(1977)  Page(s) 1.  Includes photo(s).
 
....[referring to an article by Percy H. Wright in 1940]  Much was to be learned from Mr. Wright's experience. The strange name derived from the fact that many buds failed to open; this notorious fault was due to the degree of doubleness and not to unseasonal weather; the plant was capable of sporting both as to petal number and petal color, and therefore might exist in other forms (for instance, Bunyard's version must not have balled); when semidouble it was fertile with a native species having 28 chromosomes, and if this species were Virginiana (for which R. lucida is synonymous and now obsolete), then the extreme hardiness, scent, and proclivity to sucker would be explained....Mr. Wright then told how he'd tried to incorporate Banshee into his breeding program, without success, for when at all double, the offspring invariably balled. ...[From Horticulture, 1951] There has been a good deal of speculation about what the right name of the Banshee rose is, for obviously it has been renamed right in the "blizzard country" where it has proved best adapted. A letter received just today from a rose correspondent in New York . . . suggests it is none other than the famous old "Maiden's Blush" : This suggestion has been made before but Mr. Skinner [this, in 1951 ] at once denied its validity. The flower of the Maiden's Blush rose is better than the flower of Banshee, and was not troubled by balling in my climate, but the plant was so much less hardy than Banshee that they all died out within a year or two.
During the summer of 1947, Mr. Skinner took a trip to Northern Europe, visiting Sweden among other countries. While there, he noticed the Banshee rose growing in abotanical garden under the name of Rosa amoena grandiflora. "Amoena" translates to charming, while "grandiflora" means large-flowered, both but a garden name, botanically a dead-end.
Back in 1956 I initiated a correspondence with Mr. Wright with the idea of obtaining stock of his Banshee, but I need not have bothered. That spring, two sets of roots came from Crosby in the farthest northwest corner of North Dakota. The pair were labeled simply "Maiden's Blush" as they were known locally out in that most frigid part of the country. The following spring as I peered and poked at the unfolding leaf-buds, the realization struck that here were no Albas at all. Already established in the garden were Maiden's Blush, Great and Small, from Hilling's, England, and Alba Semi-plena from Bobbink & Atkins and as a collected plant. The Alba characters were fixed in my visual memory beyond any question.
That same spring, when three more arrived from the Hudson Valley, New York, each called Banshee but with extra descriptive words to indicate slight differences, their new leaves left no doubt that they and the North Dakotans were identical.
As the Crosby pair sent out first the fresh green leaves, smooth, with wedgeshaped bases, then tight clusters of buds preceded by unbelievably long sepals, I wondered why no one had written how beautiful they were. Finally, as each kind showed color, I held my breath, so to speak: they did not ball! Yes, the scent was very nice though would not be fully appreciated until a year or two later. And marvel of marvels, the less double set quite a few round dull red hips.
....In her book of 1935, Old Roses, Mrs. Keays, who must have been in close correspondence with Prof. Hamblin, expressed thanks to him for his gift of Alba Flore Pleno, "which set us right with the Alba roses from the beginning." She described her two pink "Albas", "Clustering Maiden's Blush" and "Celestial", then dropped the subject abruptly, only to resume her uneasiness about Albas in the Annuals of 1937 and 1941:
Clustering Maiden's Blush is an Alba which we have found repeatedly around old cabins and in the oldest neighboring gardens. It has the fascination of a delicate color and texture which its name expresses, Foliage is less blue than the type; the calyx is round and blunt like a thimble. The long sepals tapering to a slim point are sometimes spatulate, but not so decorative as the more fern-like sepals of the type Albas.
She also adopted Prof. Hamblin's terminology for her oddly different pink roses and called attention again to the unusual receptacle or calyx-tube:
The turbinate calyx occurs in another rose much more widely spread [than R. francofurtana] -the Alba, var. Rubicunda, where lies the ancient Maiden's Blush. In this group the blue-green of Alba gives way and the foliage is pale and not positively blue . . . The Maiden's Blush roses have a blunt calyx-tube, like a thimble . . . The pink Alba is delicately green, at this time taking on a lovely autumn salmon color. The bush is lady-like, pastellish; neat and clean . . . tough and enduring.
In some instances "thimble" well describes the shape of the green swelling below the petal mass. Her observation about the fall foliage color is accurate, too. Roses are not noted for good color then and many drop their leaves inconspicuously. A few American species develop vivid autumn color, ones like R. nitida and R. virginiana. The Banshee plants here, while not exactly flashy, are decidedly noticeable come October.
A small black and white photograph arrests our attention in that 1937 Annual: it shows Mrs. Keays' two "Albas", Clustering Maiden's Blush and Celestial. Notice that both have the Banshee foliage and, if you examine the few buds with a small lens, you will see that the calyx-tubes match two forms in the accompanying drawing. 
...Other photographs reveal their secrets under scrutiny. Roy Shepherd described two Albas in his book, The History of the Rose, 1954. One, his "Small Maiden's Blush", he presumed to be "possibly a Rosa alba x Rosa centifolia hybrid", adding, "Some writers confused it with the Banshee Rose of Canada, but there are many points of difference." There may have been floral distinctions, but the foliage had to be the same. Both were Banshees; both balled. What is strange is the large clear photo of a rose he called "Mme. Zoutman", a Damask. It is plainly another Banshee, a very fine form.
When Victoria Sackville-West wrote in the 1963 Annual about her "Roses in the Garden", I had to smile at her problem with one: And finally . . may 1 mention R. californica flore-pleno? I owe this to the kindness of Mrs. Fleischman who gave me a rooted cutting straight from California. Not knowing in the least what this was going to turn into, I stuck it into the front of the border, where within two or three years it formed a bush ten feet high and eight feet through. So, beware! It flowers madly, and is in every way a treasure, only I wish I dared move it and am wondering where it is going to stop.


