ROSA. Rose. Widespread in the Northern Hemisphere. We are assembling a diverse collection of roses, including a few common favorites, some of the best of the old roses, modern extensions of the same themes, and species from California and elsewhere. Most of them have the typical spiny stems and leaf stalks which make being a rose enthusiast such a bloody business. Their classic five-petalled (or ten to hundreds in the double-flowered selections) flowers are borne in clusters at the shoot tips. Many are wonderfully fragrant (oddly enough, their intensity and specific variations in scent often go undescribed in rose texts, as if all were alike). The “hips”, or fleshy seed capsules, which follow can be quite decorative, usually more so in the species and the hybrids closest to them. Most of the following prefer sun but tolerate a wide variety of soils and watering regimes. Hardy to 0^oF or less, except as noted.

californica. A native species, quite common here along the Central Coast. It forms broad thickets from underground shoots—a useful feature for revegetation and ground cover, as well as a potentially serious problem for the smaller garden. Individual stems are 4-6' tall and closely set with pale green to bluish green leaves. Single pink flowers up to 2" broad decorate the plants most of the summer. We hope to offer a superior selection or two in the future, as well as the current seedling material.

wichuraiana. I am hoping that this trailing/climbing rose will get a better reception in this new round than in the first. It has performed magnificently in my own garden, making a solid, trouble-free carpet up to 10' broad. The leaves are small, dark and wonderfully shiny. The subspecies poterifolia has slender, profusely branched stems and single, pure white flowers, about 1½” across. The cultivar ‘Hiawatha’ has stouter, more rapidly extending stems and single, vivid red flowers with white centers. ‘Variegata’ is more delicate in appearance, like poterifolia, and has cream-yellow margined leaves and white flowers.