(16 Jan 2019)  
 
The name ‘Mary Queen of Scots’ is applied, in commerce, to at least two very different cultivars of Rosa pimpinellifolia. One of these is a plant with very distinct double purple flowers with pale backs to the petals (‘Bicolor’ in the 1820s sense) and rounded black heps; another as a plant with single pale pink flowers irregularly marked with darker pink which develop into elongated dark red pendulous heps (possibly one of a number of hybrids between R. pimpinellifolia and R. pendulina). It is very unlikely that either rose has any association whatsoever with the 16th century woman of that name. There is no evidence that any coloured double forms of Rosa pimpinellifolia were known in cultivation until about 1800 and the name does not occur until the 20th century.

(16 Jan 2019)  
 
The name ‘Mary Queen of Scots’ is applied, in commerce, to at least two very different cultivars of Rosa pimpinellifolia. One of these is a plant with very distinct double purple flowers with pale backs to the petals (‘Bicolor’ in the 1820s sense) and rounded black heps; another as a plant with single pale pink flowers irregularly marked with darker pink which develop into elongated dark red pendulous heps (possibly one of a number of hybrids between R. pimpinellifolia and R. pendulina). It is very unlikely that either rose has any association whatsoever with the 16th century woman of that name.