visitor about the roses, but when they spy these unique buds, a connection forms and they start spewing forth questions. Questions that I usually can't answer, but at least I no longer have to search among mundane gambits to elicit conversation.  "How about this weather?", or "How about those Wildcats?" get tossed aside for a more stimulating discussion (at least to me) of Napoleon's three-cornered hat.  I am almost always able to restrain myself and stop before the visitor's eyes completely glaze over once again. 

Dry Times and Desperate Measures

The dry time has come, my friends, when a gardener's principles of xeriscaping and letting plants fend for themselves has smashed into the proverbial hard spot.  As a gardener on this bit of prairie, I try mightily, sometimes seemingly against my better judgement, to have as little impact as I can on my environment.  Minimal extra water use, lots of mulch, pesticides only in emergencies, no inorganic fertilizer, plants selected for the conditions of my region.  I fail mightily as well, harvesting corn drenched in insecticide (growing corn here in Kansas at any time qualifies as an emergency), watering marginal plants in dry times, and choosing some plants because they are unusual or interesting or pretty, even if they are better adapted to Costa Rica than this mid-continental desert.

I understand, however, on some basic level, that an attempt to garden at all must inevitably result in some effects on the environment.  I can't give Mrs. ProfessorRoush a rose garden, for instance, without displacing the native prairie grasses that would otherwise outcompete the roses.  I can't plant a tree on the prairie without shading out some of those same grasses.  I can choose a Miscanthus sp., or select among the excellent cultivars of Panicum, but the first is not native here and the second may not drawn the same insects, or the same birds to its seeds, or provide the same benefits to the soil as the native forms.  As noted by Michael Pollan in the classic essays of Second Nature, ornamental gardening means finding "a middle ground between the two positions of domination of a piece of ground or acquiescence to the natural conditions of the area."

I have drawn the line against nonintervention this weekend while worrying about my trees.  I'm quite pleased, these days, with the growth of several maples and oaks and cottonwoods that I have planted, and I'm quite distressed to see them turn silver leaves to the sky and begin to die.  Go away, Charles Darwin, and stop whispering in my ear.   I cannot stand by and let the pressures of Natural Selection, represented by this extreme and unusual drought, dictate which trees survive in my garden.  I cannot coexist here with a garden of Red Cedars and Osage Orange.  I need my Sweet Gum, my Black Gum, and my 'Patriot' Elm to create the illusion that I have some control over my garden.  I need them to linger here after I'm gone, keeping my presence after the end of days.

So I'm watering the trees today, deeply and individually, with a sprinkler that will cover most of the root extent.  I'm watering them in order of my love for them; my daughter's accidental Silver Maple first, next the native Cottonwood (pictured here) ravished first by ice storms and then drought, the 'October Glory' Red Maple that I hold dear in the Fall was third, and so on to the others.  My apologies to the Flint Hills aquifer, but I'd like someday to see a tree here large enough to support a squirrel or two, maybe to serve as a perch for a hungry owl, and perhaps to provide a little shade to rest from the Kansas sun.  As I water, however, I see that the backlit spray of water just looks like another clump of grass on the prairie, a quiet reminder to me of what God really intends to be grown here.

Sedum Smorgasbord Served

ProfessorRoush, why do you grow sedums as an edging plant?

Because, my Dear, they are drought-resistant and make nice tidy foliage clumps and they have disease free foliage and they bloom brightest and best after the roses are tired and also because the deer leave them alone.

But ProfessorRoush, why then have you clipped off the blooms on all your sedums this late in the season?

Because, as you so often make me aware, Mrs. ProfessorRoush, I was wrong.  Again.  I didn't clip them, the deer ate them.  The deer love them.  Indeed, if you search the Internet or books, there will be any number of websites that list sedum as a deer-resistant plant (including a pamphlet from a local gardening store that I based my decision on), but many of those were written by evil gnomes and are dead wrong.  As usual, I should have looked to the Universities of this fine land for definitive information.  Rutger's University has a very well laid-out webpage that lists sedum as "occasionally severely damaged."  North Carolina State Extension has a nice pamphlet as well, listing them as "occasionally damaged".   As a Extension Master Gardener, I should have known better than to trust a non-research-based source.  I am expecting a hit squad of Mossy Oak®-camouflaged EMG's to show up at my door at any minute, demanding my trowel, Felco's and my EMG name badge.

I don't wish to be full of sour grapes, but what the heck kind of a term is "deer-resistant" anyway?   I understand the evolutionary advantages for Lamb's Ear, for example, to have developed a fuzzy surface that is distasteful to deer, but the plants don't really resist the deer, the deer just resist eating certain plants. Until, in the midst of a drought, they're hungry.  After that, Watch Out, Nellie, because the stupid large furry rats won't even leave the junipers alone. 

Lesson learned.  By edging a nice rose bed with 'Matrona' (Sedum telephinum) divisions, I have merely set out a smorgasbord of sweetly-flavored succulents during a drought.  HEY THERE!  DEER!  LOOK OVER HERE!  Don't bother with all that tall dry grass, come get these velvet-lip-wetting candy treats I've set out for you.  And please, nibble on the roses on your way through, pretty please?   To quote Charlie Brown, "Good Grief!"