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'Lady Somers' rose Reviews & Comments
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Perhaps our description of 'Lady Somers' could mislead readers. New leaves are light green and dark veined. Slightly older leaves are mid-green. Old leaves are dark green and only they are "rugose" meaning wrinkled. They are not rough to the touch like Rosa rugosa. For a one-liner I suggest "leaves are dark green and wrinkled."
The bush is well armed with spiky thorns at all stages, surprising in a rose which Laurie Newman believes to be a Gigantea Hybrid.
The rose looks out, neither up nor down. So everything depends on how tall the bush is.
I've uploaded photos showing these features.
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Interesting. The 1933 reference which I believe would have come directly from Alister himself (and I’ve added an asterisk to this ref) says “Foliage wrinkled, light green”. (If not for that reference, I would have guessed that the bright green with dark veins new leaves could possibly have resulted from a slight shortage of iron.) Therefore I’ve changed the description of the leaves from dark green, to light green.
The description “rugose”, as you say, means wrinkled. My dictionary: from Latin – rugosus, from ruga, a wrinkle. In the HelpMefind database, rugose is automatically attached to wrinkled. This is not meant at all to refer to the leaves feeling like Rose rugosa do.
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Dear Patricia,
I thought of the low-iron possibility myself. Easy to check out in the next few days. But in that case the leaves would be mid-green or deep green all the time.
There is the other possibility that the Mistydowns rose in inauthentic, but there have to be strong reasons for considering such a possibility, don't you agree? I'm mainly concerned that people recognise it when they see it. The same goes for "rugose", which I quite understand but don't want anyone to get the wrong end of.
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My understanding of iron deficiency is that it shows in the new growth with young leaves the worst affected.
The 1936 reference is the last one I could find of a nursery actually carrying this rose. I don’t really know who was conserving it all these years, and where it resurfaced from. If the rose in question was a found rose, then there may be some doubt. If it has a provenance with the name attached, then it is less in question.
Theories. I know that Alister’s roses carried Australia through the war, because there was little else to be had. As for his plan, only a chronological look at his roses showing the parentage for each would show how he thought. In many instances there is no parentage known, and even less when we are looking for the pollen parent.
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Perhaps you are painting yourself into a corner on the leaves. Margaret's photo shows dark green leaves, wrinkled. My photos show mature leaves as dark green, wrinkled. If my new leaves indicate chlorosis, all the leaves will be dark. So if you get too bolshie over what you suppose is Clark's description you will have to maintain these roses are inauthentic.
Margaret's rose was at John Nieuwesteeg's, so I'll write to him about its provenance.
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Susan Irvine, "A Hillside of Roses" pp122–3, quoted in full, says " 'Lady Somers' H. T. 1930. 'Comte de Rochemur' X 'Scorcher' (one of Clark's). 'Full, open, slightly fragrant, fresh pink, tinted flesh' is the description in Modern Roses. We have a rose from Dettman's garden in Kyneton which fits this inadequate description, but there is no proof." [The garden's owners are now generally agreed to have spelt their surname Dettmann.]
John Nieuwesteeg writes, "I am 99 percent sure it came from Hugh Dettman's garden at Kyneton where Susan Irvine and I together collected budwood/cuttings from anything that looked like a rose. … Am I sure it is correctly named? No, I am not. None of us ever will be." But then he partly takes it back: "All of Alister's 'Lady' roses are very beautiful; this rose is no exception.
"I daresay I may well have the only plant left on the planet. [It is going to be] budded up for me this season as we must not lose it.
"P.S. I do not see the foliage as being dark and my identification could well be correct, so for now it stays 'Lady Somers' with a question mark."
It also remains to be assured that John's 'Lady Somers?' and Mistydown's 'Lady Somers' are the same.
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Lord Somers (the sixth Baron Somers) was Governor of Victoria 1926–1931. Lady Somers had been Daisy Finola Meeking, born in Dublin 9 September 1896. They met at Balmoral when she and her sister were guests of the King; they married in 1921. She was known as Finola, Lady Somers. "Lady Finola Somers" would have been correct if she had been a duke's daughter. Friends called her Daisy.
Lord Somers was 39 when he arrived in Victoria; Lady Somers just 30. In 1929 she brought back from England a new de Havilland Moth in packing cases for "a 4,700 mile flight … to Alice Springs and Darwin and then back down the east coast to Melbourne. She flew with a Flt-Lt. F. M. Denny, who was on her husband's staff, 'piloting the aircraft herself for several long stages'."
"After a short period as Acting Governor-General of Australia, Lord Somers finished his highly-successful stint as Governor of Victoria in October 1931, and returned to [his ancestral castle] Eastnor. He later became President of the M.C.C., then Chief Scout after the death of Baden-Powell."
In the Second World War the Somers were posted to Egypt where he was Commissioner for the Red Cross, "but died in June 1944 from throat cancer. Sadly for Lady Somers, two-thirds of the money he left was swallowed up by death duties.
"[Lady Somers] was Chief Commissioner of the Girl Guides until 1949 when she resigned due to ill-health; she was awarded the CBE in 1950. She moved back into Eastnor Castle (actually, into the servants' quarters), lived there 'in much reduced circumstances' until 1949, when she moved into the former head gardener’s cottage to make way for her only daughter, Elizabeth, and her son-in-law, Ben Hervey-Bathurst. She … died 6 October 1981 in Hereford, aged 85." —"A Fleeting Peace: Golden-Age Aviation in the British Empire", accessed online 2 February 2014. See also "Lord Somers", (1926, June 26). The Register (Adelaide), p. 11. Retrieved February 4, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article56568639.
A Canadian passenger ship called "Lady Somers", launched in 1929, was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic in 1941.
Photo below left from The Argus, Melbourne, 24 December 1929. Below centre studio photo from 1927. Below right, Australian War Museum.
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Initial post
23 OCT 12 by
Unregistered Guest
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Available from - Mistydowns
www.mistydowns.com.au
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