[From
The Gardener's Chronicle, 1924, p.216:] Dr. Ragionieri was born at Sestofiorentino, near Florence, Italy, in 1856. He comes from a family of gardeners; his grandfather was head gardener at the Grand Duchy gardens of Petraia and Castello, from the year 1822 to 1858, and his father was Director-manager of the Marquis Corsi Salviati Gardens at Sestofiorentino ....In 1899 Dr. Ragionieri removed to Castello, near Florence, and while exercising his profession of physician he hgave increasing attention to plant-breeding; coloured Lilies of the Valley, coloured Freesias....He was probably the first in Europe to raise hybrids of Rosa Banksia.
[From
Les Amis des Roses, 2. trimester 1955, p. 25:] Ragionieri hybrida par la suite la « R. Gigantea » avec « Climbing Caroline Testout » et avec « Prince Camille de Rohan » obtenant des croisements intéressants.
[From
The Rose Annual, 1981, p. 113]: ...At the end of the first World War, the Tuscan, Attilio Ragionieri, became outstanding in floricultural experimentation. He was a physician keenly interested in genetics, and dominated by a passion for flowers, which he had inherited from his father, who was for many years head gardener at the Sesto Fiorentino villa of Marquess Corsi Salviati. Ragionieri set himself the task of improving many botanical species, and obtained excellent results in the hybridization of Ranunculus, Freesia and Lily of the Valley. Unfortunately, he dealt only briefly with roses but created a highly scented HP which he named after his grandchild 'Alma M. Lami'. Later he scored some successes from seedlings of Rosa banksiae lutea X 'Lamarque' which resulted in a noteworthy variety, 'Banksiae di Castello'.
Dr Ragionieri was born in Castello in 1856, and spent his life there, dying in 1933. It used to be a hamlet six miles out of Florence, but is now a suburb of the town. Both Ragionieri's 'Banksiae di Castello' and Baroni's Banksian seedlings were grown in the Municipal Rose Garden in Rome, and in Professor Fineschi's famous rose garden.
