Book  (1988)  Page(s) 142.  
 
location 125, R. chinensis Jacq., CHINA-ROSE, BENGAL-ROSE, CHINENSES, China, 1759, pink-white, medium size, double, June-Autumn blooming, bushy, shrubby, short-tall, dark green large glossy foliage, 5-7 leaflets, green to brown green medium size ovoid fruit

Book  (1988)  Page(s) 142.  
 
location II/10, SG; R. chinensis var. semperflorens (Curtis) Koehne, MONTHLY ROSE, CHINENSES, India, China, 1789, dark red, semi-double, fragrant, medium size, very long-blooming, bushy, dainty, 1-1.5 m, slim canes, dark green medium size glossy foliage, 5 leaflets, light red fruit

Book  (1984)  Page(s) 153.  
 
Rosa chinensis Jacq. = Syn: Rosa sinica L./Rosa indica sensu Lour. non L./Rosa indica var bengalensis (Pers.) C.Koch/Rosa nankinensis Lour. Noms communs: Rosier de Chine, Rosier du Bengale. Chine, introduit en 1768? (avis différents). Buisson. Feuilles: 3 à 5 folioles, ovales larges à ovales oblongues, 2,5 à 6cm de long. Fleurs: 5cm de diamètre. Inflorescences pluriflores. Fruits ovoïdes à piriformes, 1,5 à 2cm de long. La description donnée par Jacquin ne correspondant à aucun rosier de Chine encore rencontré en Europe, nous n’insisterons pas à son sujet. Il est possible qu’il existe encore en Chine.

Book  (1984)  Includes photo(s).
 
p9 One of the most exciting events in the early days of the Society was the positive identification in 1956 by Mr. Richard Thomson of R. chinensis semperflorens or 'Slater's Crimson China', better known to Bermudians as the "Belfield" rose. Mr. Thomson, Chairman of the Old Rose Committee of the American Rose Society at that time, found the rose growing at Belfield in Somerset in 1953 and was quoted as having said that at first he could not believe his eyes. He felt like an art collector who had "just unearthed a long-missing Rembrandt". After three years of intensive research, he finally confirmed his original opinion. Much was written about his discovery in English, American and Canadian papers and rose publications at that time as this rose was thought to have been lost to cultivation and its rediscovery was a cause for great excitement. There then followed an epic journey when Mrs. Harry Richardson and her husband sailed to Englandand accompanied by five little plants and the famous rose was re-introduced into England to the delight of everyone and was shown at the Chelsea Flower Show the following year.

p18. Plate 10. R. chinensis semperflorens or 'Slater's Crimson China' (1792). The story of how this rose was found to be growing in Bermuda under the name of "Belfield" has already been told on p9. Since then the Rose Society has propagated it intensively and most members now have a bush. It is a very slow growing small bush, reaching a height of up to 3 ft. It has dark green foliage, rather spindly, with small red single flowers, 2" across.

Book  (1984)  
 
p175. E. F. Allen. Roses of Interest. Rosa chinensis semperflorens 'Miss Willmott's Crimson China'.
Since my short note on this rose in last year's Rose Annual, Mr. Graham Thomas has queried my equating it with 'Slater's Crimson China' because the taller form, found in Bermuda, perhaps better matches the original description. However, Rowley has described this Bermuda form as having scarlet petals and sepals glandular; by contrast Miss Willmott's form and 'Cramoisi Superieur' both have crimson petals and sepals eglandular. In other words I maintain that Miss Willmott's form was the Stud China from which 'Cramoisi Superieur' and other related roses were bred. This also appears to have been Hurst's view.

p183. E. F. Allen. Reviewing The History of the Rose
Chapter 7 provides a good summary of rose breeding and development in the 19th century. However, 'Slater's Crimson China' is not a triploid; this claim originates from one of Hurst's rare errors and was corrected in Rowley's important paper on Ancentral China Roses (Journ RHS 1959, Vol 84, page 270).

Website/Catalog  (1982)  Page(s) 28.  
 

Old Crimson China (China)  Semi-single, cupped flowers of  bright crimson sometimes with a white fleck in the centre. Borne on a wiry, dark foliaged plant. Pre-1800. (C) 3 x 3’.

Book  (1979)  Page(s) 217.  
 
[Additional text in the Revised Edition:]
Note for the 1978 Edition
Rosa Chinensis is not in cultivation. The species is a native of central China and is a tall climbing rose, leaves with 3-5 leaflets, flowers single, usually crimson, sometimes pink, produced in summer only. In this book - and many others - the R. chinensis usually quoted is one of four hybrids that were introduced to Europe around 1800, particularly 'Parson's Pink' which is now called 'Old Blush'.

Book  (1978)  Page(s) 47 - 48.  
 
R. chinensis 
The China Rose. This is perhaps the most moving story of past achievements we expect to record in these pages. The China Rose more than any other is responsible for nearly all the popular roses of the present time. It is at once the rose world’s greatest blessing and mystery.

