Note: This article by Rosalinda Morgan won an
Award of Merit at the 2013 American Rose Society Newsletter/Bulletin
Competition. Originally published in The Charleston Rose, Dec. 2013 issue.
The McCartney Rose has intense fragrance.
Fragrant roses have been a seductive
tradition for years. In the garden, a
bed full of fragrant roses is heaven on earth.
Their sweet aroma as you enter the garden gate will be so captivating. Fragrance is what we expect of the rose,
whether consciously or unconsciously. It
is evident when one sees a rose either in the garden, at the florist or at the
rose show. The first thing a person will
do is stick one’s nose to inhale the fragrance and commenting on its fragrance
or lack of it.
There
are variations of the term fragrance like perfume, scent, incense and
redolence. Fragrance suggests the odors
of flowers or other growing things.
Perfume suggests a stronger or heavier odor and applies especially to a
prepared or synthetic liquid. Scent is
very close to perfume but of wider application.
Incense applies to smoke from burning spices and gums and suggests an
especially pleasing odor. Redolence
implies a mixture of fragrant or pungent odor.
These terms are invariably used in conjunction with roses.
The
American Rose Society recognizes the importance of fragrance with the James Alexander Gamble Fragrance Award
which is given to outstanding very fragrant roses. The ‘Wild Blue
Yonder’ is the 2013 winner of the James Alexander Gamble Fragrance Award. Other
roses that won the Gamble Fragrance Award are Crimson Glory (1961), Tiffany
(1962), Chrysler Imperial (1965), Sutter’s Gold (1966), Granada (1968), Fragrant Cloud (1970), Papa
Meilland (1974), Sunsprite
(1979). Double Delight (1986), Fragrant Hour (1997), Angel Face (2001), Secret (2002), Mister Lincoln
(2003), Sheila’s Perfume (2005), Fragrant Plum (2007), Sweet Chariot (2008), Louise Estes (2010), Falling in Love (2012).
A
rose is only half appreciated by the eye and the other half by the nose. It is the fragrance of the rose that Sappho
in 650 B.C. named it the “Queen of
the Flowers”. In England, they value
the Old Rose fragrance in their roses that they awarded the Clay Cup for almost
hundred years. Shakespeare loved the
Musk Rose, the Damask, the Sweetbrier, or Eglantine, the Cabbage Rose and the
Canker Bloom that he referred to them in his writings. Here in the colonies, the first sweetbriers
were believed to come over in the Mayflower or soon after since it was growing
in the Pilgrims’ garden before the end of the 17th century.
Each
year, new roses appear in catalogs.
Copywriters do a fantastic job describing the roses and its
attributes. I found the fragrance very
subjective and if we want to grow roses for their fragrance, you have to choose
your varieties very carefully. A slight
fragrance in the catalog lingo is basically no fragrance at all. If you want a fragrant garden, look for roses
with strong fragrance on the description.
In recent years, there were many scentless roses in the market that you
wonder why people are buying them. Modern hybrid teas are known to have
very little fragrance. Some have none at
all. The hybridizers are doing the
public a disservice by hybridizing the rose too much to create a perfect formed
rose that they are compromising its fragrance.
Luckily, more gardeners want the fragrance back and so the trend is
reversing. We should encourage the
hybridizers to put more fragrance in their new creations.
The “true old rose scent” is the
property of the three classes of roses – Rosa
centifolia, the Cabbage Rose; Rosa
damascena, the Damask Rose; Rosa
gallica, the French Rose. No rose
can surpass Rosa centifolia for fragrance. The Hybrid
Perpetual which is a cross between Rosa indica
and the old Damask and French Roses produced roses with lovely old rose
scent. Prominent in this group is General Jacqueminot which became the
parent of a long line of fragrant roses.
I saw this rose at the Heritage Garden in San Jose, CA and I was
enthralled by its fragrance. The old
rose scent is the most refreshing of all the flower scents. It is not bitter and will remain sweet to the
end. Most of these fragrant roses are
red with pink coming next in degree of fragrance. Yellow for the most part is the least
scented. Single rose tend to have less
fragrance than their double counterpart.
