(2019)  Page(s) 82-87.  Includes photo(s).
 
Translation:
....Tentatively I call my examined rose for NR (N as in Nordic, North European, North American). It is an old cultivated rose (or rather a cluster of many similar varieties) of unclear origin but with widespread in older gardens and parks, in cemeteries and wastelands in Northern Europe and North America. In Sweden, we have, among other things, called it Rosa suionum, 'Svearna's rose', 'Rose of the North' and 'Minette'. In other countries has it been given other names.
It is a healthy, hardy and fragrant rose type with characteristic appearance – different clones within the variety cluster are distinguished by different number of petals. At least in Sweden, Finland, parts of Norway, Canada and the northeastern United States are among the most common NRs anonymous old roses that you come across. The origin is particularly difficult to trace, as it seems to have been widely distributed outside the commercial channels through that people shared and moved root shoots. 20th century renaissance for older roses and their history as well as NR's special appearance and large spread has meant that it noticed in several places by both botanists and gardeners and also reintroduced to the market. They more detailed descriptions of NR that have been published are very congruent and seem to refer the same relatively well-filled clone, which also appears to be the most common (Hylander & Nannfeldt 1945, Bell 1977, Nissen 1984, etc.).
A common hypothesis states that NR is a hybrid between some American rose and, likely, a damascena rose – the flower of the most common clone resembles the damascena variety 'Kazanlike'. A meeting between a North American wild rose and some older Eurasian cultural rose may have taken place in North America already during the early colonization on 17th century – a similar meeting in Europe probably not until the end of the 18th century, then American roses incorporated into various collections began to be used in the breeding of new varieties. Several kinds of roses included single, double or filled flowers were brought to Europe during the second half of the 18th century. The variation of these can perhaps be seen as indications that cultivated roses took from Europe may already have been crossed before then with native North American species.
French rose breeding dominated in Europe from the late 18th century. Several breeders used the new American imports in his crossing work. Descriptions of the roses of the time (Prévost 1829, Gore 1838, Biedenfeld 1847 etc.) did not include any variety with stated American element as a whole corresponds to NR. Some are described with morphological features that we recognize as typical of our rose: The characteristic clumpy flower bases, the difficulty of the flowers to bloom in humid weather and the rounded, close-fitting, thin, grass-green leaflets, the tendency to sometimes get a couple of small extra leaves. This can be taken as support for the hypothesis about NR's lineage.
Above all the early 19th century roses 'Baron Louis' (Vibert) 'Rose Courtney' (syn. 'Rose Anglaise' [Vibert], Rosa campanulata [Desportes]) has like 'Minette' (Vibert) descriptions which in many ways can be applied to NR. But everyone is also said to have someone distinct character that separates them from ours Rose. The flower base is stated to be smooth in 'Baron' Louis', provided with bristles and glands (glandular hairs) in 'Rose Courtney'. The flower base in NR there are plenty of glands but neither single hairs or bristles. For 'Minette' is stated that the flower stem below the bracts (supporting leaves) is bald and that the flower is still small medium size. NR never has small flowers and the lower part of the flower stalk often has (but not always) small prickles.
Because many of the roses produced in France are described too summarily for any of them will surely can be linked to NR, can French origin not completely excluded. The contemporary spread of the rose however, speaks more for it to be of North American or Northern European origin. However, there is very little available documentation of early rose breeding in USA, Canada, Germany, Baltics and not to forget Russia where Descemet.....moved in end of the 1810s.
It therefore seems unlikely that we will be able to determine when, where and how NR was created. Spread through the garden trade has, at least during the last 100 or so over the years, often done by collecting propagating material in gardens or parks. For Example Alnarp's tree nurseries in the early 20th century seem to have brought in the variety from a private garden. Here it was called 'Belle Catherine', a name obtained through hearsay (Hylander & Nannfeldt 1945). In recent times the Canadian nursery Pickering Nurseries propagated the rose from material that was provided by a private individual as 'Banshee' (stefanb8 2007). In Norway it was marketed under the name 'Besto' by a nursery which is said to have received the material from one farm, whose owner had roots in and operated trade with Estonia (Salversen & Åsen 2010). In Finland, the rose was propagated commercially at the end of the 19th century from the Mustiala agricultural institute (Joy odat.). The rose can have there been spread, possibly as a survivor from a former garden, in the surrounding the park laid out in 1865 by the adventurous Swedish garden architect Knut Forsberg.....
