I have purchased Thor from ARE and planted it in two gardens. In the first it had not grown to climber proportions by the time I moved, but the rose certainly had a kind of vigor and disease resistance absent all my hybrid tea roses. The flowers were quite large, but there was a certain shapeliness to them as they opened that seemed qualitatively different from that of all hybrid tea roses I can think of. The color was definitely purplish crimson, nothing like the maroon color of Epoca depicted at Lens. And it was not at all variable. The canes were somewhat lax in a significant departure from a hybrid tea rose habit. When it bloomed, I was frequently prepared to pronounce it my favorite rose in the garden. In zone 6b, it definitely was not remontant.

I have planted it here in Arizona zone 7b, too. It grows just north of a dense cedar where it gets zero hours of direct sunlight per day; but if it were to grow maybe three feet taller it will have eight or ten hours of light. It has not, therefore bloomed. It has made a few ten or twelve ft long canes well provisioned with large, dark green foliage. This is its third location here in two years. So it is a rose that has endured a great deal of adversity, growing better than most roses with full sunlight and a fixed location. It takes a rose with a peculiar kind of vigor of root and branch - a vigor rarely found in modern roses - to tolerate the rather extreme insults I have piled on this rose. I have heard mixed accounts of the effects of R. setigera on the metabolism of a rose bred from it. The one that I have been acting on- heavily influenced by the heritage of Baltimore Belle I believe - is that R. setigera imparts vigor, cold hardiness, shade tolerance, good branching, and large flowers. And so far I'd have to say that guidance seems consistent with my own experience with Thor.

Of course I cannot be certain this is the rose bred by Horvath. Should some kind of genetic testing rule out the possibility that this is the real Thor, my experience suggests that those who grow the rose named Thor from ARE would be likely to continue thinking of it in greater-than-life terms, imbuing it with god-like qualities, planting more where there is room in their gardens, and calling it Thor.

BTW: Cass I think you did a great job of capturing some of those god-like qualities in your photo of Thor. .