"lms" wrote in message
...
In article m,
says...




http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~mstephen/ladyb03.jpg
Finally. It looks healthy and is evergreen, I swear. The apple trees
nearby
took 10 years to hit their stride, perhaps this is the apple in Lady
Banks.

That a nice crop of.. ..Grass! :-

that a right, you got.


I once went looking for R. stellata mirifica near my aunt's house in
High
Rolls, NM, and in 10 minutes found R. arkansana, it was a Thanksgiving
and
I
really didn't think I had a prayer of finding any roses going down
Fresnal
Creek, much less mirifica. (Arkansana is trying to take over the
plantation
now.) If anyone interested does a websearch on Fresnal Creek, they
will
instantly find--and to my GREAT astonishment just the other day,
ThankYou,
Alice for the snail--that Fresnal Creek is preCISEly where you find
mirifica
growing wild. This is less than 5 minutes by highway from where I
found
arkansana.
Mirifica, meaning 'wonderful', joins the Gincko, Dawn Redwood, and
cycads
in
that rare group of plants called 'living fossils'. They evolved on
island-like mountains in a sea of desert when the lush Oligocene
lowlands
dried
up and became deserts. They look like cosmos and are the showiest
flowers
of
any American wild rose. Smell like hyacinth. Leaves like columbine.
July
4 is just around the corner, and I'm all jazzed about the thrill of the
hunt.
I was once sent a small root of Mirifica--as well as R. minutifolia,
which
has the tiniest leaves of any rose--but this was like October/November
and
sadly neither survived.
But I'll be finding Mirifica soon, its seeds are as good as in my
pocket.
wink

So yes, I agree-- the world of roses extends WAY beyond those big fat
hybrids
which we are all too prone to be satisfied with. As with all things,
when
you expand you horizons, that's a good thing, Martha.

I agree. Don't know if any roses can really
be called living fossils considering the oldest
record only puts them 25-30 million years back.

But in the sense that nobody thought it was there
but it is, sure!

I think I even spelt Oligocene right. try 34 million years. Ever hear
of Florissant, Colorado? T.D.A. Cockerell, a bugman by trade, found "a
variety of fossil rose leaves and most interesting of all, a rosebud,
well preserved with bristles visible on the hip and sepals." He named
this rose Rosa ruskiniana.

"Early in the 1950s, aware of the work Dr. C.C. Hurst was doing in England
on the evolution of roses, Cockerell offered his collection of rose
fossils for
study. In an unpublished file note, as E.F. Allen relates in a 1982
British
Rose Annual article, Dr. Hurst 'considered Cockerell's ruskiniana to have
affinities with the modern Rosa stellata. If this is true, then like the
Ginkgo, Dawn Redwood and Cycad, Roisa stellata joins that rare group
called
'living fossils'."

Ah! yes. These were known (other than cycads) from fossil records
before somebody actually found the living example.
The desert rose. That thorn covered wonder.
I can see how it survived 34 million years.

Earlier in this article it was stated "Today, they're almost the oldest
known
roses in the world." A gentleman named Don Gers wrote this article for
Heritage Roses to give credit where...


Sure is amazing what you find growing even
in a city suburb. I have spotted the following
growing in various spots in KC. R. Arkansana,
R. Nutkana, R. Setigera, R. Laevigata and
my find of finds R. Ptercantha no less growing
in a church side lot incredibly, doing amazingly
well too. Tried to trace the person who grew it
but the church was closed. Make note to try again.

I grow arkansana and nutkana, at least Schoener's Nutkana.
Once spotted R. sericea pteracantha from 30-40 yards in the San Jose
Heritage
Rose Garden. It was actually blooming at the time but the blooms are,
howusay, insignificant. When I read that descriptor somewhere later, I
thought

Pteracantha blooms insignificant!! Not.
The canes (more like branches)
absolutely cover themselves. What they
lack in size they make up in numbers.

Only reason I ID'd it was 'cos I used to
grow one. Caused me a sea of heartache
trying to keep it happy.

it was entirely appropriate, even if R. sericea can have that rarest of
rare
number of petals, four.
Was actually, for me, the only rose that was a no-doubter and I had never
seen
one before. The thorns are semi-translucent, the plant was just glowing
red.
I have a variety of R. xanthina, though, that gives no points in the
glowing-
red-thorn department. I marvel at them every time they come up on my
screensaver.



--
Theo in Zone 5
Kansas City