a signature plant: green rose

Parts of my gar­den look like flo­ral red light dis­tricts, with wild, come-hither plants that beg shame­lessly for your atten­tion. I do appre­ci­ate a binge of excess every now and then, but often find myself com­ing back to one of the most hum­ble plants in the gar­den, the green rose, Rosa chi­nen­sis virid­i­flora.

Green Rose in BudOpening Flower on Green RoseA few blog­gers have been post­ing posts on what they con­sider to be their sig­na­ture plant. (Thanks to Tina at In the Gar­den who got the dis­cus­sion going.) It’s hard to pick just one, but I’d have to say this plant, the only rose in the gar­den, is high on my list. It’s noth­ing super-flashy, but I find it qui­etly inter­est­ing. And the plant has an intrigu­ing history.

A Spray of flowers of the Green RoseI did a post on the green rose over a year ago. I won’t repeat all the details from the first post but you can see my notes here.

The pic­ture I had at the time to accom­pany the post, how­ever, was pretty sad unless you want an instruc­tive photo of what it looks like when it suf­fers one of its rare attacks of pow­dery mildew. To com­pen­sate for that ear­lier ugli­ness, I took these greatly improved pho­tos of it this past week­end, when I noticed that the plant was look­ing extra-nice.

Even when the plant is in full bloom–which is much of the year–it’s easy to walk past it. A shame­less hussy it’s not. But a rose with only sepals and no petals? A rose that goes back at least to the early 1800s and maybe ear­lier? Now that’s interesting!

December 16 2008 05:02 am | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: •

5 Responses to “a signature plant: green rose”

  1. Philip on 16 Dec 2008 at 9:56 am #

    That is very inter­est­ing!
    Your green rose in your red light dis­trict is a great sig­na­ture plant!
    Philip

  2. tina on 16 Dec 2008 at 11:46 pm #

    Very inter­est­ing and a per­fect plant for you. I do like these pic­tures so much bet­ter than the other one, but the his­tory makes it extra spe­cial too. Thanks for the link. I know it blends in and is not as flashy as the other roses, but I think I’d have an awful hard time walk­ing by a green rose:)

  3. lostlandscape on 17 Dec 2008 at 7:28 am #

    Tina and Philip,
    I’m glad to be able to share this some­what off­beat plant with an appre­cia­tive crowd–Thanks for paus­ing to take a look at it!

  4. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » one wall to go on 06 Oct 2009 at 5:35 am #

    […] pruned this plant out of the way. It’s my only rose, the green rose that I’ve been grow­ing since my early teens. Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber aren’t prime rose […]

  5. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » are roses dead? on 22 Jul 2010 at 6:34 am #

    […] that plant is the green rose, a vari­ety dat­ing to the early 1800s and pos­si­bly the 1700s. And the last rose I bought was one of […]

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