 

(1977)  Page(s) 2.  
 
(contn'd)
Graham Thomas conveniently provides an excellent portrait of her rose in Shrub Roses of Today. In his case, stock came through Mrs. Fleischman, who imported it from Bobbink & Atkins. The blooms appear to be the least double of any, so they never have the bad manners to ball in English gardens. Note the long thready sepals and the wedge-based leaflets. But we cannot lay this misidentification at the door of B & A; in the lengthy list of species roses offered in 1925-26, there is no "Californica flore-pleno".
Lambertus Bobbink did distribute one Banshee, though. He called it Maiden's Blush and made much of its pronounced fragrance but was not satisfied with the name. "Maiden's Blush is probably a hybrid of Rosa alba and therefore rather difficult to classify. We are probably correct in calling it one of the old Damasks." He may have come closer, to the reality of Banshee than he realized.
Rose people are not alone in their attempts to pin a name on this rose that is many kinds yet none. A few years ago, a friend and I visited the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where the herbarium is one of the finest in the country. We hoped to fix in our minds' eyes once and for all the type characters of Rosa carolina, R. palustris, and R. virginiana, but glanced through each folder the young botanist attendant brought us. Imagine our astonishment at finding in one of them four pressed specimens with unmistakable Banshee foliage, the bud clusters almost exactly like those on plants in our gardens. The folder was marked "Unidentified".
You may have gathered by this time that Banshee is more than one rose. You are right, it is several. But they are so alike that even now, with the six growing here, when the season has advanced to May 15 they are next to impossible to tell apart. Only with plant maturity do the distinctions become clear. I regard the Banshees as a strain. That is, they are hybrids with the same parents, and might all have come from the seeds in a single hip. Within the strain these variations can occur:
WOOD. Smooth or warty, without prickles, or, when a few prickles are present, they are red and in an infrastipular pattern; one version regularly has a cross of four stout prickles below each node. Predominantly yellow-green, sometimes aging to red-brown.
LEAFLETS. Seven, with nine on basal shoots. Pea to deep green, smooth, usually glossy, sometimes humped, turning to light orange and rust tones in autumn. Broadest at the outer half (obovate) sometimes with blunt rounded tip, sometimes pointed, but always wedge-shaped (cuneate)at the base.
RECEPTACLE (calyx-tube; it seems strange to call a structure usually broader than long a tube). Can have any shape from thimble to cup to hemisphere to bowl, often with a constriction, or waist, about the middle, giving a double-decked look, the same as Bunyard's acorn-cup. This is a condition that occurs primarily to the initial bud in a cluster and is due to the developing carpels within. (See illustration.) All shapes do not occur on the same plant; each has its limited range of extremes.
BUDS. Sepals to three times the length of the petal mass when still green, with wings (pinnules) long, thready, curling. Usually in clusters of three but can be single or as many as seven, in which case the four younger buds wither and drop off.
BLOOM. Semidouble to double, two to two and a half inches. Pink, from deep bright to very pale. The more petals, the greater likelihood the flowers cannot open. In this regard our most extreme form is large, almost white; I have never seen it expand. All flowers that do, share an intense Damask perfume equal to the airborne scent of `Castilian' (R. damascene bifera) and the species Rugosas. The buds as they unfurl are often lovely, and sometimes one Banshee will regularly show good form; mostly, the bloom is muddled.
