RAMBLERS

RAMBLERS
(Dorothy Perkins shown)

Although many people think of "rambling roses" (very vigorous, long-caned, once-flowering climbers) as quite old-fashioned, their greatest development occurred from around 1900 to 1920, with the introduction of the Rosa wichurana hybrids developed by Walsh, Van Fleet, Barbier, Turbat, and others. The burst of production of new rambler hybrids at the time was fueled by a mania in the rose world for training these lax and flexible plants. Wichurana ramblers were wrapped on pillars and pergolas, splayed on fancy trelliage--as at the Roserie de l'Hay in France--and grafted high as weeping standards. Ripley's Believe it or Not, cites the case of a man in San Francisco who for some 20 years retrained the canes of the Dorthy Perkins plants in his front yard each New Year into a giant enumeration of that year. If only the classification of these rose varieties at the turn of the century had been given the same attention as their painstaking training into fanciful garden architecture, we would have a simple and distinct group of ramblers. For over a century rambling roses had been present on the rose scene, most notable the wiry, long-caned Ayrshires, such as Ruga, 1830, and the Sempervirens hybrids, including Adelaide d'Orleans. Rosa wichurana was the new darling of the rose breeders in 1900; its habit of growth nearly identical to the parents of these earlier groups, Rosa arvensis and Rosa sempervirens. Early authors like William Paul had considered the hybrids of these species to form their own distinct groups, recommending them for precisely the same garden uses. The new Wichurana hybrids were likewise considered a distinct class of roses, but as experimentation and cross-breeding flowered, new characteristics began to emerge, most notably very large blooms. To distinguish this new type, hybridizers like Walter Van Fleet began using a new, commercial classification, Large-Flowered Climbers. It was a catchy name, in plain English, and stuck. (We see a similar process occurring today with the 'English Roses', a mixed bag of hybrids which are becoming recognized as a class of their own, having only the tenuous commonality of 'old-fashioned' floral forms.) Van Fleet's most memorable creation came by accident, as a sport of one of his Large-Flowered Climbers; that was the repeat-blooming rambler, New Dawn. New Dawn quickly spawned dozens of offspring, many of which were classed as Large-Flowered Climbers. The newly recognized class began to serve as a category to contain any new repeat-blooming climber with large flowers, while still housing many of the Wichurana ramblers, some of which were being placed in a new classification, Ramblers! The rose gardener relies upon classifications to guide her in selecting varieties for specific purposes. The chaos of classifying which reigned in the early part of this century has not been helpful to the gardener. It is our intention to sort this in a manner that makes sense to the gardener, grouping roses by habit and practical usage,as well as by parentage. Hence, we group here all once-blooming rose hybrids of rambling, scrambling, climbing and trailing habit, and remove to the class known as Large-Flowered Climbers, all those hybrids that are truly remontant, such as New Dawn. You will find here not only the hybrids of the familiar species, R. wichurana, R. sempervirens, R. arvensis, but also the many hybrids of Rosa multiflora, both 19th and 20th century, hybrids of Rosa setigera, like Baltimore Belle, the Boursault Roses, hybrids of the Cherokee Rose, R. laevegata, and the great, tree-climbing offspring of Rosa soulieana.

Habit
Rambling, scrambling, climbing and trailing habits are the sole links in this very large group of once-bloomers; nonetheless, the gardener will be looking for roses which fit this general description. We break them down into five distinct habits which roughly correspond to the salient features of their wild ancestors;
1. the Boursault group, believed to be derived from Rosa alpina, which are thornless, lax shrubs of dense growth and arching-trailing habit, like Amadis;
2. the Multiflora group, tall and arching like their ancestor, R. multiflora, but with a hybrid vigor which produces very long canes, lightly thorned, with immense flower panicles on lateral shoots, like Carnea;
3. the very lax and trailing offspring of Rosa wichurana, R. arvensis and R. sempervirens, like Dorothy Perkins;
4. a group of hybrids of all of the above species, which are stouter of cane, usually large-flowered, with a spreading habit and long canes that drape outwards, creating handsome mounds, like Climbing American Beauty; and
5. a number of massive rambler-climbers of varied parentage which will attain great size as free-standing shrubs, or lend themselves to covering very large structures and climbing very high into trees, such as Tea Rambler.

Originaire de Chine et du Japon.
L’allemand Max Ernst Wichura découvrit ce rosier en 1859. Le célèbre botaniste belge François Crépin fut le premier à le décrire en 1887 et le dénomma Rosa wichuraiana. «Les rameaux, pouvant atteindre jusqu’à 7 m dans l’année, sont flexibles, vert tendre ou bronze, armés d’aiguillons crochus. Les feuilles, composées de 5 – 7 – 9 petites folioles, sont dentées, luisantes et subpersistantes. Les fleurs sont simples, blanches ou rose carminé, de 2 à 3 cm en corymbes multiflores. Les fruits sont petits et nombreux.» Crépin rajoute dans sa Nouvelle Classification des Roses (1891) «Le R. wichuraiana, cultivé çà et là dans quelques rares collections, mérite d’être répandu. Ses tiges longuement sarmenteuses, sont tout à fait couchées et rampantes ; son feuillage, à petites folioles épaisses, est remarquable par son vernis, qui est d’autant plus brillant qu’il fait plus chaud»