The Hunt for Rare Roses
Roses have been cultivated for over 5000 years; have been one of the most popular flowering shrubs ever grown. But it wasn't until Napoleon's wife, Josephine, a renowned spendthrift, at no small expense began to collect all the known varieties of roses into one garden outside of Paris in 1804, the middle-class gardeners began to take growing roses in earnest.
It was said, she even seized rose bushes from captured enemy ships in order to supplement her rose beds at Château de Malmaison. And it was later in France in 1867, Jean-Baptiste Guillot, created the first Hybrid Tea rose.
After the development of the hybrid tea, many old garden roses (rose plants cultivated before 1867) lost favor with the increasing number of middle-class gardeners. Often many rare roses were in real danger of dying off. From opposite sides of the world, two different people started their own crusades to save these rare roses from extinction.
Rare Roses in European Rosarium, Sangerhausen, Germany
Since 1896 a small group of rose enthusiasts formed an association to save as many rose species as they could. The town of Sangerhausen offered them some fallow land. Now over a hundred years later, the European Rosarium houses the largest collection of rare roses in the world.
It is home to 75,000 roses and some 8,300 species. Is also considered a rose gene bank and sciencific testing ground for many species of roses. It is home to very rare roses the, "Viridiflora" which has green petals to match its leaves and the black-red Hybrid Tea and named "Nigrette". Considered the darkest colored rose today.
Rare Roses from the Gold Rush
Oddly enough one of the hotbeds for collecting rare roses, in is California. During the gold rush, many immigrants arrived from Europe seeking their fortune in the mine fields, shops and farmlands. People are aware of the successful transplanting of grape stocks for winemaking but few know about the old garden roses.
Many settlers' wives brought with them cuttings from their family's rosebed. These plants were mostly rare roses from Mediterranean and European descent. They were often planted in cemeteries, along gravesides and in mining camps and shanty towns from San Francisco to Texas.
In the 1930's American rose enthusiast, Evelyn Keyes and nurseryman Francis E. Lester traveled widely and started to develop rare roses from plantings around old campsites and homesteads. Several vintage rose nurseries were started in the southern California area and remain active today.
But the rarest rose…
The blue rose has long been symbol of the impossible and unattainable since there are no "blue" roses in nature. Blue roses sold in stores are cleverly cut samples that are allowed to "draw up" blue dye for several days which changes their appearance.
Roses lack the correct color pigment that allows other flowers to blue. That is until now. In 2004 a Japanese whiskey brewing company, developed a genetically modified blue rose.
While its color appears more a lilac than a blue, it does have the blue 'delphinidin" gene which makes it a "true blue rose" and making it the "holy grail" of rare roses!