_Rosa_
Just as many members of the lily tribe show a preference for the rule of
three in the arrangements of their floral parts, so the wild roses cling
to the quinary method of some primitive ancestor, a favorite one also
with the buttercup and many of its kin, the geraniums, mallows, and
various others. Most of our fruit trees and bushes are near relatives of
the rose. Five petals and five sepals, then, we always find on roses in
a state of nature; and although the progressive gardener of to-day has
nowhere shown his skill more than in the development of a multitude of
petals from stamens in the magnificent roses of fashionable society, the
most highly cultivated darling of the greenhouses quickly reverts to the
original wild type, setting his work of years at naught, if once it
regain its natural liberties through neglect.
To protect its foliage from being eaten by hungry cattle, the rose goes
armed into the battle of life with curved, sharp prickles, not true
thorns or modified branches, but merely surface appliances which peel
off with the bark. To destroy crawling pilferers of pollen, several
species coat their calices, at least, with fine hairs or sticky gum; and
to insure wide distribution of offspring, the seeds are packed in the
attractive, bright red calyx tube or hip, a favorite food of many birds,
which drop them miles away.
In literature, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, no flower figures
so conspicuously as the rose. To the Romans it was most significant when
placed over the door of a public or private banquet hall. Each who
passed beneath it bound himself thereby not to disclose anything said or
done within; hence the expression _sub rosa_, common to this day.
The Smoother, Early, or Meadow Rose (_R. blanda_), found blooming in
June and July in moist, rocky places from Newfoundland to New Jersey and
a thousand miles westward, has slightly fragrant flowers, at first pink,
later pure white. Their styles are separate, not cohering in a column
nor projecting as in the climbing rose. This is a leafy, low bush mostly
less than three feet high; it is either entirely unarmed, or else
provided with only a few weak prickles; the stipules are rather broad,
and the leaf is compounded of from five to seven oval, blunt, and pale
green leaflets, often hoary below.
* * * * *
In swamps and low, wet ground from Quebec to Florida and westward to the
Mississippi, the Swamp Rose (_R. carolina_) blooms late in May and on to
midsummer. The bush may grow taller than a man, or perhaps only a foot
high. It is armed with stout, hooked, rather distant prickles, and few
or no bristles. The leaflets, from five to nine, but usually seven, to a
leaf, are smooth, pale, or perhaps hairy beneath to protect the pores
from filling with moisture arising from the wet ground. Long, sharp
calyx lobes, which drop off before the cup swells in fruit into a round,
glandular, hairy red hip, are conspicuous among the clustered pink
flowers and buds.
How fragrant are the pages of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare with the
Eglantine! This delicious plant, known here as Sweetbrier (_R.
rubiginosa_), emits its very aromatic odor from russet glands on the
under, downy side of the small leaflets, always a certain means of
identification. From eastern Canada to Virginia and Tennessee the plant
has happily escaped from man’s gardens back to Nature’s.
In spite of its American Indian name, the lovely white Cherokee Rose
(_R. Sinica_), that runs wild in the South, climbing, rambling, and
rioting with a truly Oriental abandon and luxuriance, did indeed come
from China. Would that our northern thickets and roadsides might be
decked with its pure flowers and almost equally beautiful dark, glossy,
evergreen leaves!