Hey, it's Jason again from Fraser Valley Rose farm here to continue my series on the old garden roses moving on to the Albas now
I have to say I'm a little biased here
I love the Albas and if you wanted to choose to start with one group of the old garden roses to put in your garden
I think the Albas would not be a bad choice. They're immensely garden worthy and I'm going to start this video a little differently
I'd like to start with a slideshow of the plants
All right, I hope you enjoyed that slideshow of the Albas. I'm going to get into the descriptions here
But before I do it might be a good time to go to the bottom of the screen here and click the CC or closed
captioning symbol that way as I try to go through French or Latin
Names and I butcher the pronunciation you won't have to rely on my words
I'll go through the transcript shortly after uploading and make sure that those are spelled properly in the transcript
Okay, let's start with this
The Albas are a smaller group than the Gallicas and the Damasks and what I mean by that is there are fewer
Extant varieties ones that I can find today on the market
i'm
Not sure they were ever as many Albas as there were
Gallicas or Damasks and I'm not sure quite why that is because they're such an excellent garden rose
The only thing I can think of over my personal theory is maybe just that the color range of the Alba was a little less
Popular than the darker richer colors of the Gallicas
The Albas are pretty much limited to white and light pink
Almost by definition and so the Gallicas would have had fancy spotting, mottling,
stripes and darker pink and towards purple colors so that
May be the reason although I may be full of it as well
Okay. Now let's start with a description of how they grow. The Albas are a tall arching shrub even more so than the Damasks
Gracefully arching branches. And as I say quite tall. You have a big garden presence
there flower color is that white and pink that I mentioned
With an excellent scent on the flowers. They do bloom only in the spring
and
They bloom over a long period so it may take them from anywhere in the range of three weeks or a little bit longer
To go from the first bloom all the way to the last bloom on the shrub
So it's a long period but it's only once in the year
what else? they characteristically have a
foliage that's kind of got a grayish or bluish tinge to it and
Early on I think people made the Assumption possibly that these were related to rosa rubrifolia
genetic testings more recently has found that they are probably closer related or a hybrid between the
Gallica and the dog rose
rosa canina
One more thing I'll mention is just to do with their overall health and
I've mentioned before that
The Gallicas are a little susceptible to foliar disease. The Albas - not so much
I've had good luck with them in my garden and they have a good reputation good solid reputation for being very disease resistant and also
Exceptionally cold hardy. So if you're in those American prairies where you can't grow all of the tender hybrid roses
The Alba's might be a good choice for you
All right. I'm not gonna go too far into history or folklore of roses in this video
I did plenty of that in the Gallica video, but I do have to cover the War of the Roses
So here goes: the War of the Roses was fought in England. From
1455 for 30 years between the supporters of the House of York and the House of Lancaster
And you guessed it the House of Lancaster had a rose that bore its name and so that the House of York
The White Rose of York was reputed to be rosa alba semi-plena as shown in this video and the red rose of Lancaster
was taken to be the rose of Gallica officinalis, which I showed in my last video. As is
dramatically portrayed in this scene
that I'm putting up on the screen and it's a like the story goes that the nobles had to choose between two garden roses the
white or the red to show their support for these two houses that may have been a little bit made up after the fact but
Certainly is an interesting piece of rose
history. When the war came to an end by the way with a bit of a York victory the
The two roses were combined into one floral emblem the Tudor Rose
So that's how the War of the Roses fits into history of roses. From the front end of this video
I showed that slideshow of the different varieties. Actually that a couple of notes about those roses
So Chloris is one of my garden favorites
It's a soft pink with an excellent scent a tall graceful habit and my favorite part
Completely free of thorns. I also should note that
I have some gardening friends who have grown this way up in the interior of the country
Where it's a lot colder than it is here, and it's come through beautifully. So wonderful garden Rose their
Second what I want to talk about is Maidens Blush
Maidens Blush is not a very suggestive name the other name it has is
Cuisse de Nymphe Emue which I think
Translates to "thighs of the passionate nymph"
This was also one of Rosarian Peter Beales' favorite roses
So wonderful rose to try there and the third thing I'll mention
And I'll just put up a picture of Alba maxima here
Is that even though almost all of the rose oil in the world produced is from damask roses
they do make something called white rose oil from
Presumably rosa Alba Maxima and what they say is it has an extremely strong fragrance
But it's also very very expensive kind of a premium product there
Okay, that's everything I have on the class of Alba roses
But because I do like to say one little tidbit of information for the back end of the video
For you rose geeks who like to follow all the way through. I'm going to mention that
there's a term called "sub rosa" from Latin meaning "under the Rose" and what means is in secret or
secrecy and the
connection of roses to the idea of things being secret goes back all the way to the Egyptians and
Carry through the Romans where they said if something was said "sub vino"
Then it should be "sub rosa" meaning if it's it's talked about when you're under the influence of wine. It should stay secret
So, sort of their version of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" I suppose
It carried on into the Middle Ages and so they would paint roses or hang roses in the council rooms of royalty
when they made decisions that wanted to be kept secret who were to be silent and
So the Tudor Rose that I mentioned in this video was painted in the council chamber of King Henry the 8th on the roof
That everybody knew
Zip your lips
It's still a modern term. If you go to the Parliament in Scotland if they say a meeting went Subrosa
It means what we in North America would say in camera or off the record. All right
Thank you so much for watching. And if you have any comments on any of this, please leave those below