Book  (1988)  Page(s) 160.  
 
location Show garden, R. moschata Herrm., MUSK ROSE, SYNSTYLAE, southern Europe to Himalayas, white, semi-double, good fragrance, medium size, cluster-flowered, floriferous, bushy, arching, 2-3 m, well-branched, medium green large matte-glossy, 7-9 leaflets, greenish red small rounded fruit

Website/Catalog  (1985)  Page(s) 41.  
 

Rosa moschata.  Huge vigorous plant suitable for treeplanting, etc. Fragant, off-white flowers in trusses. Flowering mid-summer. An old, 16th Century rose. P. Shade tolerant. (S) 20 x 10’.

Website/Catalog  (1983)  Page(s) 37.  
 

Rosa moschata. Huge, vigorous plant suitable for tree climbing etc. Fragrant, off-white flowers in trusses. Flowering mid-summer. An old 16th century rose. Authenticity under review. See Princess of Nassau. P. Shade tolerant.  (S) 20 x 10’.

Website/Catalog  (1982)  Page(s) 34.  
 

Rosa Moschata  Huge, vigorous plant suitable for tree climbing , etc. Fragrant, off-white flowers in trusses. Flowering mid-summer. An old c. 16th century rose. T. Shade tolerant. (S) 20 x 10’.

Book  (1981)  Page(s) 60-61.  
 
[As background, Bean has taken the stand the species in main should be Rosa brunonii Lindl. , whose synonyms include R. moschata Crep. and R. moschata var. nepalensis Lindl. The true Rosa moschata is a related but distinct rose. Bean, after a thorough description of the immense, climbing, once-flowering R. brunonii:

R. moschata J. Herrm. Judging from old description, portraits and herbarium specimens, this species, little known today, differs from R. brunonii in the following respects: it is a tall shrub, scarcely a climber; leaves dark green and smooth above, whitish beneath, glabrous except for the downy midrib, up to no more than 2 in. long and ovate to lanceolate, relatively broader than in R. brunonii, very finely toothed; flowers larger, in lax corymbs, musk-scented, borne from August until the first frosts, the petals somewhat convex, acuminate at the apex..., receptacle covered with fine, appressed hairs, not or only slightly glandular...fruits not often describe, but said ...to be small and ovoid.

R. moschata is not known in the wild in its typical state. It was introduced to Britain in the reign of Henry VIII from Italy. In Germany it was still a novelty in the 1580s, and not entirely hardy....the name Rosa damescena was also used for it, probably from the belief that is was the 'Nesrin' or 'Nefrin' of Arab medical works - a rose grown about Damascus whose flowers were used as a purgative. It was this property, and not the fragrance, that made the Musk rose of interest to the European medical botanists. "The Musk Roses, called in Latin Rosae Moschatae and Damascenae are the small, single, white roses, which blow not till autumn ...the Best and more efficacious are those that grow in the hot countries....Three or four of these Musk Roses being bruised in a Conserve or Infusion, purge briskly, so that sometimes they occasion blood; those of Paris do not work so strong..."

Still a common garden rose in the early part of the 19th century, R. moschata has been displaced by its garden hybrids. Indeed, it was thought to be extinct in this country until Graham Thomas found it growing at Myddelton House, Enfield, once the home of E. A. Bowles, who records in My Garden In Summer (1914) that he had a young plant raised from a cutting brought from The Grange, Bitton [which we learn from Bean was Canon Ellacombe's garden]...it remains rare.

Book  (1978)  Page(s) 152.  
 
R. moschata  and R. brunonii
R. moschata is the Musk Rose, familiar to everybody by name, but who has seen it? It was reported to have been brought to England from Italy by Thomas  Cromwell, which puts the date before 1540, in which year he lost his head. For three hundred years, it was generally described as growing three or four metres high, flowering late in the summer, or even early autumn. For much of that time, it was the only climbing rose grown in gardens; and there were reckoned to be plenty more in its native places, in Spain, North Africa and Madeira. 
   By the early twentieth century, R.  moschata was  being described entirely differently, as growing much bigger and flowering early rather than late. The original had obviously been supplanted and was virtually lost to cultivation. It then appeared that there was no use going to Spain, North Africa or Madeira to look for it, because it was as rare there as in England. We must therefore suppose that far from being a native of that region, it came, like most of the Synstylae, from much further east. There is a French account from the late eighteenth century of a plant cultivated in Ispahan, known as the Chinese Rose Tree. Seeds were sent to Paris, and proved to be the common (as it was in those days) Musk Rose. If the people of Ispahan named it Chinese, it is strange that the plant explorers did not note its presence in China or about the Himalayas. One should read three fascinating articles upon the subject, by Norman Young in the Rose Annuals of 1960 and 1962, and by Graham Thomas in 1965; 'The Mystery of the Musk Rose' in Climbing Roses Old and New by  Graham Thomas  describes his efforts to discover it again, and summarizes the affair in masterly fashion. Seed was eventually discovered in Spain, and plants from it are growing in the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Wisley. 
   According to Thomas Rivers in the 1840 edition of The Rose Amateur's Guide, 'The White  Musk Rose is one of the oldest inhabitants of our gardens, and probably more widely spread over the face of the earth than any other rose.' In that case, how extraordinarily thorough has been its eclipse!  We find ourselves left without any wild rose we can identify as R. moschata. The conclusion must be that it never was wild, but rather a form of one of the Synstylae, or a hybrid between two of them which came true from seed, apart from its variations between single and double. Whether it originated in China, or in some country to the west of China, we have no idea. Nor do we know when it completed its journey to the Mediterranean  area. 
   The supplanter of the Musk Rose appears to be R. brunonii......

Book  (1977)  Page(s) 78.  
 
Graham Thomas. Climbing Roses - Old and Modern.
Before continuing with our historical survey let us look a little more closely at R. moschata, the Musk rose of the ancients. In early days, hundreds of years ago, the extract Musk, from the little Musk Deer of Asia, was a much prized fragrance, of piercing sweetness, and the scent of the Musk rose was of similar quality. Here in a slide is a part of a picture of the Madonna and Child being offered by an angel a bowl of two of the sweetest flowers Jasmine and Musk rose. It was painted by Rosselli; he lived in Italy from 1439 to 1507. The Musk rose's petals always recurve like that. It is the only rose pictured by Van Huysuym in the September grouping for his twelve monthly pictures of flowers, painted in the early 18th century.....

Book  (Jan 1946)  Page(s) 31.  
 
R. moschata, Herrm. The Musk rose. A shrub with arching branches which form a graceful mound wherever it is sufficiently hardy. This was an old favourite and was a parent of our original climbers.

Book  (1937)  Page(s) 78.  
 
ruscinonensis Déségl. (synonym of moschata Herrm.)

Book  (1931)  Page(s) Vol. II, p. 686.  
 
Only two varieties of roses are cultivated in Bulgaria, the Damask Rose (R. damascena), light red in colour and very fragrant, with 36 petals, and the Musk Rose (R. muscatta), a snow-white rose, far less fragrant, yielding an oil of poorer quality, very rich in stearoptene, but containing very little otto. It is of more vigorous growth and is grown chiefly for hedges between the plantations to indicate the divisions of the rose fields.