Hybrid Tea.
BARDOU JOB.
Hybrid Tea.
BARDOU JOB.
Other new roses of this new race followed slowly—very slowly—till 1890. I have just gone carefully through the catalogues of the chief English and foreign rose-growers; and find that in 1889 only twenty-four Hybrid Teas were known. There were some truly admirable roses among them. Camoëns came in 1881. Lady Mary Fitzwilliam, one of the most valuable, 1882. Delightful Papa Gontier, 1883. Grace Darling and Gloire Lyonnaise, 1884—the latter a rose which is not as generally cultivated as it should be; for grown as a bush it is the perfection of an autumn rose. Viscountess Folkestone, 1886. Bardou Job, 1887—a slightly capricious rose in some places: but so beautiful with its great semi-double flowers of scarlet-crimson flaked with velvety-black, that one bears with its little ways patiently, rejoicing when it condescends to respond to one's care. In 1888 came Bennett's The Meteor. In 1889 Augustine Guinoisseau, invaluable for massing. And either that year or the next, the gorgeous and thorny Marquise de Salisbury.
But the real development of the race began in 1890. And since then each year has seen one superb rose after another produced in such numbers, that it is as difficult to keep count of them as to determine which of the magnificent novelties should be picked out for special mention.
It must be noted that there has been rather too great a tendency to raise enormous roses of slightly pale colouring, and among them many are merely fit for exhibition and of little use to the amateur for garden purposes. But of late these faint shades have been successfully fought against; and while size has been preserved the colours are growing deeper and richer each year. So that we are surely drawing nearer the not impossible day when we may get Hybrid Tea roses as brilliant a red or yellow as Duke of Edinburgh or Maréchal Niel, as large as [Frau Karl Druschki], and as fragrant, let us hope, as La France. As it is, it is difficult to imagine anything much more vivid than the orange, deep salmon-pink, copper-red, and rosy-apricot of some of the novelties of 1906-7-8. Among them may be noted Messrs. Alex. Dickson & Son's Dorothy Page-Roberts, Souvenir de Stella Gray; Messrs. Wm. Paul's Warrior; MM. Soupert et Notting's magnificent Mme. Segond Weber, Mme. J. W. Budde, Marichu Zayas; M. Pernet-Ducher's Mme. Maurice de Luze, and Mrs. Aaron Ward.
These roses, as I have said, are the result of crossings between the Hybrid Perpetual and the Tea rose. And if we think for a moment how these two families came into existence, we shall see what a curious and interesting blending of many different strains has been needed to develop this beautiful and valuable race. But the end has not come yet to what may be accomplished. And there can be no doubt that many remarkable developments in the history of rose-growing still lie before us and succeeding generations, when the results of fresh experiments with the Wichuraiana, the Rugosa, and other roses are made known.
Single Hybrid Tea.
IRISH ELEGANCE.