Rose War

Last month, I was reading the autobiography of the dadaist, George Grosz, and I was intrigued by the following passage about the type of work he took on to establish himself in New York:

My best commission--from George Macy, the publisher of Limited Editions--was illustrations for O. Henry's selected short stories. I did many full-page watercolors. I still look at those pictures and that whole beautifully made book with pleasure. I drew Interregnum for Carresse Crosby and her famous Black Sun Press, a sixty-page album of political and partly prophetic caricatures at a time when Hitler was still considered a fairly local, harmless, transient problem. These two assignments, though they paid well, got practically no attention; today they may be collectors items.

I wanted to see if he was correct about the O. Henry book being a collectors item, and I found that editions in good shape sell for at least $200.

But then I found a copy on Amazon for just $8. I thought that sounded too good to be true, but I decided to take the chance and order it. When I received it, my fears proved sound--it was a cheap edition of the O. Henry stories from 1917, not the Grosz illustrated version from 1935. When I emailed the sellers to complain, they said I could choose another book from their inventory for the same price to make up for the error. I picked pretty much at random a book called Growing Fragrant Plants, by Rayford Clayton Reddell and Robert Galyean. This turned out to be a book about a nursery in Petaluma, California and the commercial potpourri they produced in the 1980s. Offhandedly, they mention that the American Rose Society produces a comprehensive annual ranking of commercial rose plants and sell it for only $1. I looked online, and this pamphlet is still available, but the price has increased to $5 in the past twenty years.

I'm a sucker for ratings, and I wanted to see how the rose bushes I've planted stack up, so I ordered the handbook. So far, I've planted the following rose bushes:

First, an alba semi-plena, in the middle of my front yard.
Second, a floribunda "Sun Flare" in the back of my front yard.
Third, a rambler "Silver Moon" along my side fence.
Finally, a Rosa sericea pteracantha near the "Sun Flare."

When the handbook arrived in the mail, I quickly paged through to see how the roses I selected ranked among the rose growing cognoscenti. Each rose gets a score from 1-10, with a score above 9.3 indicating "one of the best roses ever." As far as I can tell, no roses are currently judged to belong to this category. Next is a score above 8.8, which indicates an outstanding rose, followed by 8.3, which is a very good to excellent rose, 7.8, a solid to very good rose, 7.3, a good rose, 6.8, an average rose, 6.1, a below average rose, and finally below 6.0 a rose that is not recommended.

I'm going to take pictures of each rose this weekend, but to tide you over, here is how my shrubs ranked in ascending order:

Silver Moon: 8.0 (The handbook calls this a Hybrid Wichurana, because rambler is not a category. But the Taylor's Encyclopedia of Gardening from 1936 says that Silver Moon is a hybrid of R. laevigata, not R. wichuraiana.)
Sun Flare: 8.3
R. sericea pteracantha: 8.5
Alba Semi-plena: 8.9

So, I have one solid, two very good and one outstanding bush. Not bad!