The Circleville Herald (Circleville, Ohio) p. 5 (26 Aug 1959)
Mrs. Fisher Top Rose Hybridizer

There are only two or three top flight women rose hybridizers in the whole world. Mrs. Gordon Fisher of Woburn, Mass., is one.

She developed one of the first true lavender roses, "Sterling Silver".

And because "Sterling Silver" has a bluish cast in its silver petals it is in the realm of possibility that this interesting, long-stemmed, fragrant lavender rose may be an ancestor to the first blue roses to come out of America.

Anyway Gladys Fisher is hoping for a blue rose. And each morning when she views flats of tiny seedlings she casts a quick glance over the whole lot for a blue rose.

Seedling roses bloom when only two or three inches high. And from these seedlings rosarians work to develop length of stem and texture or petals. The color of the rose seedling never changes.

MRS. FISHER is described as a vivacious, attractive little person, forever sought after as speaker at rose festivals and garden clubs. Both she and her husband, the late Gordon Fisher, were graduates of the University of New Hampshire. They were married in 1916. And for some 27 odd years Mrs. Fisher stuck to her "knitting" which happened to be the business of making a home and rearing the two Fisher children.

Just one week after her husband's death in 1943 the head rose hybridist at the Arnond-Fisher company, the wholesale florist organization which her husband had owned, left to enter the service.

And Mrs. Fisher decided to try her hand at the job. Timidly at first! During the first year she made only between 50 and 100 crosses.

She worked for five years before she developed her first patented rose, "Pandora," a creamy apricot with a heart of deeper apricot. Others are "Love Song", "Tapestry" and "Capri".

In 1946 Mrs. Fisher's first lavender, "Morning Mist" was developed. From "Morning Mist" a stronger rose, "Sterling Silver" was created.

Mrs. Fisher frankly admits that patience is one of the characteristics a rose hybridist needs. It is a tedious and exacting job. It also requires a formidable knowledge of the principles of heredity.

First Mrs. Fisher says she chooses a rose of good stock. A rose bud is selected, opened and the pollen popped into an envelope and carefully labeled.

In a few days when she is ready to make the cross she selects that parent rose, removes the petals, stamens and pollen. Then she rubs the pistil of this rose in the pollen from the envelope. When the pistil is throughly covered she ties a glassine bag over the cross to prevent further pollenization.

THE ROSE is tagged with complete information.

Later when Mrs. Fisher inspectes it, if the seed pod is green she knows the cross has taken. When the rose hip is the size of a walnut and orange in color the seeds are removed and planted in flats.

It takes some three months before the seedlings are an inch high. Even at this early date the selectivity starts.

Roses are self pollenizing so the hybridizer dares not wait for the rose to open but must make her cross while it is still in bud.

Mrs. Fisher may have started her work timidly but now her seedlings number up to 10,000 a year. So maybe she will reach her goal. Maybe she will be the one to develop the first American blue rose.

We say "American Blue Rose" because blue roses have been developed both in Japan and Germany.

It is interesting to note that Mrs. Paul Wood of Stoutsville during her stay inJapan in 1955 saw blue roses which had been grown in the Japanese Emperor's garden. And they were a true blue she says. She also saw brown and black roses in Japan.

Mrs. Fisher has another goal beside a blue rose. She's striving for a more perfect red rose. It will be a sort of memorial to her late husband whose favorite flower was the red rose.

My great grandmother originally called this rose "First Lady" in honor of Mamie Eisenhower. However, when she went to Washington, DC to present the rose to the First Lady, Mamie Eisenhower was unavailable. So, instead she named the rose "Sterling Silver" for a friend who wanted a rose for a silverware pattern.

I was first told this story by family members some 20 years ago, never quite sure about its authenticity. However, in the past year, while researching family ancestry, I have found one newspaper article referring to the lavender rose as "First Lady" and one photograph of her being presented the patent with the naming story written on the back.

(I also possess a set of family silverware from the 1960s with a rose pattern, which I now assume is patterned after the Sterling Silver.)