Rosa × richardii Rehd.

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Rosa × richardii' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/rosa/rosa-x-richardii/). Accessed 2024-03-27.

Genus

Synonyms

  • R. sancta Richard, not Andr.

Glossary

apex
(pl. apices) Tip. apical At the apex.
bullate
Puckered; with blister-like swellings on the surface.
exserted
Protruding; pushed out.
glabrous
Lacking hairs smooth. glabrescent Becoming hairless.
glandular
Bearing glands.
ovate
Egg-shaped; broadest towards the stem.
rachis
Central axis of an inflorescence cone or pinnate leaf.

References

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Rosa × richardii' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/rosa/rosa-x-richardii/). Accessed 2024-03-27.

As seen in cultivation this rose is a low, rather open bush, whose weakish stems have a few hooked, scattered prickles of unequal size. Leaflets three or five, ovate or oblong, 1 to 2 in. long, often blunt at the apex, simply toothed, bullate above, hairy beneath; rachis downy and more or less prickly. Stipules broad, edged with glands. Flowers 2 to 3 in. across, pale rose, produced several together in a loose cluster, each flower on a slender glabrous and smooth stalk 1 to 2 in. long. Sepals downy and glandular, very large and pinnately lobed, the largest being 112 in. long, and 58 in. wide at the base, with broad, leafy points. Styles hairy, free, long exserted. Willmott, The Genus Rosa, p. 337, t.

This rose, known only from cultivation, was described in 1847 from Abyssinia, where it is grown in the vicinity of churches and in the courtyards of monasteries – whence the epithet sancta used by Richard. How and when it reached Europe is not certain, but the firm of Dammann at Naples were propagating it by 1896; the nurseryman George Paul of Cheshunt had it by 1897 and sent a flowering specimen to Kew in December of that year, to show its perpetual blooming.

According to the botanist Schweinfurth, the vernacular name used for this rose in Tigre province is of Greek origin. It is certainly a rose of great antiquity, already cultivated early in the Christian era in the Fayyum oasis, south-west of Cairo, to which it may have been introduced from Greece or the Near East via Alexandria in Ptolemaic times. The evidence for its presence there lies in the remains of roses forming the funerary chaplets of mummies found by the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie in the Pyramid of the Labyrinths at Hawara, dating from some time between the 2nd and 5th centuries a.d. The fragments were sent to the Belgian rhodologist Crépin and were identified by him as R. sancta. The Fayyum oasis was later a centre of Coptic christianity, with which the Abyssinian Church had close relations.

R. × richardii (sancta) is near to R. gallica. Its armature, and the long-exserted styles, suggest that the other parent was a member of the Synstylae – either R. moschata or, as Hurst suggested, R. phoenicea. Such a parentage would make it a sort of Damask rose.