A NATIVE ROSE.
Inquiries continue to reach me from home and abroad about a certain rose incidentally mentioned on this page a year and more ago. It is said to be unknown and unprocur- able, and seems to have gone clean out of cultivation in England. The rose was rightly named Moschata floribunda. It is a native rose of Northern India, a true species, and appears to have been introduced into England as long ago as 1596. It is a simple briar, very sweet-scented, with a vigour of growth to which I know no parallel whatever, and it layers itself freely. It withstands without sign of penalty the worst of the winds off the sea. I saw a bush some forty feet across in the Isle of Wight on the north side ; and cuttings from it have grown hardly less profusely in the Home Counties. The Isle of Wight bush was procured in 1906 from J. Smith, Dairy Hill Nursery, Newry, Ireland. I cannot find a mention of it in any English catalogue. The rose needs space and flowers once very freely early in the year.
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