Paradigm Rose Shift

I have not entirely neglected my garden reading this Winter, but I must confess that I've struggled at times to keep a high interest level in the books that I chose to read (more on that in a later blog).  I did, however, recently pick up a copy of an older rose tome by noted rosarian, Rayford Reddell, titled A Year In The Life Of A Rose, and written in the ancient times of 1996.  My second-hand volume, by the way, seems to be autographed by the author, and thus well worth the marked-down $2.50 price.

Mostly, this short book reminded me exactly how much rose gardening has changed within two short decades.  Mr. Reddell wrote the book in a time when the AARS program reigned supreme in the rose world, annually introducing beautiful but finicky princesses who often weren't worth the trouble of growing.  He wrote at a time when Jackson & Perkins and Week's Roses were thriving and turning out promising new varieties by the dozens every year.  I expected, and was not disappointed, to find suggestions and advice based more on the classical formulas for growing good show roses, advice aimed at production of massive Hybrid Tea blooms grown in blessed coastal or southern climates.  There were many prunning and spraying and fertilizing instructions that were used 20 years ago when the modern shrub rose class was still in infancy, but few suggestions for environmental consideration or organic care.

I respect Mr. Reddell's expertise and knowledge without question, but I did not agree with his recommended rose choices and, given my Kansas climate, I'm sure he would understand.  The chapter entitled "The Future For Roses" did predict the growth of the shrub rose class and the trend for breeding disease resistant roses, but Reddell proclaimed 'Carefree Delight', in my opinion a real yawner of a shrub rose, to be the "quintessential Landscape rose."  I don't think so, Mr. Reddell.  And then he goes on to worship at the roots of 'Scentimental', the wine and white streaked 1997 AARS winner.  Every reader here knows my love for striped roses, and yes, I do grow 'Scentimental', but the rose struggles mightily to survive for me and every year I consider uprooting and composting it.  The blossoms are nice, but I'm not sentimental about 'Scentimental' at all. 

The text was most fascinating to me for what it didn't predict;  the breeding of Knock Out and the subsequent disintegration of the commercial rose world that we knew in 1996.  There is a section in the book titled "Roses by Zones,"  In it, Mr. Reddell picks a well-known rosarian in every USDA Zone to glean local advice from, and, by chance, for Zone 4B he chose to repeat advice from Bill Radler, the breeder of 'Knock Out'.  This was Radler pre-Knock Out, discussing winter protection and fertilizer choices in Wisconsin.  Not a word about the revolution to come. 

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn defined the concept of  a "paradigm shift", postulating that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions" replacing one world view with another.  Within the Rose World, there have been at least 3 paradigm shifts, first with the introduction to the West of the "China Stud roses," then the breeding of the first Hybrid Tea in 1867, and more recently, with the rise of disease resistant shrub roses, like Knock Out, that bloom madly and healthy in our landscapes in a very un-rose-like manner.  A Year In The Life Of A Rose illustrates that 'Knock Out 'was the catalyst for a classic paradigm shift, a change unforeseen by the arguably foremost expert of the field in his time, only five years before the paradigm shift to disease resistant landscape roses began.

Slow Changes

My apologies for leaving Garden Musings alone so long.  ProfessorRoush has been in a gardening funk of major proportions, accompanied, I assume, by many of my Zone 6 and lower friends.  My garden is incorporating the local signs of Spring at a snail's pace, with the warm days of yesterday faded into the cold afternoon of today. And likewise it's Gardener has also been absent-without-permission, unable to get excited even at the daily opening and closing of his snow crocus.

 

The garden is completely static, unable to rouse itself from winter at the recent pace for Kansas.  As I review my notes of years past, this Spring seems to be "normal" and I would predict the redbuds and forsythia bloom at the end of the month, with daffodils in early April, unlike last year when we had redbuds and daffodils in full bloom by now, and iris and Scilla had already graced my presence.  This year, the redbuds and forsythia are still tightly closed.  Scilla hasn't appeared above ground and the daffodils are barely peaking up in places.  ProfessorRoush only hopes that all this means a wet Spring to break the drought and shortened weeks of furnace temperatures in July and August.

