Rosa 'Sir Thomas Lipton' 4 May 2026

The Rosa 'Sir Thomas Lipton' is a hybrid rugosa rose named to honour Sir Thomas Lipton (1848–1931), the famous Scottish tea merchant, philanthropist, and America's Cup yachtsman. The cultivar was introduced in 1900 by Dr. Walter Van Fleet, a prominent American breeder. It is a hybrid of Rosa rugosa alba (a white Japanese rose) and the polyantha rose 'Clotilde Soupert'.

I found these two blooms today. I overlooked them yesterday when they would have had a tidier look. This rose always brings back memories of living with Rosemary in Mexico City from 1967 to 1975 when we moved to Vancouver.

In our Mexico City, good English tea was not to be found anywhere. Whenever we had friends or relatives coming from the US and Canada we would ask them to bring us Lipton Tea. Often what we got were teabags. I must confess here that we re-used them. I swore that once in Canada we would never do that and we would have the best tea available. For years I have had at least 10 tins of the best varieties of loose tea. Now unfortunately I have been losing my sense of taste and while I have a huge tea ball I have to imagine what my tea tastes.

This blog fills one of my last holes so that is why the scan done today Monday is in the blog for May 2.