Rosa 'Sombreuil' 13 August 2026

The Rose Family – Robert Frost – 1928

The rose is a rose,

And was always a rose.

But the theory now goes

That the apple's a rose,

And the pear is, and so's

The plum, I suppose.

The dear only knows

What will next prove a rose.

You, of course, are a rose -

But were always a rose.

When I found this poem I immediately thought of my Rosemary since she was the one who in 1991 gently pushed me to go to a Vancouver Rose Society meeting at the Van Dusen Garden Flora Hall. I could now not live with roses in my little Kits garden. Her name, to my ears, sounds even more beautiful – Rosamaría.

The name Rosemary comes from the Latin phrase rosmarinus, meaning "dew of the sea" (ros meaning "dew" and marinus meaning "of the sea"). In English, folk etymology later reshaped the sound of the word to blend with the unrelated personal names Rose and Mary.

The white rose here is Rosa ‘Sombreuil’. It has a lovely scent, blooms for months and is a climber.

Rosa ‘Sombreuil’ -1850 by the breeder Français-André Robert. However, there is a modern controversy: the popular large-flowered climbing rose widely sold as 'Sombreuil' in the United States today is a different modern or 20th-century climber introduced around 1951 by Roses of Yesterday and Today.