Agnes Smith is probably not the same rose as Rosa Indica fragrans (Redoute, 1817) as the flowers of Agnes Smith are a little flatter and too evenly pink throughout. It is clearly very closely related. Hume's Blush was afterall presumed to be a cultivar of Rosa x odorata, of which there are many cultivars and possibly some wild forms.

However nobody today can be certain if the rose Empress Josephine imported to Malmaison was one of the ancient Chinese "Indica" cultivars that Hume imported, or a seedling that Hume is said to have raised. We would assume that the rose at Malmaison was correctly labelled by Thory and Redoute, which begs the question, if it really was Hume's Blush then why was it not labelled as such. Instead the rose is labelled Rosa Indica fragrans, with no mention of Hume. And this was not an isolated case...

As any scientist will tell you, in order for a cultivar name to be valid, a direct link needs to be established in the published literature between it and a scientific name. This link is unfortunately absent. It is not until the geneticist and author Dr C. C. Hurst, writing in 1941, that a link was made between the names, supposedly through informed logic. Yet Hurst believed 'Hume's Blush' to be extinct, therefore he had no specimen on which to base his assumption. In any case, by that time too many years had passed to form a legitimate scientific link between Redoute's painting and the actual Rosa x odorata cultivar known as Hume's Blush.

The sad reality of the matter is that the identity of the cultivar known as Hume's Blush will never be known, due to discrepancies that began in the literature within a decade of the rose's release.

The early literature also contradicts itself (the great botanist Lindley informs us that Hume raised a seedling, but in other texts we are told that Hume imported an early Chinese cultivar and named it "Hume's Blush"). Even the naming is a matter of speculation as nobody knows for sure who was the first to actually coin the name for the rose. The contemporary literature neglects to state this, and I cannot find any early contemporary mention of "Hume's Blush" in print.

So from a scientific standpoint, the big problem with establishing the identity of Hume's Blush is that the early illustrations widely accepted as depicting this rose were never called that. They were called Rosa indica fragrans Thory (1817), Rosa odorata (hort. ex Andrews) Sweet (1818) [in Hort. Suburb. Lond. 119, 1818], Rosa indica odoratissima Lindley (in Edwards, 1824), and Rosa indica odorata Andrews (1828), and Rosa odoratissima (Loudon, 1830). The common names used were “Sweet-scented China Rose” (by Lindley in Edwards), "Sweet-scented Indian Rose" (by Andrews), "Sweetest Scented Rose" (by Loudon), and "Scented Rose of India" (by Redoute), but not "Hume's Blush". Colville also grew and sold an Indica (i.e. Rosa x odorata) cultivar at the famous nursery in the UK, but according to Lindley apparently called it "Tea-scented rose".

In Sweet's Hortus Britannicus of 1826, p. 138, we find R. odorata is listed with synonyms R. indica odorata (Andrews) and Rosa Indica fragrans (Redoute). In Loudon's Hortus Britannicus of 1830, the only plant by name of "Hume's Blush" is a cultivar of Camellia flavescens, however on page 208-215 he lists an enormous number of wild and cultivated roses, including a number of so-called "Blush" roses. "Hume's Blush" is not among them, but he does list the Rosa odoratissima "Sweetest-Scented Rose" of Edwards Botanical Register Plate 804 and a few roses with Bengale in their name. This is the case right up to 1850.

If Hume had raised a seedling from the imported "Indica" cultivars from China (as Lindley tells us he did in Edwards' Botanical Register of 1824), Hume's Blush may therefore have looked similar to Rosa Indica fragrans, but with more of the tea-like characteristics that we recognize today. In which case, Agnes Smith may be a contender. However, given the reasons already stated above, this is highly speculative.

In this century we are left with about 4 old paintings and illustrations that depict Rosa x odorata cultivars, which, although placed in synonymy by many authors, contain a number of discrepancies. They appear to be depicting several distinct roses. It is interesting that none of the contemporary sources of the illustrations ever refer to the rose as Hume's Blush. Only Edwards associates one of the illustrated roses with Hume [the lithograph by J. Watts of the rose grown at Colville's Nursery], but this is not published until 1824.

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