Bought this from Palantine Roses. It is grafted. When I bought this rose, we had to move unexpectedly knowing we would move again in a few years. This rose has been in a large pot for four years and has done very well. It is always the first rose to open its flowers. The smell is divine and the color makes it standout. Very lovely. Does well in our humid climate where most other roses succumb to blackspot. I spray with neem oil only and this rose remains healthy. I also fertilize with a liquid fertilizer, Neptune's harvest.
Growning in nearly full shade , zone 5b, Syracuse NY. Flowers truly violet, suckering a ton. I uploaded growth (suckering) habit and flower closeups. Has a real button-eye. Max height about 4'. Flowers 2.5" across.
One of my favourites. Shapely rosette flowers, showing a beautiful button eye, with indefinite yet beautiful mix of lilac, pink, mauve and purple, slightly fading with age. Very charming, and... very difficult to reproduce in photos! There are very few pictures around that show B. D. C. colours with accuracy!
Fragrance is very strong and of very high quality, the purest gallica scent you can imagine. Heavenly.
The bush is low and compact, with typical healthy gallica foliage, which I like very much.
I find that "Boule de Nanteuil" os very, very similar. I suspect they could even be the same rose, or one a sport of the other.
It seems however, that this rose is not the original, but came into commerce after 1940 under this name. There are too many differences to the early descriptions of 1836-1848.
Early descriptions also refer at BdC es Hybrid China, which is very strange, being "our" BdC apparently a typical pure Gallica, with not even the snallest trace of china blood in foliage and flower appearance.
My Belle de Crecy suckers more than any other rose in my garden-she really colonises. I have to move several other roses because she has suckered in amongst them. She sets no hips.
The paper 'Characterization and Genetic Relationships of Wild Species and Old Garden Roses Based on Microsatellite Analysis' (Scariot, Akkak and Botta, Torino, J. Amer. Soc. Hort. Sci. 131(1):66-73, 2006) shows that this rose is genetically extremely close to Conditorum, and not far from the Apothecary's rose. Your perceptions of it as a Gallica have been tentatively vindicated.
