What is your most favorite flower? and also tell your national flower too.
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M$3 Answers
Old Garden Roses are those rose classes in existence in Europe and the U.S. before 1863. That was the year that the first Chinese roses arrived in those areas. Chinese roses introduced the tea scent; a bright yellow (and therefore orange) that didn't smell like sulfer, as the bright yellow Swiss species rose does; larger flower sizes with fewer petals, perpetual blooming; and long stems. It also introduced cold sensitivity and plants that looked like sticks instead of graceful shrubs.
The Old Garden Roses, by contrast, have small flowers with many more petals in pastel and mauve colors, borne on bushes that are beautiful in and of themselves. They have strong scents in which many people detect undertones of orange, vanilla and/or baby powder.They're cold-hardy and hardy in all ways, needing no pampering of any kind. In fact, some types have been rescued from castle ruins, where they'd been growing unattended for hundreds of years! Some classes, such as the Damasks, can grow very tall, over 10 or 12 feet, and not even be a climbing rose. I have an Autumn Damask in my garden that is currently over 12 feet tall, unsupported because it doesn't need it.
Most Old Garden Roses bloom only once. The Bourbons, which self-hybridized on the Isle de Bourbon, will rebloom at least once a season. I have a couple of these. The ancient Twice-Blooming Rose of Paestum, mentioned by Ovid, will rebloom. And the Quatre Saisons, thought to be the same as a similarly-named Roman rose, will bloom four times over the course of the summer. These roses are thought to be among the ancestors of the Bourbon class.
In short, Old Garden Roses are terrific roses for busy gardeners, particularly those where temperatures freeze in the winter! You almost can't kill them; you don't need to baby them at all, even in hard winters. They'll respond well if you feed them well, but you don't have to. Bourbons do really well in Texas and can even get invasive there, but they're just fine here in Indiana.
I grow this one, and it's lovely in scent, form, and growth:
Here are a bunch of the ones I grow:
I love the striped ones! I have three different striped ones. Striped and spotted flowers were all the rage for awhile. Like 200 years or so.
They smell so strongly while in bloom they can be smelled over a block away.
About 18 years working with Old Garden Roses
http://scvrs.homestead.com/OGRprimer.html
http://www.rdrop.com/~paul/
And one of two good U.S. sources for OGRs: http://www.heirloomroses.com/cgi-bin/browse.cgi?page=cat&cat=Old+Garden... Most of mine came from here.
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M$
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M$
My favorite flower is White Rose.
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M$
Thanks @tracebooks, what a beautiful answer. Rose is my favorite all time.