Basye's Purple Rose

For fellow rose-nuts who want to grow the unusual, I would recommend that they try 'Basye's Purple Rose' as a candidate for scratching that particular thorny itch.  For the photographers among the group, it will also present the challenge of correctly capturing the difficult wine-red color into a digital file.  As you can see from the varying hues represented by the photographs on this page, that is not an easy task.  The first photo, at the left here, best captures the exact tint and hue according to my eyes.  Iphone photos of this rose, like the second picture here, often turn out truly awful.  I've mentioned it in this blog before, but I like it enough that I felt it deserved a page of its very own.

'Basye's Purple Rose' is officially a mauve shrub rose bred by Dr. Robert E. Basye in 1968.  According to
William Welch, Basye rejected the rose as "a jewel in the rough", but the rose made it to commerce nonetheless, perhaps through stock given to Welch by Basye in 1983.  A cross of R. foliolosa and R. rugosa rubra, I've placed it in my mind as a Hybrid Rugosa, although I suppose it could just alternatively just as easily be described as a Hybrid Foliolosa.  Blooms are single with 5 petals, about 2.5 inches wide, have a mild fragrance to my nose, and repeat sporadically.  After the first flush the bush usually has a few blooms on it, but it won't make a large impact on garden color for the rest of the season.  I've seen the color described in various sources as "rich cabernet-red", "fuchsia", "magenta", and "rich wine-crimson with strong purple tones".  Personally, I would incorporate the velvety texture of the petals into my description of the color and tell the reader that the petals were cut out of the royal purplish-red robe of an English king.

This shrub is healthy here in Kansas, with no blackspot or mildew visible, but it is reported to mildew in some climates.  It has narrow medium green leaves, but the leaves towards the bottom 18 inches of the plant tend to drop off over the summer with no apparent disease.  The picture at left illustrates the bush in full bloom.  It was completely cane hardy in my garden last year in a winter that took almost all modern hybrid roses back to the ground, so I'm sure it's hardy in Zone 4 and probably can be successfully grown in Zone 3.  Terminal height in my garden is about 5 feet high and about 4 feet wide from the original plant.  It does throw up suckers on its own roots and I expect this rose could form a thicket if untended.  Young canes are red and very thorny, while older canes have less numerous awl-like prickles, but the bush form is gangly and not well covered.

'Basye's Purple Rose' is a collector's plant, not a landscaping specimen, and it seems to be primarily known and raised in America.  I couldn't find any mention of it in Peter Beale's Classic Roses, Twentieth-Century Roses, or Roses, but it is is described in G. Michael Shoup's Roses in Southern Gardens and William Welch's Antique Roses for Southern Gardens.  The latter describes it as ravishingly fragrant, but is the only source I've seen that attributes it with any substantial bouquet.

There are reports that 'Basye's Purple Rose' is tetraploid and fertile with modern roses.  Paul Barden listed the rose as "likely my very favorite Rugosa and certainly one of my favourite roses period.   Few, however,  seem interested in the rose as breeding stock.   Kim Rupert perhaps stated it most clearly in a  post on helpmefind.com/rose where he said "Able to be crossed with other roses, but far from willing and extremely willing to pass on awful plant architecture....a truly awful choice for breeding."   

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetle....

No!  I won't finish saying it.  In the 1988 Tim Burton film, Beetlejuice, the obnoxious ghost perfectly played by Michael Keaton, appears after the third repetition of his name.  So, I won't even think of Japanese Beetles lest I call them forth.

Opps.  Too late.  I found this little demon pictured in the photo above on July 4th, hiding in 'Golden Showers' at the Manhattan City Park Rose garden.  I've been expecting them to arrive soon, because I found my first last year on July 7th.  I didn't find any on July 4th this year at the KSU Rose Garden or on my own roses.  And, believe me, I looked carefully.

However, I had previously put some Japanese Beetle traps out at home, and inspecting this one, a Rescue! Trap, on July 6th, I found three males and a female, all of which I subsequently and thoroughly smashed to beetle pulp.  This trap was sent to me last year as a trial by a marketing agent for the Rescue! company and I believe it is a superior trap.   If you want to purchase one, it is currently $8.34 on Amazon.com.   I particularly like the strength and thickness of the collecting bag and the zipper closure at the bottom which lets the bag be emptied and inventoried as often as I like.  Those of you who have ever smelled the eventual stench of a "nonemptyable" trap know exactly what I'm talking about.  A competitor's system in a different area of my garden hasn't captured any beetles yet, but I don't know if that means that the Rescue! trap is also simply better at attracting the beetles or if it is just positional coincidence.  I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, I've raised the drawbridge, stationed lookouts at observation points around the ramparts, and readied the cannons. And, thanks to this trap, there are at least three male and one female Japanese beetles who won't be fornicating on my roses or producing any future beetles in this season.