Mustiala named NR Rosa hybrida amoena (Nummi 2001), a name that also under 20th century was used as a synonym for 'Mustialan ruusu', i.e. "The rose from Mustiala" (Joy). Amoena (delightful) or Amaena can be found in older literature such as, or in, names of several different roses but no one works to identify as NR. Above all in German rose literature from the 19th century contains numerous examples: Among others Nickels (1838), Biedenfeld (1847) and Jäger (1936) state 'Amoena' as the name of several different kinds roses. Also in Sweden between the 1860s and In the 1930s, several "amoena" (POM's rose database). And in 1947 it reported Canadian breeder F L Skinner from a tour of Sweden, that he in a botanical garden noticed by NR under the name Rosa amoena grandiflora. He knew well again the one from home - as 'Banshee'.
In the Finnish garden trade, for a time also the name 'Coronation' was used as a synonym for 'Mustialan ruusu' (Lindgren 1905). As the directory states: commonly called NR should have been known as 'Mustialan ruusu' this Finnish designation already before 1905. 'Mustialan ruusu' or 'Mustialanruusu' is still used in Finland in parallel with the Swedish-invented names Rosa suionum and 'Minette'. ('Coronation' is since 1911 the name of a red-flowering climbing rose).
The oldest evidence found for NR in Sweden is a pair of herbarium sheets from 1917 collected in Sätra brunn (originally labeled Rosa francofurtana x nummulifolia) and the Bergian garden (marked R (gallica) francofurtana Münchh. v nummulifolia). Based on one another sheet with a simple white, rather small flower, in 1919 Almquist considered himself, in national romantic zeal, to have discovered a previously unknown "indigenous, upland rose species" that he gave the name Rosa suionum. In some unclear way this name was later transferred to the pink full-flowered rose, i.e. NR, on, among other things, the sheet from 1917. When it was realized that the rose also existed in Norway, the direct translation 'Svearnas ros' was changed to 'Nordisk ros' (Hylander & Nannfeldt / Fries, Sylvén & Hylander 1945). An x was later often added in the name to mark that it is about a hybrid. Rosa x suionum has until today incorrectly used as the name of NR together with the equally incorrect 'Minette'.
The name 'Minette' came via a Danish rose nursery to Sweden from EuropaRosarium Sangerhausen in the former GDR (Merker 1985) where the rose has been cultivated since 1940 (Nissen 1984). Here the NR was stated to be an Alba rose introduced in 1819 by Vibert. That NR obviously cannot be identical to Vibert's 'Minette' has not prevented the name to spread epidemically. In Finland, Estonia and Russia, among others, 'Minette' has been adopted as a synonym for Rosa suionum and 'Mustialanruusu' (Joy, Liventhaal 2017, Russian Wikipedia 2017). It even has guested for a few years with Canadian Pickering Nurseries (stefanb8 2007). These withdrew however, the native name 'Banshee', then it has been pointed out that 'Minette' is an incorrect and invalid name for this rose.
During the 1970s, Nissen collected found roses from their homelands in northwestern Germany, among them one whom she called 'Dornenlose Kreiselrose'. In 1984 she had realized that this was the same rose that was called in Sweden Rosa suionum and at the rosary in Sangerhausen as 'Minette'. She herself identified her foubndling as a Francofurtana variety (Nissen 1984). Her collection is preserved at the Museum Albersdorf where one now on good grounds dropped the first name "Dornenlose" – this is certainly not a thornless rose (Museum für Archäologie und Ökologie Dithmarschen 2016). Nissen may have taken the name from Nickels, who stated 'Dornenlose Kreiselrose' as the German name for Rosa turbinata inermis rosea (Rosa alpina turbinata). During the group designation "turbinata", based on the peculiar shape of the flower base, describes he, among other things, varieties of and crosses with the mysterious North American Rosa rapa (Nickels 1838) which is stated to be one of the parent varieties of 'Baron Louis' and 'Rose Courtney' (Prévost 1829, Gore 1838, Biedenfeld 1847 and others).
