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Yesterday's Roses Are Back in Style
| Article
# : |
14416 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1988 |
2,166 Words |
| Author
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Virginia K. Greiner
Virginia Greiner, whose garden column appears weekly in the
Washington Times, grows roses in the suburbs of the nation's
capital. |
The grandes dames of roses, which fell from grace as their more prolifically blooming modern sisters caught the public's eye, are being rediscovered. They have not survived a few million years for nothing.
Ironically, gardeners are now seeking these antique beauties because they are easier to grow than the fussy and demanding modern varieties. But, this isn't the first comeback for old roses. These dowager empresses of the rose world have had their ups and downs through wars, revolutions, scandals, Roman orgies, the Dark Ages, and passing fads. They've survived foraging dinosaurs, inbreeding, cultural upheavals, and neglect and abandonment; and they still grow wild all over the world, from the frigid Arctic Circle to the sizzling Equator.
Yesterday's roses have had a glamorous and checkered past, and, like most women of a certain age, they keep their backgrounds and birthdates a bit hazy. Parents, genes, crosses, natural intermingling: so many forces have been at work it's impossible to know all the secrets of these grandes dames--and impossible to settle on a magical date that divided all the old garden roses from the modern ones. To tidy up the family tree, the American Rose Society settled on 1867, the date when La France, one of the first early hybrid tea roses, was introduced. Roses from a class in existence before that date are called old garden roses; all roses from a class established after that are known as modern roses.
Old roses may look delicate, but they're the botanical equivalent of an iron butterfly. Their hardiness is one reason why they're being sought after again. Although some are frail, many sneer at a host of diseases and insects that plague most modern roses. They don't nag busy gardeners for as much pampering, winter protection, feeding, watering, pruning, spraying, and praying over as their modern sisters demand. Newer roses, although ravishing in appearance and much freer with their blooms, tend to pout and droop if they don't get all this al fresco room service.
These neglected roses also have the old-fashioned sense to hide their toughness under seductive finery: delicate, flat, five-petaled "single" flowers or big, blowsy overblown puffballs. Some display small, finely shaped and cut leaves in soft grays, blue-greens, and burnished coppers; some have bountiful "hips" (the small receptacles that hold the rose on the stem), which ripen into beautiful colors and hang on the bush long after the last rose of summer is only a
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