• VIRsprite

Bred by M.S. Viraraghavan (India, circa 2020).

Hybrid Hulthemia persica, Tea.  

Red, white center, white mottling.  Mild fragrance.  5 to 6 petals.  Average diameter 3".  Medium, single (4-8 petals), borne mostly solitary, in small clusters, expanded , open bloom form.  Blooms in flushes throughout the season.  Medium buds.  

Medium, bushy, few or no prickles/thorns.  Glossy, bronze-green foliage.  

Viru was always fascinated by Rosa persica/hulthemia , though he did not think that this rose species really fitted into his main and focussed goals of breeding roses for warm climates. Even as early as the late 1970s he wrote to and received replies from Jack Harkness about Rosa persica /hulthemia since Jack had bred ‘Tigris’ and ‘Euphrates’ from this species. He even got a plant of R.hulthemia from the Nymphenburg Botanic Garden in Munich, Germany. Unfortunately he could not keep it alive in the hot tropical climate of Nellore in Andhra Pradesh State in southern India, where he had been posted whilst working in his governmental position. Though, once his breeding interests shifted to the two Indian species R gigantea and R. clinophylla from the 1980s onwards, he concentrated on them, but working with many different rose species was always of interest. When, many decades later we got plants of the later persica hybrids, of the Ilsink bred ‘Babylon’ series, his interest in this species was rekindled. And he thought that if he crossed these with his Tea roses perhaps some warm climate persica hybrids could be raised.

He was not very successful at first, perhaps because the two lines are genetically distant, or perhaps for other reasons. Finally, about five years ago he got this seedling, which didn’t, like earlier seedlings, die on him. He carefully nurtured it and was delighted by the first flowers. Since the first flowering, this seedling had rewarded him with many flowers over the years, and so he was seriously thinking of naming and releasing it. His name ‘Silk Road Sprite’ was to honour the famed and romantic Silk Road of historical times , of Marco Polo and other travellers who traversed the difficult, long and arduous paths, over mountains and rivers, bringing exotic oriental goods, including roses, from the Far East – China and even Japan – and through the ‘Middle East’ where Rosa persica is to be found, all the way to Europe, to Greece and Italy, going by land and sea routes, some touching the Indian subcontinent, through the Himalayan mountain passes, and across the Indian Ocean, and taking many splendid things back and forth, connecting diverse peoples and cultures. And ‘sprite’ because the legendary city of Eridu, part of Babylon (during Sumerian times , in Mesopatamia), was on the banks of the River Euphrates, and one can imagine mythical fairylike beings – sprites - cavorting in the river waters.

Prickles: small size, few, triangular