'R dawsoniana' rose photos

Garden and Forest, Nov. 11, 1891, page 533 A New Hybrid Rose. WE have more than once insisted on the value of the Japanese Rosa multiflora as a hardy shrub. A figure illustrating its flowers and foliage was published some time ago in this journal. The picture in the present issue is of a fine specimen in the garden of Mr. John Robinson, of Salem, Massachusetts. It shows the manner of growth of a plant which possesses an individual beauty surpassed by that of few of the plants found in our gardens ; and apart from its own merits it seems destined to play an important part in the creation of a new race of hardy climbing Roses. Mr. Dawson has been hybridizing it at the Arnold Arboretum and has already produced two or three distinct seedlings of very considerable value. We are able to produce on page 533 of this issue a photograph of one of these hybrids obtained by crossing Rosa multiflora with the well-known Hybrid Perpetual General Jacqueminot, the latter being the pollen parent. The result is a vigorous and hardy plant with a tendency to climb high. The spines and foliage are those of the pollen-parent, but the flowers are clustered like those of R. multiflora, sometimes as many as sixty being developed in a single panicle. They are semi-double, rose-colored, an inch across, and-exceedingly fragrant. In Rosa multiflora may be found the ancestor more or less direct of the so-called Polyantha or miniature clustered Roses which have become popular of late years in English garden; but none of these are hardy or very satisfactory with us here in the northern states, probably because they or their parents are of southern origin, and the real interest of the results obtained by Mr. Dawson lies in the fact that by working from an absolutely hardy form of Rosa multiflora he has been able to lay the foundation for a race of hybrids of as great or greater beauty than any of the Polyantha race found in gardens, and absolutely hardy. We intend to figure some of the other hybrids obtained by Mr. Dawson from this cross; among them is one with the habit and foliage of Rosa multiflora, with small, semi-double, fragrant, pink flowers, which is, perhaps, even more distinct and beautiful than the one which forms the subject of the illustration in this issue.