Rose lovers owe a lot to English breeder, David Austin, who over the past several decades has led a movement among breeders that has re-introduced fragrance into the world of garden roses.\u00a0 For several decades after World War II, rose growers focused on other traits, especially the long stems and large, high-centered blooms that characterized the hybrid tea roses dominating the retail market.\u00a0 Some varieties, like the red and white stalwart, \u2018Double Delight\u2019, had pronounced fragrance, but many commercially available hybrid teas had aromas so light as to be almost undetectable.\u00a0 The quantities of pesticides that many rose gardeners used on those lovely plants also helped knock out the fragrances.<\/p>\n
But starting in roughly 1980, fragrance came back into style.\u00a0 Major rose hybridizers followed Austin\u2019s lead in breeding the trait back into shrub roses, groundcover roses and even classic hybrid teas.\u00a0 All of this has benefitted gardeners everywhere, adding to the sensory delights of large and small landscapes.<\/p>\n
But rose blossoms, even those of repeat or near-ever blooming varieties, are ephemeral.\u00a0 It is part of their charm, but it does limit fragrance.\u00a0 Foliage, on the other hand, lasts from its first appearance in early spring, through fall\u2019s hard frosts.\u00a0 Aromatic leaves might well be rose breeders\u2019 next frontier.<\/p>\n
Anyone who has sniffed a rose leaf knows that the only sensation that will register with your nose is the occasional aphid inhaled by mistake.\u00a0 But, unknown to many gardeners, species or wild roses with scented leaves have existed for millennia.\u00a0 Two varieties stand out: the eglantine or sweet briar rose\u2014Rosa eglanteria\u2014and the incense rose\u2014Rosa primula.<\/p>\n
The least known is certainly the incense rose.\u00a0 It is native to Turkestan, an area in central Asia bounded by Russia, Mongolia and the Caspian Sea.\u00a0 It is a big rose, about seven feet tall by six feet wide, with graceful arching branches that give rise to \u201cleaves\u201d, which are actually groups of up to 15 individual leaflets.\u00a0 The five-petaled, single flowers, which bloom fairly early in spring, are primrose yellow and only appear once a season.\u00a0 The great rosarian, Graham Stuart Thomas, described the bushes as having \u201ca fine effect when loaded with flowers.\u201d\u00a0 Both the plant\u2019s new growth and its prickles or thorns are reddish brown.<\/p>\n
All those traits make the incense rose a thing of beauty, but the plants are distinctive because the leaves, which bear high concentrations of essential oils, have the pronounced sweet, herbal aroma of incense.\u00a0 Best of all, you don\u2019t have to burn the leaves to release the scent.\u00a0 It will tickle your nose any time, but especially in breezy, somewhat moisture-laden air.<\/p>\n
The eglantine or sweetbriar rose, sometimes also known botanically as Rosa rubiginosa, arrived in this country from its native Europe and western Asia in Colonial times.\u00a0 The flowers, which at 1.5 inches, are about the same size as those of the incense rose, are clear pink and also bear five petals each. \u00a0The shrubs grow between six and 15 feet tall, sprouting arching branches, well armed with hooked prickles and leaves divided into groupings of five leaflets apiece. More than one commentator has noted that sweetbriar planted en masse, makes an excellent boundary or privacy hedge.\u00a0 However, the distinguishing feature of the eglantine and its hybrids is the pronounced scent of the foliage, which smells like green apples.<\/p>\n
For some reason, perhaps having to do with the incense rose\u2019s climate preferences, it has not become popular as a garden plant.\u00a0 Sweetbriar, on the other hand, has fared better and sometime between Colonial days and now, caught on to the point that garden escapee plants have spread into the wild in some parts of North America.\u00a0 Sometimes eglantines still grow in old, untended cemeteries.<\/p>\n
In the guise of its alter-ego, eglantine, the rose also shows up in literature. Chaucer bestowed the name \u201cMadame Eglantine\u201d on the Prioress in Canterbury Tales<\/em>. Shakespeare mentions the eglantine rose in A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream <\/em>and poets, including Dryden, Keats and John Greenleaf Whittier, planted the fragrant eglantine firmly in their verses.<\/p>\n Breeders have come up with a number of hybrids of Rosa eglanteria, but not, as far as I know, of Rosa primula.\u00a0 Perhaps it is difficult to hybridize.\u00a0 In any event, breeding fragrance into rose leaves, might well offer advantages beyond simply adding to the fragrance dimension of home gardens.\u00a0 Fragrant foliage plants, like those in the mint family, tend to repel deer and other rapacious garden varmints, not to mention some insect pests.\u00a0 It is possible that scented rose leaves might keep deer from nipping off young shoots and buds, which would be a very good thing.<\/p>\n Most modern gardeners do not have room for roses as big as either the eglantine or the incense rose.\u00a0 We can wait for the day when hybrids of those roses, complete with aromatic leaves, come in sizes more suitable to home landscapes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rose lovers owe a lot to English breeder, David Austin, who over the past several decades has led a movement among breeders that has re-introduced fragrance into the world of garden roses.\u00a0 For several decades after World War II, rose growers focused on other traits, especially the long stems and large, high-centered blooms that characterized … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[1453,1573,1571,1574,1572,1575,1577,1411,194,1576,729],"class_list":["post-2048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-aromatic-leaves","tag-eglantine-rose","tag-incense-rose","tag-rosa-eglanteria","tag-rosa-primula","tag-rosa-rubiginosa","tag-rose-breeding","tag-single-roses","tag-species-roses","tag-wild-roses","tag-yellow-roses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2049,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions\/2049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}