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| Rosa 'Leander' 25 June 2026 |
I am placing scans of my roses back to holes in my blog posts.
Leander falls in love with Hero and
swims every night across the Hellespont to spend time with her. Hero lights a
lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way. Leander's soft words and
charms—and his argument that Aphrodite, as the goddess of love and sex, would
scorn the worship of a virgin—convince Hero, and they make love. Their secret
love affair lasts through a warm summer, but when winter and its rougher
weather looms, they agree to part for the season and resume in the spring. One
stormy winter night, however, Leander sees the torch at the top of Hero's
tower. He attempts to go to her, but halfway through his swim, a strong winter
wind blows out Hero's light, and Leander loses his way and drowns. When Hero
sees his dead body, she throws herself off the tower to join him in death.
Their bodies wash up on shore together, locked in embrace, and are then
subsequently buried in a lovers’ tomb. Wikipedia
Few plants
in botany, roses might be a pleasant exception, have names associated to the
arts, Greek Myths and music like Rosa ‘Benjamin Britten’.
To be a
rosarian, a person like me, who became that, thanks to gentle pushing by my
Rosemary, by osmosis I gained a cultural background without much effort.
This pink
rose, a very favourite of Rosemary’s, had us discussing the tragic Greek myth
behind the name.
But we never
did talk about the clitoria.
The German
Botanist Johann Philipp Breyne discovered and named the plant while on
expeditions to Ternate Island in Indonesia in the 1800s. He was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and
both were working on the ideas of natural selection and evolution of the
species. The Portuguese name for the
plant is Fula Criqua meaning flower of creation. Filipino’s call it Pukingan and the small
green pods are cooked and prepared into a traditional dish. Malaysian’s call it Bunga Telang. Other names are Asian Pigeonwings, Blue bell
Vine, and Darwin Pea.