DK, Canggu writes: A few months ago I bought some roses from a nursery in Ubud. These were roses I have grown back home. The flowers were a bit smaller than usual, but I thought this may be because they were quite young plants. They have since re-flowered, but this time they are very much smaller – about the size of the average miniature rose; neither do their colors seem as intense. The leaves are also much smaller and not as dark green or strong. I have given them fertilizer. Why is this so? Roses here do not seem to have a strong fragrance. Is it the climate?
Roses are not really at home in tropics. They will grow here, but with the results you have described. Ubud is higher and cooler than the coastal regions, but the roses you bought were probably grown at a higher altitude, probably around the Kintamani area where I have seen roses growing more or less with the habit we expect in temperate climates. Have you noticed there are fewer petals in your later flowers?
Roses must have cool nights for the flower to develop size, number of petals, and intense color. To some extent, this is also true of perfume. In my present garden, I inherited two roses. One I think is a rose known in Australia as ‘Peter Frankenfelder’. I know this rose well. A single multi-petalled, high-pointed flower per stem - a vigorous plant - a favorite on the show bench there. Its color is a rather ‘hard’ deep pink (not my favorite color) and it has a strong fragrance.
The same color in the tight bud, (I am looking at one cut this morning) but within a few hours the color fades to a much pleasanter pink (known as ‘vieux rose’ - old rose in my young days). Blossom size only about 10% of ‘normal’ with a mere 15 petals as against 35+ petals I am used to. It became fully blown within 3 hours of picking. It may last 3-4 days, given clean water, changed daily, in an air-conditioned room. The spicy perfume is the only thing which seems exactly the same (but only about 50% intensity). I could identify this rose back home at a glance – I am not at all certain of it here.
This rose was just forming buds when I moved in at the beginning of January (just two stems flowered). In 40 days, it has re-grown and flowered two more stems. So-called recurrent roses bear many flowering stems in cooler climates over a period of 3-4 weeks. It takes between 50-60 days for the next flush plus a long winter’s rest. Such rapid re-growth with constant flowering about 40 days apart does not permit the development of good blooms. Enjoy them for what they are, but do not expect better roses unless you are prepared to move up into the highlands.
So many people lament the ‘loss of scent’ in roses today. This is fable! Even roses exist which have never had perfume – some even smell bad. One such species being: - Rosa foetida lutea, Rosa foetida bicolor – foetida = stinking in Latin. I have grown these roses; While I think ‘stinking’ too strong a term, they do not smell the way we expect roses to smell. Until the China roses arrived in Europe in the early 1800s, lutea was the only true yellow rose available to the hybridists. Many were the attempts to breed from it, but due to incompatible chromosome counts (ploidy), few had much success. The strong yellows of today are fairly recent arrivals.
The cut flower trade is particularly responsible for this perceived ‘loss of perfume’. Perfume is a combination of many factors; some being – time of day, relative humidity, amount of sunshine, ancestry of the rose. In the rose, perfume is secreted by tiny glands more or less situated at the base of the petals. Thin rose petals have these glands in abundance – the thicker the petal, the fewer such glands.
The cut flower business demands thick petals to give the flower a long vase life (up to ten days). This is BIG business. Some 25 years ago Israel exported four Boeing 747s stuffed with cut roses to the international flower market in Aalsmeer, Holland. This figure has probably doubled by now. These roses are grown hydroponically under completely controlled conditions.
All the big breeders now concentrate on giving this trade what it wants: Breeding for the home garden is now of secondary importance. Most such roses are never given names – just a code number. In the past, some were also good garden plants eg: Wilhelm Kordes ‘Kardinal’. Nowadays, their cultivation needs such high-tech conditions, they are rarely, if ever, released to the general public.
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