Among the recent additions to this genus, the White Province, or Rose Unique, is indisputably the most valuable. Its introduction in 1777 was entirely accidental, through the medium of the late Mr. Grimwood, nurseryman, a great admirer and collector of roses, who, in an excursion which he usually made every summer, in passing the front garden of Mr. Richmond, a baker near Needham in Suffolk, there perceived the present charming plant, where it had been placed by a carpenter who found it near a hedge on the contiguous premises of a Dutch merchant, whose old mansion he was repairing. Mr. Grimwood, requesting a little cutting of it, received from Mr. Richmond the whole plant; when Mr. G., in return for a plant so valuable, presented him with an elegant silver cup with the Rose engraved upon it; and which in commemoration has furnished food for many a convivial hour. It is of a dwarf growth, and remains in flower near six weeks longer than the other Province Roses; which renders it still the more estimable. We wish it had been in our power to have accounted for its having been till so lately a stranger to us, and whence indigenous; but at present our information is entirely confined to the knowledge of its casual introduction; and until some further light is thrown upon the subject, to elucidate its genealogy, we shall regard it as a native.
Our drawing was taken from a plant in the nursery of Messrs. Colville, King’s Road.
ROSA parviflora, Provincialis.
Small-flowered Province or Blandford Rose.
CHARACTER SPECIFICUS.
Rosa parviflora, germinibus sub-globosis; pedunculis glandulosis; caule et petiolis aculeatis; aculeis ramorum sparsis, rectis, sub-reflexis; foliolis ovatis, subtus villosis, marginibus glandulosis.