Climbers for the most part are slightly fragrant. The scent of roses is affected by warmth and
moisture. The scent of the roses is more
pronounced on warm days than on cool days especially if the weather is
dry. Roses tend to be more fragrant in
autumn than in the summer. The Last Rose
of Summer is said to be the sweetest of all.
Roses picked up early in the morning have stronger fragrance than roses
gathered later in the day.
Fragrance
in roses comes on various forms. One
associates rose with the true old rose scent.
Damask is the true rose scent and the Damask rose ‘Kazanlik’ is the most sought after rose in the manufacture of the
attar of roses. Old Garden Roses – the Damasks,
Centifolias, Albas, Gallicas, Mosses, Bourbons and some Rugosas have damask
scent with a touch of some kinds of fruit aroma. One of the earliest Damasks is Rosa
sancta found in an Egyptian tomb dated c. 170 A.D. Cleopatra carpeted the floor two feet high
with damask roses to seduce Mark Anthony.
Damask scented roses are associated with love and spring as evidenced in
the painting La Primavera or Spring by Botticelli where he used Rosa gallica and in the Birth of Venus, he used Maiden
Blush.
Besides
the true old rose scent, there are other types of fragrance in roses: We have
the tea scent; the odors of spice – bay, clove, pepper, vanilla. During the Roman times, bay was used as
crowns to protect the emperors from evil spirit and ward off harmful
bacteria. In ancient Greece, the Pythian
priestess ate bay before she went in to the sacred shrine at the Oracle of
Dephi and started reciting verses.
We
also have musk, myrrh, wine, honey scent.
The Tea or the Musk roses also seem to be scented of muscatel wine. Felicia,
Cornelia and Buff Beauty will
scent your garden with its tea and musk fragrance. Tuscany China
with Austrian Briars gave rise to roses with fruity fragrance. Mme
Isaac Perriere has a raspberry fragrance.
Zephirine Drouhin and Rosa Eglanteria are good examples of
roses with an apple scent. Apples have
been a fruit of favor since the Biblical times when Eve chose to eat it. In mythology, the golden apple was given by Paris to Aphrodite in a
beauty contest which indirectly led to the Trojan War. We also have balsam, clover, violet, jasmine,
and lavender scent. Most of the Old
Garden Roses- Rosa gallica, Rosa damascena, Centifolias, Mosses all have
the balsam scent in their leaves. Balsam
was highly praised in the Bible as the Queen of Sheba took The Balm or Balsam
of Gilead from Arabia to Judea and presented
it to King Solomon. Many Rugosas and
some Hybrid Teas like Crimson Glory
and Chrysler Imperial have the scent
of cloves. Some Hybrid Teas also smell
of clover. In the Middle Ages, clover
was a symbol of the Holy Trinity because it had three leaflets and a four-leaf
clover is a good luck symbol.
Jardins de Bagatelle and Jude the Obscure have scent of vanilla
which I find so intoxicating. Stanwell Perpetual has the sweet scent
of lavender and violet. Some David
Austin’s roses are myrrh scented. One of
them is Ambridge Rose. In the Bible, myrrh was given to Jesus by the
Magi and again while Jesus was dying on the cross. The Egyptian also used myrrh resin in the
mummification processes. Old Blush, the Green Rose and La Reine des
Violettes are all scented of pepper.
Gloire de Dijon and Marechal Niel have the scent of
tea. It seems that there is a
correlation between yellow or ivory colored roses and tea scent.
A
form of Rosa indica odorata, the
Tea-scented Rose from China smell like fine China Tea as distinguished from Rosa indica, the China Rose which is not
always fragrant. This rose found its way
to France
and later crossed with the old Musk Rose which gave rise to a new class called
Noisettes. The old Musk Rose scent is
not exactly as you would expect a rose to smell. A fine example of Noisettes is Marechal Niel, a fragrant but tender
rose that can only be grown outdoors in mild climates. Late in the nineteenth century, Hybrid
Perpetual was crossed with the Tea-scented rose which resulted in the Hybrid
Tea of the modern days.
The perfume of the rose is believed to
have curative powers. In the olden days,
roses are used to make all sorts of medicinal potions to cure maladies and
drive away bad spirit. A bouquet of
roses uplifts the spirit any day of the year.
Even a single rose in a room will liven it up on dreary days. We are very lucky to be growing the
rose. Take a break and smell your roses!
