La Ville de Bruxelles is a very beautiful rose, of delicate waxy tint and vigorous growth. Madame Stoltz is of a pale straw or lemon color. Madame Soëtmans is of delicate cream-color, tinged with buff. Madame Hardy is a large and very full rose of the purest white. It has but one fault,—that of sometimes showing a green bud in the centre. But for this, it would be almost unrivalled among white roses. Leda is of a blush tint, edged with lake.
There are but few new varieties of this family, as the double sorts do not bear seed freely.
[Original]
Rosa Alba.—The parent of the Alba, or White roses, is a native of Central Europe. The species is so called from the prevailing delicacy of hue in its varieties, many of which are of a pure white, while none are of a deeper coloring than a bright pink. The original stock is spineless; but many of its progeny, in consequence, probably, of hybridization, have spines in greater or less number. The upper surface of the leaves has a glaucous or whitish tinge, and the shoots are of a clear green.
Félicité is a large double rose, of a delicate flesh-color, and a most symmetrical shape. La Séduisante is of a bright rose in the centre, shading into flesh-color at the circumference: it rivals the last in the perfection of its shape. Madame Audot is of a pale flesh-color. Madame Legras is a white rose of a peculiar delicacy, and very graceful in its habit of growth. The Queen of Denmark is of a clear rosy pink. Sophie de Marsilly is of a delicate rose-color, slightly mottled, and, when half opened, is a rose of remarkable beauty.
The Alba roses bloom abundantly, and form in masses a beautiful contrast, in their chaste and delicate hues, with the deeper colors of the French and Hybrid China roses. They rarely bear seed freely.