Positional Vistas

I am a gardener that spends most of my garden time looking down at the level of my feet, peering into the depths of each flower in search of beauty, examining each leaf closely for evidence of insect damage or fungus, standing fast against the tiny advance guard of marauding weeds.  I rarely take the time to glance up into the greater world and appreciate the wider views of my garden.  I could probably blame my approach to gardening on my surgical training because of the similar approach when I concentrate on a surgery.  In one moment, in a surgery, the world is small, the length of an incision or of a bone fragment.  The work completed, I take a breath and suddenly there is a bright room, with people and beeping anesthesia machines and the clank of instruments thrown back onto the table.  My innate focus on the activity at hand, however, is probably not training but is simply my nature and perhaps why I enjoy both my vocation and my hobby.  Anyway, the lesson for the today is to try not to be like me.

I was struck recently, walking Bella and passing by the northeast facing "entrance" to my back patio (shown above left), that a tall pillar rose on the left and the house on the right frame an almost good vista, the fake path stones leading one's eye to the patio and the statue and steps at the other end beckoning onward.  I was also struck by the fact that I know the view from top of the steps at the other end, shown to the right here, is not quite as artful, no frame to draw the eye and the satellite disk rudely imposing on the scene.









But those observations did serve to lead me into a search for other pleasing vistas in my garden and I learned once again that finding beauty is often simply a matter of one's perspective.  A frontal view of this peony bed, with peonies, mockorange, and honeysuckle in full bloom is not nearly so interesting as the "long axis" view at the left, with the curved line of the bed drawing our eyes down it.  It was a fabulous Spring morning, that day I took this photo.











And likewise, my lavender border, frozen back and beaten down by a harsh winter, looks like forty miles of bad road until the gardener or visitor takes a position to look along the bed, focusing on the upended limestone rock at the center.  The light blues, purples, grays and greens are so soothing that I could sit and look at this picture all day long.













I need to remember to look up far more often.  I live in a place where the sky and the land meet sometimes to form a fantastic view, a vista that only needs to be carefully framed to release the magic within it.  Two steps to the right and several feet forward and the picture at the left, of the low clouds, distant fog and my neighbor's house, could have been an even better memory of a special early morning.  We merely need to always remember to look for the beauty, frame it, and file it away, in a picture or in that collection of neural paths called a memory.  Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, but it is certainly enhanced and improved by the perspective of the beholder.

Rural Rhythm

Among the Griffith Buck roses that I ordered and planted this year is a delightful delicate pink rose named 'Rural Rhythm'.  Introduced in 1984, 'Rural Rhythm' is a cross of 'Carefree Beauty' and 'The Yeoman' and is the first of the Buck roses I've run across that incorporated David Austin's English Rose line in the breeding.   I would say her appearance, however, reminds me of a more delicate 'Tiffany', the very shell pink blossoms of 'Rural Rhythm' tending to yellow at the base.  The petals on this rose are, however, almost translucent when the rose fully opens, reminiscent of the English rose parent.  According to Sam Kedem, the color of the flowers intensify in cool weather, so I'll be looking forward to that as Fall nears.

'Rural Rhythm' blooms in clusters of 1-5 and the flowers are full and quite large, about 4 inches in diameter.  They start out in Hybrid Tea form, but quickly open to golden stamens against a light yellow center. One poster on Gardenweb.com suggested that the flowers have weak necks but I haven't yet noticed that here.  On the plus side, the bloom is so light-colored that it doesn't burn in the Kansas sun, but not so light that it browns when it gets wet or fades.  There is a moderate fragrance to my nose, again tending more to the English rose parent.  My small bush has been blooming its head off (I counted 20 blooms at once on a bush that has yet to reach one foot in height or wide), but it is far to early for me to say anything about blackspot or winter hardiness here in Kansas.  Internet references suggest that it is both hardy to Zone 4b and blackspot resistant.  I did run across a really great pamphlet on hardy roses for Zone 4 from the University of Idaho Extension, which listed Rural Rhythm as having 50% winter dieback.  

Beyond everything else, I simply love the name of 'Rural Rhythm'.  I can't find any explanation of why Dr. Buck gave it that name, but it has everything going for it.  It has alliteration, it rolls off the tongue, and it reflects the quiet nature of the rose in the garden.  My rural garden.