Rosa sericea ssp. omeiensis f. pteracantha 7 May 2023

When I first met Rosemary in December of 1967 (we were married in February 1968) I never connected her lovely name to a rose. And this was the case, even though in Spanish her name is the pleasantly sounding Rosamaría.

It took many years later to link her name to roses when we moved to our corner garden in Kerrisdale in 1986 and, she strongly persuaded me to attend a boring meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society. She persisted and I believe that one of our first purchased roses was the English Rose R. ‘Heritage’.

To this day her name is now strongly bonded to the rose and to the roses of my garden that used to be ours.

This May 1 I was too lost in my thoughts to check on the status of my Rosa sericea ssp. omeiensis f. pteracantha. It had bloomed then.  My scan here of the first bloom of the season will have to stand at May 2.    

Rosa sericea ssp. omeiensis f. pteracantha May 2, 2023

Today Sunday, May 7 I noticed how nice the rose is blooming all over so I cut another branch and here it is.

With a world in turmoil, living with two now very hyper cats and suffering the extreme noise of the many dehumidifiers in my house which was flooded from top to bottom last Wednesday it is most pleasant to know that Rose sericea (etc) is a paragon of predictable stability like my Rosemary was.

Rosa sericea (etc) is the only species rose with  four petals as species roses have five. Curiously if  you look at the bloom on the left of today's scan you will count five!