There are a number of points that need to be considered here. First, I have only just signed up for HMF and I did not realise that a note to the administrator would be posted on the site and that AmiRose would be asked to respond. My criticism was not intended for publication and I am sorry for the annoyance that it will have caused AmiRose. Second – and this was the point of my note – it cannot be good policy for HMF to combine photographs of two different roses in the same folder. If you wish to treat the double form as the type, then I suggest that you ought to create a separate folder for the wild single-flowered form as f. normalis.

So far as AmiRose's response is concerned, I think it might be worth pointing out that R. xanthina was not described by Linnaeus, but by Lindley.

But there is a bigger problem of identification that needs to be resolved – is AmiRose's photograph of R. xanthina f. duplex correctly named, and is it indeed distinct from 'Allardii'? It would be helpful if he could tell us where he took his photograph i.e. is it in a garden where we can study it or, if it is in his own garden, can he tell us where he bought it? The same is true of 'Allardii', which he clearly knows well enough to make the comparison; where has he seen it or from whom did he acquire it? If he has further pictures of either of them, it would be useful to see them, too. I am not sure that having 'tight and crumpled inner petals' is a sufficiently distinctive characteristic, unless it is a consistent one – petal-shape is often the result of physiological factors, rather than genetic ones.

I have only seen 'Allardii' once – at Cavriglia – where it was named 'xanthina plena'. Jaeger thought f. duplex was synonymous with 'Allardii' but then listed it as hybrid of R. spinosissima, adding that it was close to 'Harisonii'! But I think this may indicate that several different roses are circulating under the same name and this seems to me precisely the sort of problem that HMF is well placed to resolve.

One more point – AmiRoses is a wonderfully skilled photographer, but he does not always say where and when he took the photographs that he posts to the HMF website. Would it be possible [1] for him to go through his pictures and add this data – a boring job for a winter's day, perhaps? [2] for HMF to alter its procedure for uploading pictures so that this data is a compulsory requirement in future? It would add enormously to the value of its pictures.

It's posted under R. xanthina.