ROSE, with seed-buds nearly round; peduncles and petioles hispid
and glandular: the stem and branches are prickly, scattered,
straight, and slightly bent back: the leaflets are villous beneath,
with slightly glandular margins.
* * * * *
Among the recent additions to this genus, the White Province, or Rose
Unique, is indisputably the most valuable. Its introduction in 1777 was
entirely accidental, through the medium of the late Mr. Grimwood,
nurseryman, a great admirer and collector of roses, who, in an excursion
which he usually made every summer, in passing the front garden of Mr.
Richmond, a baker near Needham in Suffolk, there perceived the present
charming plant, where it had been placed by a carpenter who found it
near a hedge on the contiguous premises of a Dutch merchant, whose old
mansion he was repairing. Mr. Grimwood, requesting a little cutting of
it, received from Mr. Richmond the whole plant; when Mr. G., in return
for a plant so valuable, presented him with an elegant silver cup with
the Rose engraved upon it; and which in commemoration has furnished food
for many a convivial hour. It is of a dwarf growth, and remains in
flower near six weeks longer than the other Province Roses; which
renders it still the more estimable. We wish it had been in our power to
have accounted for its having been till so lately a stranger to us, and
whence indigenous; but at present our information is entirely confined
to the knowledge of its casual introduction; and until some further
light is thrown upon the subject, to elucidate its genealogy, we shall
regard it as a native.
Our drawing was taken from a plant in the nursery of Messrs. Colville,
King’s Road.
[Illustration]
ROSA parviflora, _Provincialis_.
_Small-flowered Province or Blandford Rose._