RoseFile Essays

Fragrance can be one of the most alluring aspects of the rose. The instinctive behavior of most rose lovers when they see a rose is to bring rose and nose near together and inhale. The rewards of this behavior can be tremendous. One can look at faboulous, huge, perfect photos of roses in books or prints, or on line, for seconds, minutes or hours, and none of it compares to finding a good smelling rose.

There are lots of strategies to finding good smelling roses

Choose roses that have won Fragrance Awards .
Choose roses that come from classes reknown for fragrance; Noisettes, Hybrid Rugosas or English Roses. Damasks, Albas and Gallicas can be good bets.
Choose roses recommended by others for fragrance. I have found or heard from several sources that the following roses are quite fragrant:
- Ambridge Rose
- Sombreuil
- Memorial Day
- Konigin von Danemarck
- Blanc Double de Coubert
- Conrad F. Meyer
- Great Maiden's Blush
- Gertrude Jeckyll
- Graham Thomas
- Constance Spry
- Madame Plantier
- Lamarque
- R. rugosa
- Fragrant Cloud
- Fragrant Plum
- Melody Parfumee
- Double Delight
- Angel Face
- Nur Mahal
- Henri Martin
- Francis E. Lester
Choose colors that are likely to have fragrant roses. Purplish roses are reputed to be better for fragrance as a group than some other colors. Frequently the scarlets, bright oranges, and golds will not be very fragrant. And there is a rule - apochyrphal perhaps - that says red hybrid tea roses can either be easy care or fragrant, never both.
Decide which is more important, a long lasting cut rose or a good smelling one. There is another rule that says that thin rose petals release fragrance readily, thus roses with thin petals seem more fragrant. The consequence of thin petals is that the flower does not last well when cut.

For some time between 1945 when Peace took the world by storm and 1985 when a handful of David Austin's roses got rave reviews, the conventional wisdom, especially in America, was that photos sold roses. Period. This meant fragrance was irrellevant. As a consequence, roses had fragrance as a matter of accident rather than as a matter of design. The fragrant rose began to look like a thing of distant memory.

But people fought back. A number of independent nurseries opened up and sold 'old' roses. Some of these were old in the formal sense - predating 1867. Others were old in the sense that they were off patent and out of distribution. Many of these roses had fragrance and in many cases it was the fragrance that sold the rose. This wave of interest in roses that fell out of the main stream definition - hybrid teas with stiff, upright forms in garish colors - parallelled and reinforced the interest in David Austin's fragrant English Roses.

Today we see a resurgence of attention to fragrance among rose breeders. Carruth, for example, has managed to leverage a long standing tradition at Weeks Roses of working with fragrance as a part of the breeding equation. For some time between the sixties and eighties their most notable introductions were as noteworthy for their noses as for their shapes, sizes, colors, and habits. Today, roses such as Neptune and Memorial Day are large, well formed, healthy and vigorous roses that boast plenty of delicious fragrance. And breeders at other large rose institutions are introducing fragrant floribundas at a pace uneard of two decades ago.

Each rose attribute goes through periods in which it gets relatively more or less attention. During the 40 'dark years' for fragrance, much work was focussed on color and much headway was made in improving the color pallet of the rose. It seems a bit unlikely that fragrance will ever get the same level of undivided attention, but fortunately the rose will continue to smell good so long as there are gardeners who insist that:

A rose by any name should smell as sweet.