Although there are no double wild roses known at the present day, either in Europe or in this country, yet, as other flowers have been found double in a wild state, it is not impossible that some of the ancient varieties bore double flowers in their native condition in the fields. Such may have been the Centifolias, mentioned by Pliny and Theophrastus, as growing upon Mount Panga, and those which, at a still earlier period, according to Herodotus, grew wild in Macedonia, near the ancient gardens of Midas.
The poverty in description which we have observed in ancient writings, and their comparatively small number of species, extends also to a much later day. In a little treatise published in France in 1536, and entitled De re Hortensis Libellus, there are but four species mentioned, and scarcely anything concerning their culture. An Italian work published in 1563 mentions only eight species. In the Florilegium of Sweet, a folio volume printed at Frankfort in 1612, are ten very coarse representations of roses, but with no indication of their names.
In the Paradisus Terrestris of Parkinson, a folio volume printed at London in 1629, some twenty-four kinds are mentioned. Some of them are represented by figures in wood, which are very coarse, and scarcely allow recognition of their species. In the Jardinier Hollandois, printed at Amsterdam in 1669, are found but fourteen species of roses, very vaguely described, with scarcely anything on culture.
The first work which treated of roses with any degree of method is that of La Quintyne, published at Paris in 1690, and yet its details of the different species and varieties do not occupy more than a page and a half, while twenty-one pages are given to the culture of tulips, and fifty to pinks. Though he describes two hundred and twenty-five varieties of pinks, and four hundred and thirteen tulips, he mentions only fourteen species and varieties of roses. For a century subsequent to the publication of La Quintyne’s work, the Rose is very little mentioned, either in English or French works, and there is nothing to indicate the existence at that time of many species, two or three only being required for medicine and perfumery. Some of the English collections, however, numbered during that century some twenty-two distinct species, and a number of varieties. In 1762, Linnæus was acquainted with only fourteen species. In 1799, Wildenow, in his Species Plantarum, mentioned thirty-nine; and Persoon, a little later, reached forty-five species; De Candolle, in his Prodromus, published in 1825, increased the number to one hundred and forty-six; and Don, in 1832, makes two hundred and five species. If to these are added those which have been within fifteen years discovered in the Himalaya Mountains, and in other parts of the globe, the number will be greatly increased.
Many of those enumerated by Don should not, in truth, be considered distinct species, and quite a number are nothing more than varieties. In fact, roses are so liable to pass into each other, that botanists are now of the opinion that limits between many of those called species do not exist; a fact which was strongly suspected by Linnæus, when he said, “Species limitibus difficillime circumscribuntur, et forte natura non eos posuit.”
There is much confusion in the genus Rosa, and in the best arrangement there may be many, which, on close examination, would scarcely deserve the name of species. The best scientific work on the Rose is the “Monographia Rosarum,” by Dr. Lindley. This author, and Loudon, we shall follow entirely in our botanical classification. The latter enumerates several other works on the Rose, which are not within our reach.
The Rose is found in almost every part of the northern hemisphere, between the 19th and 70th degrees of latitude.
Captain Fremont, (now General Fremont) in his description of the prairies some five hundred miles west of St. Louis, says, “Everywhere the Rose is met with, and reminds us of cultivated gardens and civilization. It is scattered over the prairies in small bouquets, and, when glittering in the dews and waving in the pleasant breeze of the early morning, is the most beautiful of the prairie flowers.”