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Rosa cerasocarpa Rolfe

Modern name

Rosa cerasocarpa Rolfe

Synonyms

R. gentiliana sens. Rehd. & Wils., in part, not Lévl. & Van.

A deciduous climbing or semi-climbing shrub up to 15 ft high; young shoots somewhat glaucous, armed with a few scattered recurved spines. Leaves up to 7 or 8 in. long, consisting of three or (usually) five leaflets; rachis glandular, slightly prickly. Leaflets narrowly ovate or oval, long pointed, sharply and conspicuously toothed, 2 to 4 in. long, half as much wide, glabrous of nearly so, rather glaucous beneath. Flowers white, produced in June in fine corymbose clusters 6 in. wide, each flower 112 in. across, borne on a glandular stalk 34 to 112 in. long. Receptacle obovoid, downy and glandular. Sepals linear, sometimes pinnately lobed, 12 in. long, downy and glandular. Fruits globose, downy, deep red, 12 in. wide, with the sepals fallen away. Bot. Mag., t. 8688.

R. cerasocarpa was described in 1915 from a plant which flowered for the first time in June 1914 in the garden of Sir William Thistleton-Dyer in Gloucestershire; it had been obtained by him from Sir Thomas Hanbury of La Mortola, Italy, and had been raised from seeds collected in China. In the following year it was figured in the Botanical Magazine, but Sir William considered that even that excellent portrait did not do justice to the beauty of his plant. ‘The solid trusses are unlike those of any rose I know, and suggest an Azalea’ (Gard. Chron., Vol. 74 (1923), p. 55). Whether this rose was ever propagated for general distribution it is impossible to say. It seems to be very near to R. rubus (q.v.) – nearer to that species than to R. longicuspis, with which Rolfe compared it.

The description of R. cerasocarpa in Boulenger’s revision of the Asiatic Synstylae is inaccurate, and the species is wrongly placed in his key among those with rounded flower-buds.

R. henryi Boulenger R. gentiliana sens. Rehd. & Wils., in part, not Lévl. & Van.; R. moschata var. densa Vilm. – R. henryi, described in 1933, is essentially a renaming of the species treated in Plantae Wilsonianae, Vol. II, p. 312, under the name R. gentiliana (for the true species of that name, see under R. multiflora). As described, R. henryi does not seem to differ significantly from R. cerasocarpa, when allowance is made for the fact that the latter species was described from a single cultivated plant and R. henryi from a range of wild speciments. Boulenger would surely have noted the similarity if he had actually seen the specimens of Thistleton-Dyer’s plant, or even the plate in the Botanical Magazine, but he seems to have been unaware of either. His conception of R. cerasocarpa was largely based on a fruiting specimen collected by A. Henry (7007) which Rolfe thought might belong to his species, and it is perhaps significant that another specimen of Henry 7007, in the Boissier Herbarium, is included by Boulenger in R. henryi.

R. henryi was introduced by Wilson in 1907 from W. Hupeh, China, under his numbers 609 and 609a. The nurseryman Paul of Cheshunt had plants, but whether he ever propagated and distributed this species is uncertain.


Genus

Rosa

Other species in the genus