Article (newspaper)  (Mar 2009)  Page(s) 3.  Includes photo(s).
 
Patricia Routley: Back in 1897 a Quaker man came to the Western Australian goldfields to manage the Sons of Gwalia goldmine. Years later in 1928 he became the 31st President of the United States. The rose breeders of America honoured him by naming one of their most beautiful introductions after their president in 1930 with a tall, yellow and pink (basically yellow) hybrid tea named ‘President Herbert Hoover’. Five years later this rose threw a sport which was promptly introduced to help celebrate the centennial of the state of Texas in 1936 and the sport was given the name of Texas Centennial. Both of these roses are classics and two of the great roses of our time. They are just about identical, both with a spicy perfume and differing only in their colour. ‘Texas Centennial’ is a deep strawberry red with some gold shading, ageing to basically pink. They are both tall roses, probably the largest growing hybrid teas available and one toffy-nosed Canberra man in 1948 actually called them “popular, but a bit wild-west”. By 1983 Texans realised that they hadn’t seen ‘Texas Centennial’ around for many a year and a great hunt began all over America to find this famous rose. It took them three years but they managed to find it in the Huntington Arboretum in California - just in time to celebrate the Texas Sesquicentennial in 1986. They should have looked down in our part of the world. It was here, but it took me a long time to find it too. For twelve years I went to Manjimup and never saw it. I think I must have been looking down - “look down, lest you step on a daisy’s crown”, or “find a sixpence, pick it up...”. Then one day in 1999, I looked up. There it was right to the top of the Telstra building, covered with its huge strawberry coloured flowers and mingling with the smaller white flowers of a R. fortuniana rootstock that had overtaken the rose next door. It truly was a cascading sight to take your breath away. Thelma Fechner remembered these roses growing in 1961 and they may have been there for years before. Margaret Eggington felt that they were planted by Mr. Albert Eggington, Manjimup’s cleaner and gardener. Very quickly, latching on to the rose’s signature of its height, I realised that it was ‘Texas Centennial’ from 1935. I made sure the manager of the Telstra building and Manjimup Motors next door, knew what it was and how old it was and on my second attempt in June, 2000, I took 10 cuttings and got two to strike. Oh hooray! I used to love going to Manjimup then for the sight of this beautiful rose. Then in 2003 Telstra needed to repaint the rails, and build a new metal box and the neighbouring rose was taken out and ‘Texas Centennial’ was cut right down. It has never really recovered and grown back to its old glory, but it is still there.

Book  (Sep 1993)  Page(s) 395.  Includes photo(s).
 
Texas Centennial Large-flowered. A.F. Watkins 1935. ... a sport of 'President Herbert Hoover'. Description.

Book  (Apr 1993)  Page(s) 601.  
 
Texas Centennial Hybrid Tea, red blend (vermilion-red with some gold, cente rlighter), 1935, 'Pres. Herbert Hoover' sport; Watkins, A.F.

Book  (Feb 1993)  Page(s) 213.  Includes photo(s).
 
Texas Centennial Large-flowered hybrid tea. Parentage: Sport from 'President Herbert Hoover'. USA 1935. Description and cultivation... flowers: vermilion-red with a tinge of yellow... excellent as cut flowers...

Book  (1993)  Page(s) 159.  Includes photo(s).
 
A Hybrid Tea that grows well as a shrub. Watkins (USA) 1935. A sport of 'President Herbert Hoover'. Repeats. Height: 120 cm (4 ft.) Excellent scent.

Book  (1993)  Page(s) 84.  
 
Texas Centennial a sport of 'Herbert Hoover'...

Book  (May 1992)  Page(s) 408.  Includes photo(s).
 
Texas Centennial Hybrid Tea. Watkins (USA) 1935. Sport from 'President Herbert Hoover'... bright vermilion-red with a gold base [Note: the photo shows a pink rose with an orange center...]

Website/Catalog  (1986)  Page(s) 40.  
 
Texas Centennial*.....(Temporarily out of stock) 

Magazine  (Jul 1985)  Page(s) 19. Vol xxviii, No. 7.  
 
