SOME PIMPINELLIFOLIAE AND OTHER EARLY-BLOOMERS IN THE ROSETO BOTANICO
“CARLA FINESCHI”
“CARLA FINESCHI”
By Andy Clark
“Come into my garden. I would like my roses to see you.” This invitation is engraved in a marble plaque set into the stonewall surrounding the house at the Roseto Botanico “Carla Fineschi” in Cavriglia, Italy. The words are those of Richard Sheridan, the Irish-born eighteenth-century dramatist and politician, and, indeed, I felt as if the roses had welcomed me on the lovely mid-week afternoon last May when I visited this idyllic garden.
Begun some thirty years ago by Dr. Gianfranco Fineschi as a private garden, and named for Carla Fineschi (the Doctor’s late wife) who was instrumental in the Roseto’s development, the garden is now a foundation supported solely by donations. It is a highly organized and exquisitely tended botanical garden of some 7,000 species and cultivars, subdivided into numerous sections in a classical botanical system.
The Roseto is located on high ground in the tranquil landscape of rolling hills just outside the town of Cavriglia in eastern Tuscany. Vineyards, olive trees, and grassy fields studded with wildflowers surround the garden. That afternoon I heard bees buzzing, birds singing, peacocks calling, and the sound of a tractor’s engine idling. I saw striped lizards scurrying underfoot. Dogs barked loudly in a large enclosure towards the back of the garden; others scampered after a woman who perhaps resided in the house, which has its own private and gated rose garden. Numerous cats sauntered along, lolled contentedly, or preened, but none was more charming than a small white feline who picturesquely posed on a table among bowls of pansies.
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The weather was ideal on the day of my visit: sunny and pleasantly warm with a slight breeze blowing and white clouds in a bright blue sky. However, the preceding month had been very rainy. Undoubtedly the weather had forestalled blooming, and flowers were especially sparse in the expansive plantings of the northwest quadrant of the garden, between the Roseto’s two gates. The rugosas, which had many blooms, were the lone exceptions.
Nevertheless, some of the all-but-flowerless beds caught my attention. Only a few steps from the gate adjacent to the house are about a half-dozen beds entirely devoted to roses raised in California. Roses hybridized by Herbert C. Swim (Chino) from the 1940s through the 1970s are especially prominent. One of the few blooms I saw on Swim’s roses was a lonely but nicely shaped ‘Forty-Niner’, a red hybrid tea he introduced in 1949 to commemorate the gold rush of a century earlier. Other breeders well represented are Theodore J. Morris (Van Nuys), Denison Morey (Santa Rosa), Gordon von Abrams (Davis), and David L. Armstrong (Ontario). Nearby is a large raised bed given over to dozens of roses developed in the 1950s and 1960s on the East Coast by Eugene S. Boerner (New York).
Naturally, roses raised by Italian breeders are very much in evidence. ‘Saffo’, a beautiful hybrid tea, was one of the few plants with flowers in the three beds devoted to their work (in the southeast area of the garden). ‘Saffo’s’ red flower is large and semi-double with a yellow center. It is lightly fragrant, and was introduced in 1934 by Domenico Aicardi, who named the rose for the ancient Greek poet Sappho.
In the same quarter of the Roseto, there was a very large vaulted metal arbor covered with five types of roses, of which four were species roses, all banksiaes. Two were white, R. banksiae normalis and R. banksiae alba plena, and two were yellow, R. banksiae lutescens and R. banksiae lutea. The fifth rose was an Italian banksiae hybrid, ‘Purezza’ (a cross of ‘Tom Thumb’, a miniature rose, and R. banksiae lutescens), with white double flowers, introduced by Quinto Mansuimo in 1960. The many fragrant roses blooming on this pergola delighted me, and I especially admired the delicacy of the single roses R. banksiae lutescens and normalis.
Then, moving further eastward in this part of the Roseto, I came upon terraces of long rows of species and hybrids in the pimpinellifoliae (spinosissimae), bracteatae, carolinae, laevigatae, and synstylae classes, among which were many already in bloom. Some were staked with large poles, others grew in metalwork cages, and still others were trellised or splayed out against a high fence constructed of upright metal poles and horizontal wires. I have a preference for the simplicity of single roses, but because I could not possibly linger over every rose in this extensive planting, I concentrated on the pimpinellifolia (Burnet Roses) now often classed with the spinosissimas, a class of roses that some say lent its name to the title of the 1905 historical novel The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. According to our horticultural expert, Clair Martin, The Scarlet Pimpernel was actually named for an herb of the genus Anagallis with scarlet-purple or white flowers that mark bad weather by closing up early.
