Regardless its obscure provenience (some private garden in Germany?), this old rose is clearly interesting and should be available in some nursery to help its conservation and share amongst rose enthousiasts, as we know this heritage is very fragile.
Information on provenance was given by Marita Protte under "Website Guest Insights". We will try to move the thread to this rose and will add the corresponding note. It is clearly not Dupont's Louise, which was probably extinct after some years, but a similar reversion/sport/seedling. We will not have certainty without DNA analysis.
Thank you for your kind reply. So it may be a reversion similar to the moss 'Andrewsii' in a way? I see that this lovely rose deserves to be in cultivation. I'll be glad to add a sample of this in my garden.
If 'Louise' I would question how a rose which has been extinct for a century would appear now in Sangerhausen. Marita's photos from Sangerhausen show a single centifolia as a "found" rose. I am asking myself whether this is a sport/reversion which appears from time to time.
I have been looking for an answer to this question for a long time. There is actually a connection between Josephine de Beauharnaise and the Seeon Abbey / Upper Bavaria, where I found this rose More precisely, this rose was brought to me in 2014 by a farmer who lives in Guggenbichl, less than 2 km from Seeon / Upper Bavaria. This monastery was bought in 1852 by Amelie, a daughter of Prince Eugene de Beauharnaise / 1st Duke of Leuchtenberg and son Josephine de Beauharnais ‘. Since Amelie's only daughter dies early, the monastery falls to Amelie's nephew Nicholas. I was able to trace the origin of the simple centifoil back to around 1927. At that time the rose was in the garden of Bibiane Oberhofer, who had worked as a young girl for the Leuchtenbergs in the Seeon monastery. According to reports from her family, she had received the rose from the Leuchtenbergs and planted it in her own garden. From there this rose wandered through different hands to Guggenbichl. It will probably not be possible to finally clarify whether this rose comes from Josephine's collection or is a chance seedling. Whether an old garden directory from Seeon can still be found in the Leuchtenbergs archive would be worth a visit. There are no more old roses on the monastery grounds today. However, there are still numerous R. X damascena Celsiana in many gardens around Seeon. This could indicate that other roses have also found their way into the neighborhood from the monastery.
Thank you for this interesting history of provenance. As Dupont's 'La Louise' is not mentioned by Prevost, Boitard and other authors, and Otto/Nietner declare it later to be afull rose instead of single, I believe that the existing single centifolia is a new reversion/seedling, not a clone of Dupont's original plant.