Where Are You Texas Centennial? By Barbara Walsworth, Associate Editor, American Rose Magazine It had all the makings of a Texas-sized missing person's search, but the subject wasn't a person; it was a rose. Namely, the long lost but still sought after Texas Centennial.
The search began when a listener asked gardening radio show host Neil Sperry to help locate the missing Texas Centennial. The call for help from a Mrs. Virginia Shannon, a personal friend of Dr. John Watkins, who just happened to be the grandson of the introducer of the rose; she wanted to surprise him with a planting of the rose at his new residence in Tyler, Texas.
A top-notch team of private rose investigators was called in - the Dallas Rose Society, to be exact - and the search for the missing rose became the focus of a thorough investigation headed by Dallas Area Historical Rose Group member Joe Woodard. His official report was published in the June, 1984 issue of the Yellow Rose, the group's publication, and he has given us permission to share the saga of the rose's reappearance with you.
The first investigative port-of-call was Modern Roses 8, and the rose was found to have made an appearance there as being named and introduced by A.F. Watkins, Dixie Rose Nursery, Tyler, Texas in 1935. Its parentage was listed as a sport or mutation of President Herbert Hoover. The description listed Texas Centennial as vermillion-red with some gold, center lighter, with long, strong stems. It carried plant patent number 162 (expired) and was traced as far as Portland where it won the gold medal in 1935. The dedicated rose hunting team obtained a mug shot from the 1936 American Rose Annual, and found that Texas Centennial had appeared in the most wanted Proof-of-the-Pudding listings in several issues. An examination of Bev Dobson's Combined Rose List - 1983 turned up no evidence. But investigator Woodard uncovered a real clue when he contacted Dr. Eldon Lyle, Director of the Texas Rose Research Foundation in Tyler, Texas. Dr. Lyle was familiar with Texas Centennial and suggested that a good place to look for it hiding out would be in light shade. This eyewitness had seen it growing in the commercial fields near Tyler, but alas Texas Centennial was once again long gone. Dr. Lyle had known the hybridizer and the introducer, but hybridizer had died and the nursery no longer existed. As fate would have it, evidence filtered in from an entirely unexpected source. A packet of rose garden slides that investigator Woodard had ordered from England arrived, illustrating rose gardens throughout England and Europe. A slide of Texas Centennial turned up, taken in a rose garden in Madrid. It was clear that Texas Centennial had certainly been a wanderer and had at one time drifted far afield! Meanwhile, back at headquarters, the puzzle began to fit together for Woodard and his top-notch team. A catalog arrived from a rose nursery in San Jose. California and the elusive Texas Centennial appeared in its directory. This time, investigator Woodard had caught up with the elusive rose in California and he wasted no time in putting the finger on all the plants that were available. It looked as though everything had fallen into place ... the instigator of the search would have her housewarming gift, and members of the investigating team who had become enamored of the elusive rose would have one of their own. But alas. this was not to be. Texas Centennial had once again defied all the experts and escaped capture!
The nursery in California discovered, after receiving a copy of the slide from Woodard, that the rose masquerading in their catalog as Texas Centennial was a look-alike whose real name was Autumn (an older variety that had been kicking around since since 1928.) But the erstwhile nursery owner had been caught up in the thrill of the search and managed to correctly identify one of the occupants of the rose garden at Huntington Arboretum as the missing rose. It obtained budwood from the real thing and plants are scheduled for extradition from California to Texas in 1986. Just in time to celebrate, of all things. the Texas Sesquicentennial. After all, that old drifter Texas Centennial had been named and introduced to celebrate the centennial of the state of Texas in 1936. Investigator Woodard plans to make a permanent home for the drifter in a new bed at the Samuell-Grand Municipal Rose Garden in honor of the occasion. That will be a timely and fitting home-coming for a rose that made its first appearance 50 years before. Welcome back, Texas Centennial; we hope you're home to stay!

Website/Catalog  (1985)  Page(s) 47.  
 

Texas Centennial* (Hybrid Tea) Pointed pads. Flower is vermilion-red with some gold.  Fruit fragrance. Vigorous, bushy plant. 1935. (C) 3 x 2’.