Summary. The wild form of the commonly cultivated Rosa chinensis Jacq.,



f. spontanea Rehder & Wilson, is illustrated and described. The history of its



discovery and introduction to cultivation in western gardens is given. The



typification and synonymy of R. chinensis are discussed.

Until the late 18th century, European trade with China was restricted to the caravan routes across Asia, and very few Chinese garden plants reached northern European gardens. Increasing trade with China following the setting up of the East India Company, with trading posts on the Indian coast, notably at Calcutta, enabled garden plants be introduced, kept alive with some difficulty because of two crossings of the tropics and the long voyage round the Cape.

The Chinese had cultivated roses both for ornament and medicine for over a thousand years, and had developed double-flowered forms of many species, as well as repeat-flowering dwarf forms of wild climbers (Needham, 1986, Bunyard, 1936). Chinese repeatflowering roses were one important group of cultivated plants which was introduced to Europe in the late 18th century; they appear to have been based mainly on two species, now called R. chinensis Jacq. and R. gigantea Collett. These two are the only species in sect. Indicae Thory, now commonly know as the Chinensis
group, or sect. Chinenses DC.

In Species Plantarum (1753) Linnaeus described one rose from Eastern Asia, Rosa indica L. This name has also been attached to cultivated roses of the Chinensis group, but Linnaeus’s description of Sorbus-like fruit and the illustration to which he refers in Petiver’s Gazophylacium (1702), show that he was describing, at least in part, the rose now commonly called R. cymosa Tratt., so Jacquin’s Rosa chinensis is generally considered the oldest name in the Chinensis group.

N. J. Jacquin (1727–1817) described and illustrated Rosa chinensis
in 1768. It is not clear from Jacquin’s drawing, which shows a single
shoot with a bud, nor from his description, whether the flower of his plant was double or single. The nearest to it which remains in cultivation is probably that now called ‘Slater’s Crimson China’ or R. semperflorens Curtis, a double deep red repeat-flowering rose, plants of which were brought from China in 1790 and described and illustrated in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine in 1794 (t. 284). It was imported and grown by Gilbert Slater, of Knots-Green, near Laytonstone. In many parts of China and Japan, this is still a commonly-cultivated variety, where it is known as ZI UE JI, ‘monthly’, alluding to its repeat-flowering. In 2004 we saw a single-flowered but otherwise similar variety growing in village gardens near Baoxing in Sichuan. Single-flowered cultivars long grown in Europe include ‘Sanguinea’ also called ‘Bengal Crimson’ and ‘Miss Lowe’. These are the closest cultivated roses to the subject of
this plate, the wild Rosa chinensis f. spontanea, of which they appear to be repeat-flowering mutants. Whether any other rose species are involved in their ancestry has yet to be determined.

Rosa chinensis f. spontanea was described by Rehder & Wilson