The colors of two Burnet Roses growing next to each other contrasted beautifully: ‘Cantabigiensis’ or some times listed as R. pteragonis cantabrigiensis or “Cambridge Rose”, a pale yellow single rose, and ‘Beth’, a single rose whose five petals are white in the center and deep pink elsewhere. The former was a natural hybrid that occurred in the Cambridge Botanic Garden about 1931, and which is credited to Weaver on the Roseto’s label. The latter is a hybrid developed by Mertens in 1973. (Regrettably, I do not know the first names or initials of either Weaver or Mertens.) Not far from these I found ‘Anemone’, a cross between a tea rose and R. laevigata, whose flowers recall ‘Beth’, but in reverse. Also known as the ‘Pink Cherokee’, 'Anemone' is pink in the center but this color is intermixed with white toward the edges, creating a radiating pattern of shades of pink. Among the hybrid Burnet Roses I saw in the Roseto, one of the most beautiful was ‘Stanwell Perpetual’, thought to be a cross between R. pimpinellifolia and a Damask. Its lush flowers are soft light pink, double, and very fragrant.
Another pink species rose in this area of the garden, but one of a very different character than the five-petal single roses just mentioned, is R. farreri persetosa ‘Threepenny Bit Rose’, which is listed as a pimpinellifolia on the Roseto’s website but classified as a cinnamonea by others. This is an exceedingly prickly plant, introduced from China in 1914 according to Peter Beales, and even the light pink flowers have a wild look about them. The edges of the older blooms turn under, giving the flower a limp yet graceful appearance.
Less eye-catching than the pink Burnets, but no less pretty, are the white varieties. One in particular drew my attention, R. pimpinellifolia altaica. This rose has a very luxuriant single flower whose large petals brought to mind the broad, spreading wings of a butterfly.
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'Austrian Yellow' |
The yellow-flowered pimpinellifolia are especially striking and stand out from afar in the long rows of plantings at the Roseto. The most intensely yellow species rose is R. foetida (whose fragrance does not seem unpleasant to me), also known as R. lutea, ‘Austrian Brier,’ or ‘Austrian Yellow.’ (Ed. Some gardens still list the yellow fetid roses as species but in reality they are old garden hybrids and are listed as such in The Huntington’s garden.) Among the hybrids, R. lutea maxima, ‘Harison’s Yellow’ (“Yellow Rose of Texas” or R. harisonii) and ‘Golden Chersonese’ are brilliant yellows. The color of ‘Austrian Yellow’ is not only very bright, but it is also a deep and clear shade of yellow. Only by contrast with ‘Austrian Yellow’ do the hybrids appear somewhat pale. R. lutea maxima is probably a hybrid of the ‘Austrian Yellow’, as Graham Thomas has noted. ‘Golden Chersonese’, introduced by E.F. Allen in 1966, is a hybrid of the two yellow roses, R. ecae, a species rose from Afghanistan, and ‘Canary Bird’, a hybrid of uncertain origin. As dazzling as these yellow roses were, a recent hybrid outshone them: ‘Relax’, a hybrid of ‘Austrian Copper’ developed by L. Meilland in 1978. Inside, the flowers of ‘Austrian Copper’ are primarily intense red-orange. Outside, they are bright yellow. ‘Relax’ puts both brilliant colors together on the inside, where yellow in the center transitions into red-orange toward the edges. The outside is a less intense shade of yellow.
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'Relax' |
Beyond the pimpinellifolia and behind the house is a very large raised bed planted with Moss, Damask, Centifolia, and Hybrid Gallica roses. Further to the right of that bed is an extensive area of old roses bordered by a tall rose-covered fence. This sector is divided into six beds planted with dozens of varieties of Hybrid Perpetuals as well as lesser numbers of Portlands and Bourbons. There were not many flowers to be seen here, and, since it was already late in the day and I had a long drive ahead of me, I decided to leave. I had spent a marvelous afternoon in this paradise of roses, and as I drove away I couldn’t help thinking about a return visit.
Note: Consult the Roseto’s website, http://www.rosetofineschi.org/fineschi/fineschi.htm, for further information. Click on “Tour the Garden” to go to the plan of the Roseto, and then click on the plan to zoom in on a particular section. Next, click on the enlarged plan to bring up a list of roses in that area, and then click on hyperlinked names to bring up photographs of individual roses. Information on the bilingual (Italian-English) taxonomic catalogue and bulletins published by the Fondazione Roseto Botanico “Carla Fineschi” are available on the website. If you go to the Roseto you should plan on spending more than one day if you want to see everything. The website gives general information about visiting the garden in May and June, however, it is advisable to write or fax the Roseto to confirm opening dates and hours.
Andy Clark, Saturday Workshop Volunteer and Subrosa Associate Editor
(All photos in this article were taken by Andy Clark)