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'Sweet-scented China' rose References
Book  (Apr 1993)  Page(s) 253.  
 
Hume's Blush Tea-scented China Tea, light pink, 1809, R. x odorata variety; A. Hume. Description.
Book  (Feb 1993)  Page(s) 112.  Includes photo(s).
Book  (Jun 1992)  Page(s) 47.  
 
Hume's Blush Tea-scented China Tea. Banks/Hume/Colville, 1810. Supposedly of R. chinensis x R. gigantea ancestry. [Author cites information from different sources. In an article about Tea Roses by E.E. Robinson, it is described as "Semi-double variety, of ever-blooming habit, discovered by an agent of the British East India Company, who obtained plants in 1808 from the Fan Tee Nurseries at Canton, and dispatched them to Sir Abraham Hume, of Wortlebury, who received them in 1810, and bestowed on them the name 'Hume's Blush', in honour of his wife, the Lady Amelia Hume...]
Book  (1988)  Page(s) 42.  
 
Hume's Blush Tea-Scented China was introduced by James Colvill in 1810. (Named for Sir Abraham and Lady Hume, Hertfordshire.) Also grew at Malmaison...
Book  (1988)  Page(s) 163.  
 
location 128/2, R. x odorata Sweet (R. chinensis x R. gigantea), CHINENSES, origing unknown, found in China, 1810, yellowish white, well double, strong fragrance, large, late-blooming, bushy, branched, upright-arching, many prickles, medium-dark green medium size, matte-glossy, 9 leaflets
Website/Catalog  (1985)  Page(s) 34.  
 

Odorata (China) (Hume’s Blush) A vigorous, old China rose which, in the past, was sometimes used as an understock.....

Book  (1984)  Page(s) 81.  
 
F. C. H. Witchell: Spring Competition, 1983.
Dennis Gobee,,,then, equally casually, drew attention to his second contribution to the display: a few feet of R. x odorata carrying a number of really lovely cream flowers, each lightly shaded pink. "Got it from the Bahamas," he said, his impish smile growing broader. "It is in a tub in the greenhouse; threatens to take the place over; just prune it like a grape vine and then it flowers from top to tail."
Article (magazine)  (29 Mar 1975)  Page(s) 38-39.  
 
For the introduction of the original roses which were to have a major influence in the modern development of the genus, western horticulture stands indebted to an English country gentleman, a small and impecunious horticultural society and, linking them both, an employee of the Honourable East India Company based in Canton, China.
Sir Abraham Hume of Wormley Bury, Hertfordshire, was a keen gardener whose wife, Lady Amelia Hume, not only shared his enthusiasm but was an able botanist in her own right. By a happy chance, Sir Abraham's cousin, Alexander Hume, was in charge of the English "factory", or trading post as we should now term it, at Canton. Through Alexander, and more directly, the East India Company's inspector of tea, John Reeves (1778-1856), the Humes had received several consignments of plants during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The consignment of rose plants which Reeves had procured for them from the Fa Tee Nurseries near Canton in 1808 was probably the most important of all.
In those days, when it took almost as many weeks as it now takes in flying hours to reach England from the Far East, it was often the practice to off-load plants in transit from China to England at the Calcutta Botanic Garden as a half-way house for recovery during the long voyage. This practice led the French horticulturists to assume that the plants had actually originated in India and not China. It also confused some English botanists, too, so that to this day, the class of roses which we term the Chinas are referred to in France and Germany as 'Bengales', while the whole botanical Section which includes the Chinas, Tea-scented and Hybrid Teas was given the name INDICAE. It is not known whether the rose plants sent off in 1808 were rested in India, but it is more than a possibility since they did not reach the Humes until 1809, the year in which Lady Amelia died.
Sir Abraham passed plant material to James Colvill, an eminent nurseryman in King's Road, Chelsea, where its first European flowering was recorded in 1810. From its colour and fragrance it was given the name, 'Hume's Blush Tea-scented China'.
The statement by Shepherd, History of the Rose, that "it was not received with great enthusiasm" is not supported by contemporary evidence. It was certainly regarded as sufficiently important for Henry C. Andrews, the foremost English floral artist of his day, to make a plant portrait of it in Colvill's nursery in the same year of its first blooming under the botanical name R. indica odorata. This specific name was probably suggested by Robert Sweet, a gardener-cum-botanist who was employed by Colvill at that time. In any event, when Sweet came to write his own description a few years later, he must have realized the mistaken place ascription as he called the rose R. odorata which has stuck.
Of even greater significance, the following year, at the height of the Napoleonic War, arrangements were made to provide John Kennedy, another famous nurseryman, with a safe-conduct to take 'Hume's Blush' to the Empress Josephine, a fact remarked upon by The Gentleman's Magazine for 14 November 1811. At Malmaison, the greatest botanical artist of all time, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, painted it under the name R. indica fragrans. The plate, first published in 1817 with an accompanying text by the botanist, Claude-Antoine Thory, is by common consent, one of the most beautiful of all the 117 rose portraits published during Redouté's lifetime. It is so well known, having been reproduced on greetings cards, place mats and as a framed engraving, that any further description is superfluous.
Dr C. C. Hurst, writing in 1941, believed 'Hume's Blush' to be extinct. It had, in fact, been collected along with hundreds of other rose species and subspecies by the botanist, Dr Dieck of Zöschen, South Germany, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It formed part of the complete collection exhibited at the World Botanical Congress in Paris in 1908 and was then planted in the Rosarium at Sangerhausen where it has remained ever since. Through the generosity of Herr Hans Vonholdt, the Curator, plant material has been made available to me. The plants display when in young growth the lovely purple-red wood and foliage so characteristic of their descendants while the somewhat sprawling habit is found among several of the early hybrids still in cultivation.
Book  (1973)  Page(s) 28,29.  
 