...There is nothing of Alba in these roses. Neither in their foliage, prickleage, bud construction, nor in fruit are they alike. Only flower color is shared-a splendid example of the common urge to identify roses by their color alone. If the Banshees have been given other names, until recently, most of us have been unaware of what the type old roses should look like. Banshee does not really "impersonate" other roses. It has a strong character all its own-being sui generis in this, as Bunyard would say...
...Percy Wright pointed to the likelihood that R. virginiana was elementally involved, and, observing the Banshees, this seems unarguable. Indeed, when I first saw a suckering rose in a North Carolina garden, I was certain I'd found the missing link, a five-petaled Banshee. It turned out to be a particularly fine example of Virginiana. If the strain is indeed a very old hybrid, and not some heretofore unexplored North American rose phenomenon, my candidate for the other parent is Rosa damascena. Both species have 28 chromosomes, so the cross is genetically plausible. The Damask Rose would explain the exaggerated perfume, the color, the light green foliage, and the tortured receptacle that tries to produce ovaries first on the floor of the receptacle, as proper Carolinae species do, then on the wall, where the European Gallicanae roses reproduce. No wonder the blooms ball! If some amateur hybridizer were willing to take on the experiment, the cross of Virginiana with the type Damask `Professeur Emile Perrot' might provide duplicates of Banshee.
...Whatever the Banshees were, they were too primitive, too close to wild roses to have been included in the catalogue-books of Rivers, Buist, or Prince. The only other non-picture book that includes all 19th century roses whether garden worthy or not is Mrs. Gore's Rose Fancier's Manual of 1838. She listed every species no matter how obscure, as well as its slightest variants. Turning to Rosa lucida, I see she calls it the "Radiant Rose". Is this because the leaves are glossy, or because the flowers are unusually bright? No mention is made of foliage sheen, yet some of the flower colors are called "brilliant"; there is a single sub-variety, the "New Radiant Rose (of Vibert)".
More rewarding is the species that precedes, Rosa rapa, the "Turnip Rose", which has all of eleven sub-varieties. The Turnip Roses were North American and noted for their broad shallow receptacles that were considered "turbinate", that is, shaped like a top or the lower half of a turnip. The eleven descriptions so intergrade, with a few more Radiants thrown in, that I have come to call the batch of them "Radiant Roses". They are lost to modern botany for the type is not even referred to in the latest edition of Gray, but here is proof they existed in the 1830s.
 

(1977)  Page(s) 3.  
 
(end)
..It would be cheering to report that here in Mrs. Gore [Rose Fancier's Manual, 1838] lie the answers, the names to the Banshee clan. Not so; still, one description does sound familiar. See if you agree with me:

No. 9 Baron Louis
-Shrub, very high, vigorous; branches thick but flexible; with bristles and thorns at the base, unarmed at the summit.
-Leaves, composed of seven or nine leaflets.
-Leaflets, oblong, oval, close together, smooth, pale underneath, thin, simply serrated. Flowerstalks glandulous.
-Flowers, double, middle-sized; rumpled, of a pale flesh pink or pink, seldom expanding favourably.
-Tube of calyx, smooth, top-shaped or fiddle-shaped, as if tightened in the center.

This is about as close as we shall ever come, I believe, to a contemporary word picture of the rose known as Banshee.