I  blame the semi-annual Time Change, of course, for the combined sloth of my garden and myself, as most of my regular readers would expect.  Just this past week, around Monday, I had finally adjusted to the Fall change, sleeping in at long last several days this week until 6:00 instead of waking to frozen darkness at 5:00 a.m. As a consequence, this morning I awoke after the time change at 6:45, which on a normal work day will make me late. So now I have to readjust to life awakening in darkness again, although the extra hour at night in the garden might start to be useful. Daylight Savings Time also seems to have brought a return to the cold. Yesterday we had rain and +60F. Today, we have rain,+35F, and gale winds from the north, with snow forecast this afternoon and evening.  When, oh when, will Spring come again?

Construction on "The Barn" continues, with a roof in place, but no doors.  I did briefly rouse myself yesterday during the warm hours to fill bird feeders, pick up trash in the yard, and water a few cloched baby roses, but my only real garden progress was the planting of a daylily start from my parent's farm.  I chose this division in December from among about thirty others because it looked vigorous and strong (my father has no idea which one it is).  It has proved its vitality, because tucked away in a unheated garage in a black garbage bag for 2 months it grew over a foot of pale yellow foliage in the darkness, and so it was far overdue for planting.  With my luck and looking at the vigor of this daylily, I probably chose a clump of ugly orange 'Kwanso' to transplant.  I had plenty of that already!

Perhaps I should begin a campaign to hurry Spring along by planning some garden changes.  I need, for instance, to revise the pictured corner of my landscaping (right), which was originally a triangle of purple- and yellow-needled evergreens in front of the bluish "dwarf" spruce at the corner. Over 13 years, Juniper 'Old Gold' has overgrown and covered the plum-winter-needled Juniper horizontalis 'Youngstown Andorra' , and it threatens to move on to the adjacent roses.  Additionally, I think it has become home for several critters, as evidenced by the trails leading under it, and it needs to go.  What to replace it with?  The only danger here, as every gardener will recognize, is that I allow my Winter's despair to influence ill-advised changes in the overall garden by, for instance, inspiring me to rip out this healthy sunny border in favor of a doomed shade garden, or a 1 acre pond, or a 75 foot long pondless waterfall   Moderation is the key to garden planning by restless gardeners in Winter.

UnMundane Mundi

If a budding rosarian....interesting phrase...what exactly is a budding rosarian?  Is ProfessorRoush referring to a person who grows roses only to create flowers, rather than one who wants to promote the development of hips (a hip rosarian)?  Surely I am not referring to a rosarian who is asexually reproducing by the formation of outgrowths (buds) from their bodies?  That would be a little too sci-fi-ish even for this old Isaac Asimov fan, although it might be a useful and non-icky  method of procuring spare parts for oneself.  No, I think it can be easily surmised that I'm referring to a "new" rosarian, at "an early developmental stage but showing potential" as "budding" is defined by the Free Online Dictionary.

Let me begin again.  If a new lover of roses whimsically wants to grow a very old rose, they could scarce do better, in my humble opinion, than to grow the old Gallica 'Rosa Mundi'.  I've grown this ancient rose for a decade, this sprawling, running, short-statured clump of a bush, but I've yet to tire of it.  Perhaps it is the matchless freedom of the unique simple blossoms, each one different from another, striped or plain, as it sees fit.  Perhaps it is the understated presence of the bush when it is not in bloom, no more than three feet tall but popping up again and again as it suckers its way across the yard.  It is a stealth invader, masquerading itself within an adjacent viburnum or lilac until it announces its acquisition of territory at bloom time.  Maybe it is the history of this rose that attracts me, bound forever to the memory of a king's mistress.

