RUGOSAS

RUGOSAS
(Blanc Double de Coubert shown)

Hybrids of Rosa rugosa, a wild, remontant species from Japan and Korea, have been the most successful story of the Twentieth Century. Their natural resistance to disease have endeared them to gardeners everywhere, and breeders have gone far using their fine qualities which include beautiful, dark, corrugated and textured foliage, very fragrant blooms in clusters which appear steadily from early summer until winter, and an abundant production of tasty, edible hips or fruits which are large and showy and quickly turn bright orange to crimson when ripe. Among the hybrids here described are a number which have fallen sadly short of offering all of these fine qualities, and there are some so-called Rugosas which ought never to have been so named. A note to those who spray their roses; many Rugosas actually do not tolerate the surfactants or oils that are used in sprays, so don't spray them at all if you can avoid it.

Habits
Rugosas follow a fairly tight habit of growth, and can be easily separated into those with more and less of the character of the wild forms;
1. those low, suckering shrubs whose canes are upright, somewhat branched and very close-growing, like Fru Dagmar Hastrup;
2. those taller forms of this standard type, like Rosa rugosa alba; and
3 those which exhibit more open, branching and arching growth inherited from the other species in their ancestry, like Caporosso.