SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
Rose, with roundish seed-buds, and slightly hispid peduncles; flowers of a deep rich red colour, ever-blooming; petioles prickly; leaflets oblong, sharp-pointed, and smooth; stem green, smooth, and thorny towards the base.
This most beautiful species is perhaps the only one that could with any degree of propriety be termed an Ever-blooming Rose, the indica excepted, and which is by some supposed to be only a variety of the present plant; an idea probably resulting from the congeniality of their continual bloom: but admitting it to be only a pale variety of this dark Rose, there must be at least one or two intermediate varieties not yet imported, to smooth the gradual descent from its original; or otherwise the China Roses must be as distinct in their varieties as the generality of other Roses are in their species. It is a Rose of extreme latitude, particularly in the growth of its foliage. When cultivated in a pot, it is frequently not a fourth part of the size our figure represents; whilst on the contrary in the conservatory of G. Hibbert, esq. from whence our figure was made from a plant ten feet high, some of the foliage on the lower part of the plant was full three times the size we have delineated.
To the late G. Slater, esq. of Knots Green near Laytonstone, we are indebted for the introduction of this fine plant, in the year 1792.
