14-June War of the Roses Revisited

There are many different types, each with their own individual characteristics e.g. gallicas, albas, cabbage, Portland, moss, china, tea, bourbon, noisettes, hybrid perpetual, hybrid tea, rambler, hybrid musk, rugosa, polyantha, floribunda, English, modern shrub and miniatures to mention just a few. Some of these have illustrious histories and others, such as the noisettes, are simply named after an important breeder – in this case Phillipe Noisette.

A good place to develop an interest is Middle Temple Gardens. Inner Temple Garden is a hallowed place, as it has been a garden since the twelfth century. In Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part I, whilst in Temple Gardens, the two main adversaries of the War of the Roses (Richard Plantagenet for the House of York and the Earl of Somerset for the House of Lancaster) both pick a rose as their emblem.

The red rose picked for Lancaster was Rosa gallica and the white Rose of York was Rosa x alba. Both these roses already had long histories. R. gallica is said to have adorned the shields of Persian warriors three thousand years ago and Rosa x alba is thought to have been brought to Britain by the Romans and is believed to be an early cross between a damask rose and our own native dog rose. It was known in ancient Greece for its scent and was one of the ingredients of the rose oil called attar of roses.

After thirty-two years of war, the two houses were eventually joined when Henry VII married Elizabeth of York. The two roses were then symbolically joined to form the emblematic Tudor rose, which can still be found on the tombs of English monarchs.

These two roses are famous examples of their types i.e. gallicas and albas. Gallicas tend to be small, upright bushes with pink to dark red single flowers that appear in early summer. They are thought to be the first roses to have been cultivated and consequently are the parents of the thousands of roses we see today. They were grown extensively in France for the perfume industry. R. gallica was also known as the Apothecary’s rose for its many medicinal uses, including controlling heavy periods. The returning Crusaders are thought to have introduced it. Another historically famous gallica is R. gallica versicolor ‘Rosa mundi’ which has been in London gardens since the thirteenth century.

It stands out because of its red and white stripes. It was named after ‘Fair Rosamund’ the mistress of Henry II, who was supposedly poisoned by Queen Eleanor. Albas unfortunately are not always white but quite often pink. They tend to be large, upright shrubs with few thorns and bluish, grey-green or even slightly powdered leaves. They are also famous for their scents and often depicted in early Dutch paintings.

From the Temple Gardens it is now worth moving to Kew, where several flowerbeds indicate the history of different rose groups with well-known examples of each type e.g. damask, bourbon, china, cabbage, Portland and noisette.

Damask roses are old roses which are usually thorny with loose clusters of pink flowers, although they can be red or white. They are famous for their superb fragrance, which Herodotus the fifth century greek historian tells us “surpassed all others”. Virgil mentions that damask roses grew in Pompeii, where they bloomed twice in one year. Nero had shiploads of them delivered to Rome for his banquets, Romans believed their scent stopped you getting drunk.

Cicero complained of Romans travelling around in rose-covered bowers. Saladin, after conquering Jerusalem, ordered the Omar mosque to be cleaned with five hundred camel loads of rose water. By the thirteenth century even the Bishop of Ely was growing them in his garden in Holborn.