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PERFUME IN MODERN ROSES |
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It is commonly said that modern roses lack the perfume of older sorts. Excluding R. damascena (Plate 63), such a statement does not stand investigation. It is extremely rare to find any modern rose scentless; there are a few, but there were also some among the old varieties. Actually some had distinctly unpleasant odours, for example R. foetida (Plate 3). This species has been responsible for altering the type of perfume in some roses of today. Their fragrance is no longer unpleasant but has definitely changed.
That beautiful white rose, Frau Karl Druschki, distributed by Lambert in 1900, is being held up continually as an example of the wicked modern rose, quite devoid of perfume. It is hardly modern, and the people who make these assertions forget that other roses of the same era (now half a century past), such as Captain Christy, Baroness Rothschild, and Crimson Bedder, were not only odourless but were also favourites. Probably the big white bloom is singled out because it outstayed all others of its time by many years. Its lack of fragrance is less typical of roses of today than of those of its own time of origin. Frau Karl Druschki has given us many very sweetly scented roses as progeny. Despite these many complaints (usually from people who know least about roses!) the public continues to favour colour and form rather than perfume when ordering new rose plants. Perfume comes with relevant chromosomes just as do all the other qualities of a rose, and, if popular demand were to warrant it, the hybridist could and would concentrate on intensification of perfume. Although modern roses are just as rich in fragrance as the older types, few people realize that perfume has become more varied. Once the rich, sweet damask perfume was almost universal, differing only in intensity among popular roses from one sort to another. Then came the Tea Rose and its typical perfume. The hybridization of the two types brought the Hybrid Tea and a blending of the perfumes. Some of the progeny had nearly the damask perfume, some almost the tea perfume and the majority an intermediate type. Later, when the R. foetida cross was made, and the Pernetianas appeared, a further blending of perfume came. Fragrance is now very varied, ranging through degrees of damask, tea, and fruit odours to many types not yet classified. Have you not, on many occasions, entered a room and been aware of the presence of roses by their perfume, before you have seen them? How many of the varieties in that bowl or vase were more than twenty-five years old? The damask perfume is represented today by such roses as Crimson Glory (Plates 5, 56), Rouge Mallerin, Royalist, Heart's Desire, Mirandy (Plates 24, 41), Shot Silk, Ophelia (Plate 12) and her family, Mrs Bryce Allan, William Orr (Plate 56), General MacArthur, Hadley, Radiance and its sports, Rose Marie, Red Ensign, Lumiere, Prinses Beatrix, Charles Mallerin, Wellworth, Monte Carlo, Venise Briarcliff (Plate 12), Dame Edith Helen (Plate 13), Tassin (Plate 53), Lorraine Lee, Malar Ros (Plate 39), William Harvey (Plate 40), William Moore, Rod Stillman, Suzon Lotthe (Plate 57), Mrs Henry Morse, Julie Strahl, and Baden Baden. The tea scent is found in Poinsettia (Plate 12), Lady Hilling-don, Sunny South, Mme Jules Bouch£ (Plate 18), Souvenir de Mme Boullet, Golden Dawn, Mrs Harold Brocklebank, Mrs Dunlop Best, Golden Harvest, and others. The fruity scent is variable in type, most common among the Pernetianas and best exemplified in Angele Pernet, fitoile de Hollande, Mrs Sam McGredy, Brazil, Provence, Golden Emblem, and Rev. F. Page Roberts. |
