The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1911-09-26

oAkN0 tA0 year 1oVUs
you have to multiply M. Guillemeau's
figures by 80 or so.
The last hundred years has been
g busy n 90 far as rose gardens 60.
The secret Of making new varieties
10 not we'll enough known yet. The
process Is 30 mysterious and battling,
throwing back at the experimenter 80
many failures before it deigns to give
one success. that 1t piques the curios-
ity and ambition Of every gardner.
He knows what to do when he tries
to get a new rose; he knows that you
have to snip OF the anthers of one
rose and fertilize the pistils of anoth-
er flower and tie q bag over it so that
busy bees will not interfere with
your work; but he also knows that
only under the most favorable con
ditions will seed form in the fortified
rose, and that only two per cent of
the seeds will come up even IL he gets
them.
1t Is a queer chase, this search for
new and beautiful roses, but 1t is a
fascinating one, for many a man gives
his life to It and counts himself re-
paid and happy II he produces one
or two blooms different from those
which have delighted the eyes until
that moment.
This passion for the rose is a very
modern thing and a very ancient one
at the same time. That is, it belongs
to the nineteenth century, and then
you jump back to the days of ancient
Rome and Greece before you find any
thing like the skill that gardeners
show today. The Cloths and the van
dals, when they swept down on Rome,
did away with the cultivation of the
rose along with the rest of the CIV
ilization that Greece and Rome had
built up.
Before that time the nobility of
Athens and Italy had been just about
as busy searching rose perfection as
we have been recently. All the poets
are full of the praise Of the rose, and
all writer's mention it. Strong-minded
old Seneca sets forth as a sign of de-
generacy that in his days people want
ed roses in December, and Juvenal
complained that it was not safe to
walk on the streets of Rome lest some
ones pot Of should fall out Of
the window on your unlucky head.
When King Midas ruled in Hellas
there was the rose Of a hundred
leaves" that raj sung by Theoph-
rastus, and the same gentleman tells
US that at Philippi the inhabitants
cared greatly for their roses, which
grew double, thanks to their care and
skill. In fact. very early indeed man
must have begun to domesticate the
rose that grew wild about him when
he hunted the mastadon. Ages back
primitive woman must have begun
to plant the little flowers about the
cave doors.
When, after the fall Of Rome, the
dark ages came, only here and there
In the gardens of the m%onasteries
and palaces did the rose smile to
cheer some meditative monk or love-
sick lady. The Crusaders were the
first to bring the rose to the west,
for the home Of the rose ia probably
the orient, and it was doubtless on
the plains Of Middle Asia that the
first wild rose showed her little FIVE
petaled beauty some time during the
tertiary period-at least that is what
the fossils say. Whatever We have Of
the splendor Of roses in the west
is really only borrowed from the
orient, and to this day there r more
wild roses on the Asiatic plains than
anywhere else in the world.
But to return to the Crusaders. 1t
was the Comte de Brie, a hard fighter,
If ever there was one, who brought
the rose all the way back from Pales-
tine to Provence, a long way for so
delicate a thing to come in SO stern
a hand, but he brought 1t safely to his
lady. Later on this same rose was
introduced in England in the time Ct
Henry I'LL. and, of course, after that
there were white and red roses grow
ing quite commonly in the gardens
of royalty and nobility. If they hadn't
been, how could we have had that
picturesque war of the Roses?
When the war was over the fact
that the science of cross-breedine
was known in England was attested
by the union Of the white rose of York
with the red rose of Lancaster, a cross
fertilization that supplied the red and
white rose which adorns the garden
today. So long ago then as the four.
teenth century there were gardeners
who loved to experiment.
In the eighteenth century the rose
was not so highly regarded as II
might be because the gardens were
very formal, and you cannot plant
roses along a border to stand VI
straight like so many g%renadiers. as
you can lilies or tulips or flowers Of
that sort. There was an i%rrepressible-
ness about the rose that did not &C
with the eighteenth century, although
of course, she had her lovers then as
always. 1t was after 1900 that the
varieties began to jump up.
1t was that very intelligent lady
the Empress Josephine, VINO made
the cult of the rose really fashionable
Along with the revival Of Greek cos
tunes and the Introduction of artistic
designs from the orient and the gen.
eral breaking away from the style of
the preceding century there came the
passion for rose gardens, imported
largely from China and Japan. The
garden Of the empress was famous
do we not all remember the big
Malmaison roses Of the gardens of our
childhood. so named because they
cheered the poor lady in the loneli-
ness of her Chateau de Malmaison aft
er her downfall?
From France the fashion spread to
England, and there. as on the CONT