On Tue, 3 May 2011 12:45:11 +0100, Sacha wrote:

On 2011-05-02 20:46:38 +0100, Mike Lyle said:

Sorry I can't show you a photograph, but yesterday in the well-kept
but still otherwise flowerless rose garden at Warwick Castle I saw a
medium-tall rose in full flower rambling through some sort of cherry
tree. It had clusters of one-inch-wide scentless fully double rosette
blooms in a deep cream shade. The small foliage was of a fresh green
colour; and the plant was completely thornless. A passing gardener
didn't know what it was.

A variety of R. banksiae, perhaps? Is R.banksiae thornless, or does it
come in thornless varieties? Or what?

(The said gardener was chatty, and recounted how when one visitor had
asked him for a cutting of something, he'd replied "Of course, madam!
Shall we use the secateurs you've got in your bag?" I truthfully swore
I didn't have so much as a Swiss Army knife about me, but my daughter
rather let the side down by saying "That's not like him!")

We have R. banksiae lutea growing and flowering like mad outside our
bedroom atm but that's very definitely yellow and so is the R. banksiae
lutescens which we have on a pole, struggling to recover from its
winter bashing and flowering sparsely. But there's Rosa banksiae alba
plena which is a sort of creamy white double flower and Rosa banksiae
normalis but that's single flowered and slightly scented.

Thanks, Sacha and Charlie. A banksiae var or hybrid, then: I assume
the thornlessness is normal, as neither of you remarked on it.
Valuable to have such an early profuse-flowering rose, scent or no
scent.

--
Mike.