The first China rose bushes, with botanical records to verify their introduction, to be cultivated in Europe were the 'Old Blush China' and Rosa x odorata. They were sent to Upsala in Sweden in 1752 by PeterOsbeck, who was chaplain to the Swedish ship the 'Prince Charles' and also a friend of Linnaeus. He bought the roses from a nursery garden, Fa-tee, of Canton. Planting material of these roses was sent to England where the 'Old Blush China' was in cultivation before 1759 and plants of Rosa x odorata were established at Kew in 1769. These early introductions were not used for breeding. The later improtationsof these and other repeat-flowering Chinese roses which changed the habis of future European roses.
China Roses by Tess Allen
Book  (1971)  Page(s) 79.  
 
[From "Notes on the Origin and Evolution of our Garden Roses" by C. C. Hurst]

The Four Stud Chinas: ...
(3) Hume's Blush Tea-scented China, 1809 (R. chinensis Jacq. x R. gigantea Collett).
Hume's Blush China is said to have been imported in 1809 by Sir A. Hume, Bart., from the East Indies, at that time a comprehensive term which included China. It was figured by Andrews in 1810 under the name of R. indica odorata from a plant flowering in Colville's nursery. In the same year special arrangements were made by both the British and French admiralties for the sfae transit of plants of this new Tea-scented China to the Empress Josephine at Malmaison in spite of the fierce war that was raging between England and France at that time. In 1817 Redouté published a beautiful and accurate figure of the original plant under the name of R. indica fragrans, which shows it to be a China considerably modified by the influence of the Wild Tea Rose (R. gigantea), the bias in favour of that species being about 2 : 1. It was not, however, a true Tea Rose as some have supposed,1 since it shows the influence of the Wild Crimson China (R. chinensis) in eleven of its characters out of the thirty-one examined, the remaining twenty characters showing the influence of the Wild Tea Rose (R. gigantea). Hume's Blush China must therefore be regarded as a derivative hybrid from gigantea and chinensis. Crossed with the Bourbon, Noisette and Yellow China towards 1830, Hume's Blush China gave rise to typical Tea Roses. Living material of this Rose is no longer vailable, but like its ancestral species it was most likely a diploid with fourteen chromosomes. Material of the ancestral species of the Wild Tea Rose (R. gigantea) from both Cambridge and Burbage proved to be diploid.

1 It was on this assumption that Rehder in 1915 reduced R. gigantea Collett to a variety of R. odorata Sweet, a name given by sweet in 1818 to Hume's Blush China.
 
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