Magazine  (2020)  Page(s) 29. Vol 42, No. 4.  
 
Billy West.  Some Favourite Fragrant Roses. 
The scent of Sutter’s Gold (Swim, 1950) is also strong and delicious, with the superb combination of rosiness and fruitiness found in many Pernetiana roses. 

Article (newspaper)  (Apr 2015)  Page(s) 2.  
 
Patricia Routley: In 1993 I bought very cheaply, a pot-bound scrawny-looking hybrid tea rose bush from the hardware store. It looked just dreadful but it did have a label, Sutter’s Gold, and I am sure I heard its sigh of relief as I placed it on the back seat - it was at last coming home and would soon be able to live and breathe and grow. It was planted in the west arc to the north of the house and these supermarket / hardware store roses used to look very pretty for a number of years until the trees grew bigger and the thieving roots invaded the bed. ‘Sutter’s Gold’ was on the deep-rooting ‘Fortuniana’ rootstock and that once-scrawny little bush has survived to grow into a tall and scrawny rose bush. But that is its natural habit – tall, lanky, upright growth with long spindly smooth side shoots - tree roots or no. It never has much foliage. ‘Sutter’s Gold’ produces distinctive buds of yellow to light orange that are overlaid with a streak of Indian red. These open quickly and seem to last only a day, so it is best to place this bush in a prominent position where you will see that a bloom is coming. They are loose and fleeting10cm blooms with a glandular pedicel and up to 30 petals which will often roll longitudinally to look like a star-burst of golden orange with red on the outer petals. The reason why one grows this rose is that very few yellow roses are fragrant, yet this one is possibly one of the most fragrant of all roses. It has a strong fruity fragrance and I find smelling ‘Sutter’s Gold’ is like dipping my nose into a very ripe pineapple. Other people have smelt nectarines and citrus. But get in for your sniff whenever you see a bloom as there is not much repeat later in the year. This powerful fragrance comes from the pernetiana blood in its ancestry. It won gold medals in Portland, Bagatelle, Geneva and the All-America Rose Selection award. A rose can take you travelling. ‘Sutter’s Gold’ takes me to heaven when I smell it, and when I see it, it will take me straight back to the American goldfields. In 1950 Herb Swim in the U.S. had the brilliance to dab pollen from ‘Signora’ 1936 on to the famous ‘Charlotte Armstrong’ 1940. He named the resulting seedling ‘Sutter’s Gold’ to mark the centenary of the discovery of gold in the Sacramento Valley in California. John Sutter (1803-1880) was trying to develop this land into a town, but when gold was discovered there, the miners dug him out of house and home and he died a relatively poor man. I drove through this area in 2005 on a 3-lane highway and noted Black Walnut trees all through the bush. The land was similar to that of Mt. Helena, just out of Perth where I grew up. It was nothing at all like the desert-like goldfields country of Kalgoorlie that I was expecting.

Newsletter  (Feb 2010)  Page(s) 39.  
 
Major Chemical Compounds (%) responsible for fragrance in Selected Cultivars....
'Sutter's Gold'  (Z)-3-Hexenyl acetate 23.7; Hexyl acetate 28.8

Magazine  (2000)  Page(s) 31. Vol 42, No. 3.  Includes photo(s).
 
Editor.  More HTs with Pernetiana Features. 
Sutter's Gold 1950

Book  (Apr 1993)  Page(s) 588.  
 
Hybrid Tea, orange blend, 1950, 'Charlotte Armstrong' x 'Signora; Swim; Armstrong Nursery. Bud orange overlaid indian red; flowers golden orange, often with red on outer petals, double (33 petals), high-centered, large (4-5 in.); very fragrant; foliage dark, leathery; very vigorous, upright growth.

Book  (1993)  Page(s) 155.  Includes photo(s).
 
Hybrid Tea. Swim (USA) 1950. ('Charlotte Armstrong' x 'Signora')

Book  (May 1992)  Page(s) 406.  Includes photo(s).
 
Sutter's Gold Hybrid Tea. Swim (USA) 1950... deep yellow brushed and shaded with orange and pink...

Article (magazine)  (1991)  Page(s) 33.  
 
