The Garden 45: 177 (March 3, 1894)
William Robinson

Rose Margaret Dickson In Pots.—I have a few plants of this in pots. These have made growths of fully 12 feet, and the wood is wonderfully ripe and sound. This variety is an enormous grower; some of the plants under notice had a hundred or more buds taken from them during the past summer, and yet they carry two and three shoots of the above length. It is very strange how totally distinct in growth from either parent hybrid seedlings sometimes are. I am not quite certain, but I believe Margaret Dickson is a cross between Lady Mary Fitzwilliam and Merveille de Lyon. Both of these, especially the former, are very dwarf growers; yet we have their progeny developing wood of extraordinary length for a Hybrid Perpetual. I suppose this is really a Hybrid Perpetual; anyhow, it would not be safe to class it elsewhere, simply because a H. Tea shares the parentage. We find a similar freak in growth with Gloire Lyonnaise. This Rose resulted from crossing Mme. Falcot and Baroness Rothschild to the third generation. These also are short growers, but Gloire Lyonnaise almost equals Margaret Dickson as regards length of wood. The only one of the four Roses named which I can trace the parentage of is Lady Mary Fitzwilliam, and this resulted from crossing Devoniensis with Victor Verdier. As both of these are also short growers, it does not seem that any remote parentage could account for the extra vigour imparted to Margaret Dickson. The results of different crossings have furnished many surprises both in size, form, and colour of the blooms as well as in the growth. Mme. Falcot and Perle des Jardins, two yellow-flowered varieties, produce a creamy white in Edith Gilford. Looking further back, we find that Perle des Jardins was a seedling from Mme. Falcot, which makes the creamy white of their progeny even more strange. But enough has been written to show the glorious uncertainty of seedling Roses.