The birth of 'Rosa Mundi' was not recorded, so ancient a rose that she is only referenced as existing prior to 1581.  It should be exhibited by the name of Rosa gallica versicolor, but it is known by a hundred other names.  The Striped Rose of France.  La Panachée. Provins Oeillet. R. gallica variegata. Fair Rosamond's Rose. Gemengte Rose. Garnet Striped Rose. Polkagrisrose. The "Rosamond" reference is to Rosamond Clifford, one of the mistresses of Henry II, a 12th Century monarch.  Henry's wife, his cousin and the previously-married Eleanor of Aquitaine, must have hated this rose, although stories that Eleanor poisoned Rosamond are dismissed as only legend. The Latin phrase, "rosa mundi", means "rose of the world," and was doubtless chosen instead of "rosa munda" (Latin for "pure rose") as a clear reference that Rosamund, a mistress, had her own worldly failings matched by these rose-splashed white petals. This large, hugely fragrant, semi-double rose bears all these names and the weight of history without complaint, however, growing disease-free for me in the afternoon shade of two tall viburnums to its south.  The oldest and best known of the striped roses, 'Rosa Mundi' is bushy and dense, very hardy and once-blooming, its only failing a tendency to sucker into a thicket if I turn my head for a season. She produces lots of thin canes, and it might be best to occasionally prune back the oldest canes to thin the bush.  'Rosa Mundi' is believed to be a natural sport of Rosa gallica officinalis and recent DNA analysis seems to agree.  She has some decent coloring in the Fall on occasion, and she does set hips, but I wouldn't call the hips ornamental.  They're downright ugly in fact, brown and bland, fading to black

I tried to find out the significance of the year of our Lord 1581 regarding this rose, but my google-foo was weak and it took some time.  Finally, in the Winter 2013 newsletter of the NorthWest Rosarian, and in the Heritage Roses Northwest Spring 2012 letter, I found the re-publication of Jeff Wyckoff's ARS website article, The Trails and Tales of Rosa Mundi, which states that the first reference to a striped rose, presumed to be 'Rosa Mundi', appeared in Mathias de L’Obel’s herbal Plantarum seu stirpium icones in 1581.  I can't find the original article on the web, but if you can read Latin, you can find the original text in the archive of the Missouri Botanical Garden, along with a PDF of the book..  It's simply amazing what information is available on the Web these days, is it not? 

Where've You Been, Baby?

In preparation for Christmas, as per my usual pattern, ProfessorRoush planted an Amaryllis bulb, 'Red Lion', about 2 weeks prior to Thanksgiving.  This year's selection was purchased as a dormant bulb at a local nursery, so one could say that I splurged compared to my usual purchase of the bulbs at Sam's Club or another big box store.  All according to my new resolution to support small nurseries.

In most years, that 6-weeks-prior-to-Christmas-potting results in some welcome bloom and bright colors just at Christmas, so imagine my surprise this year when the bulb just sat there.  And sat there.  It had a greenish skin color at the top, obviously still viable, but it sat there.  I kept it watered and in full sunlight and still it stubbornly stared at me, reluctantly unwilling to reciprocate with regal red flowers or, for that matter, even stems.  Christmas came and passed without a hint of growth from the bulb. 

Finally, sometime after the New Year, my prima donna bulb decided it was time to come out of dormancy and it teased me over for weeks with the slow development of a sturdy stem.  I added rotating the pot every other day to my chores since the stem kept slanting towards the light.  At three feet tall it decided to put out three buds, just in time to lull me into anticipation of bloom by Valentine's day.  Valentine's day came and went.   And then, on February 15th, it decided that since St Valentine's day was over it could finally come out of hiding to bless us with its presence.  Three large beautiful bright velvety blooms in three days.  On the 17th, as the third bloom opened, we left for Las Vegas.  When we returned on the 21st, all the blooms were sagging, their energy spent, their beauty gone.

I may never know what was so obviously amiss this year.  Perhaps the bulb was weak?  Perhaps the pot too small?  The water or light too slight?  At any rate, at least the birds got to enjoy it through the window; a red beacon of Spring, shining from the sunroom of an empty house for a few scant days.