• Rose of Yesterday™
• VIRroxburgh

Bred by M.S. Viraraghavan (India).

Hybrid Roxburghii.  

Light pink, deep pink shading, white reverse, light green shading.  None to mild fragrance.  45 petals.  Average diameter 3.5".  Medium to large, very full (41+ petals), borne mostly solitary bloom form.  

Tall, armed with thorns / prickles, spreading.  Medium, glossy, light green foliage.  

Height: up to 5' (up to 150cm).  

Viru was fascinated by the poetic beauty, the language and the philosophy of the Rubaiyat, written by Omar Khayyam, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia in the early 12th century and translated from the Persian to English by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859. Our book titled Roses in the Fire of Spring is from a line in the Rubaiyat, and Viru quotes verses on roses from this poem in many places, like the one below:

Omar Khayyam

Quatrain 9
“You say, each day a thousand roses brings
Yes, but where is the Rose of Yesterday?
And the Summer month that first brings forth the Rose
Shall also take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.”

One of Viru’s chief goals in his hybridising programme was to try and breed new roses which looked like the old fashioned heritage roses of the 19th and 20th centuries, which, in the 21st century were supplanted by the modern Hybrid Teas and others, though many rose connoisseurs fortunately still love these old garden roses (OGRS) and are trying valiantly to conserve and preserve them.

“Creating Tomorrow’s Heritage Roses” was the theme of one of Viru’s power point presentations /lectures at various world and other rose conferences, where he showed his work with the Indian rose species R. gigantea and R. clinophylla, and the new hybrids he had made which looked like the old fashioned roses. His contention was that the rose should be allowed full rein, and be loved in all its forms and shapes.

He worked with other rose species too- roxburghii, hirtula, rugosa, persica etc. This rose, codenamed VIRROXBURGH, a cross between Rosa roxburghii plena, R.gigantea and an old rose named Echo ( Louis Lens) is a modern hybrid no doubt, but looks very much like the roses of yore. And Viru was happy that he was breeding with this species which honours William Roxburgh ( 1751-1815) who is considered as the ‘Father of Indian Botany’ and whose Flora Indica compiled the ‘the first credible account of Indian plants in English’. He was the first Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden at Shibpur, near Howrah (now renamed as the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanical Garden, Howrah, near Kolkata) making it a renowned centre of botanical research during colonial times. It was the intermediate repository and temporary recuperation place of plants, including many roses, which travelled from China to England via the Cape of Good hope) in the early 19th century – all our early Tea and China roses which reached the West recuperated first in this garden before being transported on their long journey in sailing ships, in specially made Wardian cases to keep them alive. An aside: The house Roxburgh lived in, within the botanic garden campus, is in a sadly dilapidated and decrepit state, and could well do with sensitive restoration.

I feel Viru would have liked the name now being given to this seedling of his.

Prickles: Many, Large, pointing downwards, light grey in color.