A hybrid between R. pimpinellifolia and, almost certainly, R. foetida. The typical clone makes a gaunt shrub to about 6 ft high, which does not sucker freely. Leaflets five or seven on the flowering branchlets, resembling those of the burnet rose in size and shape, but with partly glandular teeth. Flowers solitary, loosely double, brilliant sulphur-yellow, borne in June. Pedicels finely prickly; receptacle widely bell-shaped, broader than high. Sepals glandular at the edge, slightly hairy on the back. Fruits almost black.
This rose was raised by George Folliott Harison (d. 1846), a New York lawyer, or possibly by his father Richard Harison, who served as US Attorney for the District of New York during the Presidency of Washington. Both were keen gardeners. The rose – whether a chance hybrid or the result of a deliberate cross is not known – was put into commerce by Thomas Hogg, nurseryman of New York, whence the name R. lutea var. hoggii used by David Don in Sweet’s British Flower Garden, Vol. 4 (1838), t. 410; the plant figured was bought from Hogg by James M’Nab while on a tour of the eastern states for the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, but Hogg himself listed it as Harison’s Yellow (Richardson Wright, Amer. Rose Ann. 1943, pp. 3-11).
Harison’s rose is free-flowering, and a better garden plant than R. foetida ‘Persiana’.
Under R. × harisonii Rehder places ‘Vorbergii’, possibly a seedling of the original clone, distributed by Späth’s nursery early this century. The flowers are single, pale creamy yellow.
The following is probably of the same parentage as R. × harisonii:
R. ‘Lutea Maxima’. – Resembling R. pimpinellifolia in armature, but with buttercup-yellow flowers and further showing the influence of R. foetida in having sepals with occasional lateral appendages. The leaflets are broadly elliptic, about 3⁄4 in. long or 1 in. long on strong shoots, with often double and slightly glandular teeth. The receptacles are vertically compressed as in typical R. × harisonii, but they and the pedicels are quite smooth (R. spinosissima var. lutea Bean).
Under the name “R. ochroleuca”, but apparently also as R. spinosissima lutea there is, or was, in cultivation a rose very similar to the one described but with smaller leaflets, to about 1⁄2 in. long, and of denser habit. But the name R. spinosissima var. lutea, which starts in the first edition of this work, definitely belongs to the larger form – ‘Lutea Maxima’.
For another yellow-flowered rose of this group see ‘Williams’ Double Yellow’, p. 204.