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| Rosa sericea ssp. omeiensis f. pteracantha - 1 November 2026 |
"The
first shall be last and the last shall be first" is a prominent biblical
teaching spoken by Jesus Christ in the New Testament (found in Matthew 19:30,
Matthew 20:16, and Luke 13:30).
My extremely
rare Rosa sericea ssp. omeiensis f.
pteracantha is the first rose in my garden to bloom. This year it bloomed
on May 1 well ahead of the rest of my roses. Today I noticed that it had one
bloom and further down the stalk a bud. This would suggest that today’s
flower may not be the last one.
It was not until sometime in 1991 that my Rosemary
pushed me to go to a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society that I learned (it
took a while) to become a rosarian. This is not a secret sect with funny
handshakes. The term applies to a lover of roses.
Not only did Rosemary urge me (not so gently) into
gardening but she also taught me to use the proper botanical names. This rose’s
proper botanical name is a mouthful.
And now when I see any of my roses in the garden I
finally equate that my Rosemary is also my Rosamaría. How was I to know that
when I first met her on 15 December, 1967 in Mexico City that her name would
connect me with that Peruvian saint, Santa Rosa de Lima, whose feast day in
Argentina was celebrated on August 30th and traditionally it came
with a fierce storm that sometimes cancelled my garden celebration of my birthday
on August 31.
Anybody who might notice details should know that
botanical names are always italicized except when they have a hybrid name which
is contained between single quotes such as Rosa
‘Emily Carr’.