Our rose is well known in Canada and the USA, especially in and around the New England area. Here, too, the variety seems to have often spread from person to person. It received attention in rose literature during the first half of 20th century. In 1977, Bell wrote a comprehensive article, including detailed description and detailed drawings, of her research of a rose she found abandoned and identified afterwards as 'Banshee'. This vernacular Canadian names she found first in Bunyan's Old Garden Roses from 1936. In a article in American Rose Annual 1940 found she the information that 'Banshee' was one of them most common roses in eastern Canada and that its origin was unknown.
Bunyan also described a mutation with fewer petals and less tendency of the swelling buds to.... balling, ie stick together and dry into damp weather, and Bell noted that 'Banshee' is not a variety but a collective name for a group of similar roses with different many petals. Seidel (2011) claimed have found at least nine American variants. Even during the Swedish Rose project specimens with fewer petals than the "normal type" have been found.
In the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Bell found four sheets from 1810 with unidentified roses she recognized as 'Banshee'. The archives match with 'Banshee' was confirmed later by Seidel. Currently, these are the very oldest known finds of NR. (At the evolution museum in Uppsala there is an American herbarium sheet from 1886 with what is probably also our rose.) Bell also claimed that 'Loyalist Rose' is just another name on typical 'Banshee', but according to Young & Schorr (1977) 'Loyalist Rose' is actually 'Great Maiden's Blush'. The Loyalist name was registered in the 1970s by descendants of Scottish emigrants. According to the family chronicle would the rose have been brought from Scotland to northern New York in 1773 and a few years later to Canada (Mitchell 2006). The claim that NR originated in Scotland, where it alleged to have been carried by crusaders under the name 'Maiden's Blush', is not convincing for several reasons. Among other things, because this rose given its exceptional dispersal and survivability in that case still should be well known in Scotland. It seems not to be at all.
But it is clear that NR has been cherished and loved in many families for generations on both sides of the Atlantic, often accompanied by stories of past generations that carried it with him from place to place. During the Swedish Rose Appeal inventory collected and documented stories of how the rose was sent from Sweden to relatives in the USA (Salversen & Aasen 2010) and on the contrary. During the rose inventory I met an informant who told us that in the family it is said that an aunt had the "American Rose" with her moved to Dalarna in the early 20th century. One another informant said that the father took it to Sweden in the 1960s from the childhood farm in Finland and said that "the Finnish rose was one of the best from home".
it does not seem possible to determine when, how or even on which continent this one of our most common old roses arose or originally may have been called. Many name used or used can as I here shown are dismissed as incorrect. 'Banshee', 'Mustialan ruusu' and (possibly) 'Belle Catherine' is the epithet we know for sure refers to NR and no one else. 'Mustialan ruusu' seems to have the very oldest known documentation (1905), but then as explanatory synonym of (the incorrect) 'Coronation' which is why it can only be considered one national Finnish name.
'Belle Cathérine' has the second oldest documentation. However, it has had an extreme limited use – only at Alnarps tree schools 1918 -1946 and the uniqueness of the name was even questioned by the person who introduced it the. This is how Hylander and Nannfeldt write 1945: ... Professor C. G. Dahl, under whose chief time this rose began to be distributed from Alnarp, kindly announced the following: “Regarding 'Belle Cathérine' I can mention that I know well to this one... Only once have I heard one name of it, namely 'Belle Cathérine', communicated by an old lady who knew it from her youth in Karlskrona" ... "I found a notice about 'Belle Cathérine' in a register of cultivated roses in France but this applied to one type with another flower color Now has a certain name very often used for several completely different roses, and that's good it is not excluded that this also happened with this name.” It is not clear from the French register was older or younger in 1918 and the name has could not be found in any now available French variety list.
While 'Belle Catherine' had for a time very limited use and then forgotten is 'Banshee' the established and current name for our rose in North America. In Modern Roses 12 (Young & Schorr 1977) 1928 is stated as the oldest date. With the target clearing up the name mess will therefore representative of POM (The program for cultivated diversity) and SKUD (Swedish cultural plant database) applied to the American Rose Society that the variety's internationally valid name henceforth should be 'Banshee'.