Number of petals...as average of ten blooms..'Sutter's Gold' HT (1950), 30 petals

Article (magazine)  (1988)  Page(s) 66.  
 
The picture which we have received from the analysis of the foetida-group and of 'Soleil d'Or', repeats itself in its main lines with modern yellow floribundas. None however attains the saturated yellow colour of the foetida! When anthocyanides join, the content of carotenoids is regularly reduced, so as to be seen with 'Whisky Mac' and 'Sutter's Gold'. Beside much Cyanine and some Chrysanthemine, which give the red colour, we found only 20 mg% of carotenoids (of which 57% epoxydes).

Magazine  (Sep 1987)  Page(s) 142.  
 
Christopher Scott. I read somewhere that ‘Sutter’s Gold’ was Sam McGredy’s favourite rose. I can well understand it as it has so much going for it. It is my favourite, too. Despite being considered an older rose (it was introduced in 1950), ‘Sutter’s Gold’ is still mentioned in modern rose books, so why is it not more widely grown? Dr. Hessayon in The Rose Expert says that it has a list of drawbacks and mentions lanky growth and sparse foliage. I have never found these a disadvantage. It is taller than average, but that only means placing it in the centre of a bed or the back or a border, and I find it has adequate foliage. Dr. Hessayon also says that the buds open and the petals fade quickly. Certainly this is true in hot sun, but in the house they seem to last as long as other varieties. But what the blooms lack in staying power is more than made up for by the number of blooms produced. When I grew my roses in a sheltered courtyard garden ‘Sutter’s Gold’ yielded an average of 39 blooms per bush after disbudding, being only out-bloomed by ‘Peace’, ‘Wendy Cussons’and ‘Alexander’,. This is the point about ‘Sutter’s Gold’. It can hardly ever be rated as the best rose in a category, yet it is one of the best in all categories, and so, on average, comes out very high indeed. Take the length of the flowering season. It will not always be the first bush rose in flower; in my Buckinghamshire garden it has only gained that honour nine times in the last 11 years! (One of the years was the one in which all my bushes were moved, in the other ‘Wendy Cussons’ beat it by one day.) But ‘Sutter’s Gold’ not only starts early, it continues late. In the mild autumn and early winter of 1977 I actually picked seven ‘Sutter’s Gold’ on Christmas Day for a Christmas rose arrangement! That year the first bloom had appeared on 19 May (10 days before any other variety), giving me a season of more than seven months! What variety can compare with that? Along with length of season goes continuity. Once they commence, my eight bushes of ‘Sutter’s Gold’ will produce some flowers every week, continuing to do so until November. I have found ‘Sutter’s Gold’ to be very hardy. The extremely severe winter of 1985/86 played havoc with varieties I normally consider perfectly hardy. Although I suffered no losses, most bushes had to be pruned much more severely than usual, some to ground level. Not so ‘Sutter’s Gold’! It required hardly any more pruning than usual, and started producing flowers a full week before its nearest rival. ‘Sutter’s Gold’ is very resistant to disease, even though I do not carry out preventive spraying. I would call it a trouble-free rose. The long, elegant, urn-shaped buds of ‘Sutter’s Gold’do not mark it for the exhibtion bench. Despite this I have put blooms of this variety in exhibits for Large Flowered roses at both national and local shows, and won prizes for them. Those elegant, yellow blooms with a flush of red, caught at just the right moment, give a lift to a mixed vase, making it that little bit special. Finally we come to scent. ‘Sutter’s Gold’is generally stated to be ‘the most strongly scented yellow rose’. This is undoubtedly true, and makes it worthy of a place in any garden, especially as it does not hold its scent to itself but perfumes the air around it. But this is by no means the whole story because yellow roses are not generally noted for scent. It is, in fact, one of the most strongly scented roses, full stop. This was demonstrated when I entered it in the Scented Class at ROSE ‘86 and won, which earned me a mention in The Times, if not in The Rose! To demonstrate that this was not an isolated chance, I entered a vase in the same class at the Great Autumn show 1986 and won again. The general picture of the Show on page 181 in The Rose November 1986 shows the Scented Class, and the vase of ‘Sutter’s Gold’ can easily be picked out. How any rosarian can bear to be without at least a few bushes of ‘Sutter’s Gold’ I really don’t understand.