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,
a deep purplish red gallica has the scent of wine. Then we have a whole slew of fruity scents
like apple, raspberry, lemon and oranges. The hybridization of 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.
Copyright © 2013. By Rosalinda R Morgan, author of “BAHALA NA (Come What May”.
All rights reserved. FRAGRANCE IN ROSES
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