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It is also possible that one of the nowadays most common Egyptian garden roses, R. gallica v. aegyptiaca, was brought to Egypt by Greek colonists. Its native name, »ward balladi» (the native rose), indicates a culture of long duration.....
Most of these gallica-specimens are labelled with the Arabic name ward balladi, which, as mentioned above, signifies »the rose of the country». This gallica-form, therefore, seems to have been cultivated in Egypt since long ago, perhaps already during the Antiquity. According to a note on one of the labels, Crépin considers this ward balladi as a variety of R. gallica. Although the labels only indicate ward balladi we find in Schweinfurth’s Arab. Pflanzennamen etc. (1912) the same rose called R. gallica v. aegyptiaca Schwf. Any description of this variety I have not been able to find in Schweinfurth’s publications. Therefore, I will here characterize this common variety according to the specimens in the collection.
R. gallica L. v. aegyptiaca Schwf. Arabic: ward balladi. (Fig. 1.) — Stem richly branched with numerous bristles intermixed with straight, narrow prickles; leaflets 5 (in the collection there is no leaf with 7 leaflets), oval-elliptic, with cordate base and obtuse or slightly acute tip, above glabrous, beneath pale, slightly hairy, with raised veins and scattered glands on the midrib; leaves thick, apparently introrsely folded along the midrib, as many of the leaves are preserved in such a state; teeth simple, broad, rounded with a short point; rhachis with hairs and numerous glands; stipules narrow, hairy, with no or scattered glands; inflorescence a corymbe, on the specimens in question to 8-flowered; pedicels, receptaeles and sepals densely beset with bristles and glands; receptacle usually pyriform, somewhat constricted at apex, sepals usually short, little reaching above the flower-bud, only exceptionally on the largest flowers well developed with large, leaflike endlobe; inner sepals entire, outer ones usually with 1—3 pairs of narrow lobes; sepals after flowering reflexed, long persistent; corolla double, although not completely, 3—6 cm. wide, apparently deep rose; stigmas woolly, fruit (only a few seen) obovoid, 2 cm. long, 1,5 cm. broad.
According to the notes on the labels, this variety is an old Egyptian hedge-rose, which is found in most Egyptian gardens. The scent of the flowers is described in some cases as strong, in other cases as weak. It is flowering only once a year, in springtime. The flowering specimens are collected in April and in May.
The oldest specimen (1877) consists of some separated, 3 cm. wide, stalked flowers, from the monastery of S:t Antony, which is situated quite isolated on the high plateau of Galala in the middle of the Arabic Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea. A comparison shows that these flowers belong to ward balladi and not to R. Richardii, which grows at the monasteries in Abyssinia. The other specimens are from the following places: Garden at Nesle, Prov. Fayum 1884; Wakf gardens at Medinet-el-Fayum 1888; Ali Pasha-Sherifs garden at the Shubra Allée, Cairo 1888; Arabic garden at Sydney-Senab, Khalig, Cairo 1888; Fruit garden at Qubba near Cairo 1888; Arabic garden at El-Gjohassia, Tania in the Delta 1889; Cairo 1893; Palace garden of Giza as hedge 1895; Old garden of Mohammed Omar near Shubra, Cairo 1897; Cairo 1899; Garden of Ibrahim Pasha, Cairo 1899; Alexandria 1911, collected by M. F. Fish
