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| NETHERLANDS, Doorenbos, ca. 1950 Gertrude Jekyll |
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| Doorenbos Selection, Spinossissima (Scots Rose) |
I am fond of plum purple. At its most dramatic this rose is dark purple, darker at the petal bases, feathering up towards the edges, with tiny buff stamens. The flowers are small, just two inches across, the leaves slender and ferny and small. In our sandy soil the plant rarely reaches more than two feet, but suckers about creating a fuzzy nest of slim stems thick with needle thin prickles. This is the habit of the Scots roses which colonize the soil creating drifts of upright branches tipped in flowers in early May here. The texture is soft in the garden and not at all what is expected of a rose plant.
Tiny cups of claret purple continue for weeks and in the summer or sometimes the autumn they reappear. Rarely though do I see an abundance of hips, small, round, glossy wine-black fruits that are the special stuff of the Scots roses. Like elderberries, or the somber black berries of ivy, they hold one in their thrall---black fruits, plum purple flowers...
What is old in a rose? There are many yardsticks of time, and some lovers of old roses are quite particular about when a rose was introduced. The twentieth century troubles them. But none who browse through our garden would look and see something modern in Doorenbos Selection, though it was introduced by the Dutch nursery of the same name sometime around 1950. That was the year I was born, so for me it is old, and growing older.
Simply exquisite. Like you, I am particularly disposed to the color plum, especially in a rose, and generally pair them with pinks.
ReplyDeleteI bought DS this spring from the RosenMeister and I planted it near Basye's purple rose which it reminds me of but on a smaller scale
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