(1967)  
 
Of the Rugosas, best are 'Belle Poitevine', 'Magnifica', and 'Hansa'. Don't underestimate loud, shapeless 'Hansa'. It is tremendously fragrant, and if you cannot abide its harsh cerise, plop every one into the 'rotting pot'. Other Rugosas smell as good, but these three have the most petals and make dense plants that never stop blooming.

(1967)  
 
Of the Rugosas, best are 'Belle Poitevine', 'Magnifica', and 'Hansa'. Don't underestimate loud, shapeless 'Hansa'. It is tremendously fragrant, and if you cannot abide its harsh cerise, plop every one into the 'rotting pot'. Other Rugosas smell as good, but these three have the most petals and make dense plants that never stop blooming.

(1967)  
 
Of the Rugosas, best are 'Belle Poitevine', 'Magnifica', and 'Hansa'. Don't underestimate loud, shapeless 'Hansa'. It is tremendously fragrant, and if you cannot abide its harsh cerise, plop every one into the 'rotting pot'. Other Rugosas smell as good, but these three have the most petals and make dense plants that never stop blooming.

(1967)  Page(s) 131.  
 
'Rose de Resht' has the crowded clusters, everblooming habit, and fragrance of 'Quatre Saisons', but not the leaves, which are mid-green with pointed leaflets. Bushing out to 2 feet or more, it fits easily into a border of herbs where its miniature cerise rosettes look lovely behind tumbling lavenders. Fragrance is fine and buds never stop forming.

(1967)  Page(s) 129-30.  
 
Autumn Damask or Quatre Saisons Rose
Supreme among all fragrant roses is the patriarchal Autumn Damask, Rosa damascena bifera. Virgil wrote of the Roses of Paestum, that "bear twice in the year" and Pliny of "the most esteemed" Rose of Praeneste, "that goes off the very latest of all". In the twelfth century, the Arabs brought it to Spain from the Middle East, and Spaniards carried it to the western hemisphere. Every land they settled- South America, the West Indies, Mexico, our own West Coast- came to know this old beauty by new names: the Alexandrian Rose, Mission Rose, Rose of Castile, Castilian. Much later, the French called it Quatre Saisons and the English, Rose of Four Seasons, or Monthly.

While England had the once-blooming Damask by mid-sixteenth century, the Autumn Damask must have remained a stranger until the late 1700's, when that famous rose historian, Miss Mary Lawrance, described three Roses of Four Seasons. Neither Gerard nor Parkinson mention it, and Bacon could not very well have castigated Damasks as "fast flowers of their smells" had he known this one. The scent is supreme. Francis Lester, who loved this classic flower, described it as "divinely fragrant... the perfect example of a fragrance with the power to create visions that somehow seems to be the essence of all the romances of a thousand years".

To the modern rosarian, the flowers appear wholly "unimproved", a delicate pink semidouble with sometimes enough petals to have a button eye. The buds, three or seven, pointed and enclosed by slender winged sepals that extend far beyond, are on such short pedicels that the central flower cannot open wide. But this does not reduce the production of a perfume so amazing that it blinds us to the muddled flowers. William Paul appreciated the "old group of Autumnal Roses... which are more remarkable for the delicious fragrance of their flowers, than for their size or symmetry of form. How delightful it is to wander through a plantation of Damask Perpetuals on a still moist morning in autumn, when the flowers are just expanding! It is not necessary to pluck them to inhale the perfume they inherit, for the very air is laden with their fragrance". In recent years 'Quatre Saisons' has undergone much improvement: by wise bud selection, grafted plants have been produced that bloom all summer without other care than adequate water and annual fertilizing. Some will reach 5 feet or more, but relatively new sorts seldom grow beyond 3 feet.