Madame Caroline Testout, Cl.

Foliferous

The city of Portland earned the moniker 'City of Roses' after its city fathers decided to line the streets with thousands of rose bushes - Madame Caroline Testout. That was many decades ago, but a number of those roses live on today. And David Austin tells of the climbing sport being trained up the side of his family's house before 1918: it is still there (1990).

The flowers look feminine, delicate, luscious, while the plant that produces them is almost unconditionally durable. This is what we seek in roses. Precious few cultivars achieve this so well as MCT. Yet the rose does have the HT drawbacks of slow going and paucity of blooms.

ARS members rate the bush version 7.9.