The mystery comes of our being unable to identify any original species as the China Rose. R. chinensis itself is not a living entity, but a dried specimen in a herbarium collection of the Dutch botanist Gronovius. He labelled it. “Chineesche Eglantier Rosen’ in 1733, and now it rests in the British museum. It is most probably the same as a red China rose brought to Europe later in the 18th century; but nobody is really sure what it is. The true, natural species is supposed to be R. chinensis spontanea, but my remarks upon that rose will show that it is even more elusive; there is not even so much as a dried specimen of that one.
The truth appears to be that the China Rose was developed many years ago in that country of ingenious and long-civilised people, and we simply have no evidence how they did it. In the 18th century, Europeans saw China Roses on sale, the Fa Tee Nurseries in Canton being a celebrated source; and they bought them, and sent them home. It is a pity they did not pump the proprietors dry of all the knowledge they had. In due time, China Roses mated with Western roses, the Flower of East, and West meeting one might say, despite Rudyard Kipling, and the rose was magnified far beyond what had been seen hitherto. This example of human cooperation comes along free of charge with the beauty of modern roses. In a flower of ‘Peace’ there is not only the work of the Frenchman who raised it, but the hands of men who prepared the way to it, old hands, gnarled and buried a long time, Chinese, Persian, Chaldean, Mycenaean, Greek, Roman and who knows what else, up to the new hands, Irish, English, American and French. All subscribed to the making of ‘Peace‘; and were we to take the generality of roses instead of that one variety, we should embrace, nearly the whole of the nations in this peaceful and purely beneficial pursuit. ‘Peace has her victories, no less renowned than War.‘
I do not believe that we have, amongst the China Roses that came to the West, any true species, nor any botanic varieties. In my opinion, they are all Chinese cultivated varieties, and the source material is unknown to us. I suppose the original was a hybrid of the second or a subsequent generation, and the nearest parallel to such an occurrence in modern experience is R. kordesii. I fear this theory may bring the Hornets around my head, but it seems to fit the facts better than the accounts of R. chinensis written in the rose books.
Other names for the species have included R. sinica and R. indica, and on the latter hangs the explanation of the section name, Indicae: the Calcutta Botanic Garden was fairly active in collecting Oriental roses, and it was also cooperative in accepting shipments of plants from Chinese ports, and holding them (or perhaps reviving them) until a ship sailed for Europe. For this reason, the French in particular assumed that the plants came from Calcutta, and they called them ‘Bengal Roses’, which is still the common name in France and Germany; the specific name in Latin for Indian roses (R. indica) was therefore acceptable. I have often thought that botanists going to Calcutta in those days could hardly have believed their botanic fortune when they saw the plants of the Orient for the first time.
The chief blessing brought by China Roses was an extension of the flowering period from summer, even up to the gates of winter. It is easy to let that statement pass, but to arrest it, and emphasise its importance, let us repeat it in another way: until the China Rose came, nearly all European roses flowered for a few weeks, like the Cherry, the lilac, the Hawthorne, the Apple and the broom. The miracle of flowering again and again made the rose a very special plant.
 The shape of flower, which we take to be the traditional Rose, is no more traditional than appearing about the middle of the 19th century; and it comes, so far as we can judge, from the stock in trade of the Fa Tee Nurseries. The types of leaves, stems and bushes crowded into millions of rose beds about the world have the family stamp of the China Roses upon them. We know much of modern rose breeders, among whom are good and great men, but the greatest of all may be from long ago and quite unknown; and may their bones rest with our blessing in the soil of Mother China. 

Website/Catalog  (1976)  Page(s) 25.  
 
ROSE DU BENGALE (Rapporté de Chine en 1789). Rose clair semi-double.

Book  (1971)  Page(s) 76-77.  
 
[From "Notes on the Origin and Evolution of our Garden Roses" by C. C. Hurst]

The Four Stud Chinas: (1) Slater's Crimson China, 1792 (Rosa chinensis Jacq.)
The first of the four stud Chinas was Slater's Crimson China, which was imported from China by Gilbert Slater of Knot's Green, Leytonstone, about 1792. The original plant was figured by Curtis in Bot. Mag. in 1794 under the name of R. semperflorens, and there is a specimen of it in the British Museum from Kew Gardens. Slater's Crimson China must have been introduced to France soon afterwards, for in 1798 Cels, the Paris nurseryman, Thory, the French botanist, and Redouté, the famous artist, commenced their breeding experiments with it in or about that year.
Slater's Crimson China reached Austria, Germany, and Italy before the close of the eighteenth century, and early in the nineteenth century in Italy it became the parent of the Portland Rose, and thus the grandparent of the first Hybrid Perpetual 'Rose du Roi'. Slater's Crimson China is still in cultivation in old gardens, and there is an admirable modern figure of it in Willmott (1911) under the name of R. chinensis semperflorens. In its characters it is very near to Henry's Crimson China, collected in 1885 in the San-yu-tung Glen near Ichang in the Province of Hupeh, Central China, which is generally considered to be the wild species and original ancestor of the China Roses. Slater's Crimson China differs from the wild species in its dwarf habit, semi-double flowers, and perennial flowering, all of which are Mendelian characters, the genes for the first and last characters being closely linked in the same chromosome.
Like most of the cultivated Crimson Chinas Slater's form is a triploid with twenty-one chromosmes in the body-cells, fourteen in the female germ-cells, and seven in the male. Consequently the pollen is very defective, and on the average only one grain in seven is fertile. The 14 per cent fertility would no doubt be fatal to survival in a state of nature, but it is sufficient for the gardener and hybridist to raise new kinds of Roses. Some of the cultivated Crimson Chinas are, however, diploid with fourteen chromosmes in the body-cells and seven in the male and female germ-cells, having retained their wild simplicity. I found one of these diploid Crimson Chinas in the Gravereaux collection at la Roseraie de l'Haÿ, near Paris. In spite of its air of culture it was a typical wils Crimson China with single cherry-red flowers, while in habit it was a graceful short climber. Its diploid chromosme behaviour was entirely regular and normal as in a species, with no signs of hybridity, consequently the pollen and embryo-sacs were regular and the plant was as fully fertile as a wild species.