BON, CHINA, AND POLYANTHA ROSES

BESIDES the three great races of perpetual flowering Roses, the Teas,
Hybrid Teas, and Hybrid Perpetuals, on which the chief interest of the
modern rose-world is centred at the present time, there are other
perpetual flowering roses, which are of great importance both for their
value in the past and their beauty in the present. For although the
modern hybrids have somewhat obscured the fame of their ancestors, many
of them owe their origin to the Bourbon and China roses, which, in the
early years of the nineteenth century, before the advent of Hybrid
Perpetuals, were almost the only autumn flowering roses on which to
depend.

THE BOURBON ROSE, _R. Bourboniana_.

According to that invaluable book,[7] to which I owe an untold debt of
gratitude since first I began to study rose-growing seriously--the
original Bourbon, "a beautiful semi-double rose, with brilliant
rose-coloured flowers, prominent buds, and nearly evergreen foliage,"
was discovered in the Isle of Bourbon.

[Illustration: BOURBON.

SOUVENIR DE LA MALMAISON.]

It appears that the land there was--probably is still--enclosed by
"hedges made of two rows of roses, one row of the common China Rose, the
other of the Red Four Seasons, the Perpetual Damask." In planting one of
these hedges, a proprietor found a rose quite different in appearance to
the rest of his young plants, and transferred it to his garden. Here it
flowered, and proved to be a new type, evidently a seedling from the two
sorts, which were the only ones known in the island. "M. Breon arrived
at Bourbon in 1817, as botanical traveller for the Government of France,
and curator of the Botanical and Naturalization Garden there. He
propagated this rose very largely; and sent plants and seeds of it in
1822 to Monsieur Jacques, gardener at the Chateau de Neuilly, near
Paris, who distributed it among the rose cultivators of France. M. Breon
named it 'Rose de l'Isle Bourbon,' and is convinced that it is a hybrid
from one of the above roses, and a native of the island."

The true Bourbon roses are thoroughly perpetual, with rose, blush, or
white flowers, smooth solid stems, and dark, almost evergreen, foliage.
One has only to mention the well-known and well-beloved _Souvenir de la
Malmaison_ to recall the type. _Gloire de Rosamenes_[8] is a hybrid, as
I have said: but _Hermosa_, or _Armosa_ (1840), and the charming
_Mrs. Bosanquet_ (1832), often classed among the C