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• Rajni

8 favorite votes.  

Mauve or mauve blend Hybrid Tea.
Registration name: Orient Spice
Exhibition name: Orient Spice

Bred by M.S. Viraraghavan (India, before 1984).
Introduced in India by Anand Roses in 1984 as 'Orient Spice'.

Hybrid Tea.  

Lilac, pink shading.  Strong fragrance.  Average diameter 5".  Very large, full (26-40 petals), borne mostly solitary bloom form.  Blooms in flushes throughout the season.  

Medium, bushy.  Large, semi-glossy, medium green foliage.  

USDA zone 6b through 9b (default).  

Back we are to the double game! We had given the name RAJNI to this rose which was released in India in 1984, and when we wanted to register it with International Rose Registration Authority (American Rose Society being the registrar), we felt we needed a name which would have some meaning for a Western rose grower. ‘Rajni’ would be gibberish to him. And as we were at the same time -1996- registering another variety called ‘Ahimsa’ in India, as ‘Orient Silk’ for the western world, we thought we’d register ‘Rajni’ as ‘Orient Spice’ – ‘spice’ because the flowers have a heavenly clove fragrance at every stage.
‘Rajni’ is an Indian first name, and when we visited Bombay (now called Mumbai) which is a metropolis, India’s financial capital, situated on the west coast with the Arabian Sea lapping its shores, for a rose conference, we met a charming lady, Mrs. Bakul Patel. When she heard that Viru was a rose hybridizer she requested us to create a rose to honor the memory of her husband, Rajni Patel, a leading barrister who had recently passed away, and who, she said, had been very fond of roses. Viru agreed that if he found a good seedling he would be happy to name it for Rajni, and for no financial consideration.

Some years later we found a mauvy pink seedling , with shades of lilac, and with good H.T. form and a spicy fragrance, which we thought she would approve of– the colors were reminiscent of the colors of twilight on a stormy monsoon evening over the Arabian Sea, the colors of the sky as she looked out of her large glass windowed apartment in the up-market, posh Marine Drive area of Bombay.
So this seedling became ‘Rajni’ and ‘Orient Spice’, and even today wins prizes on the show bench for fragrance and perfection of form.