As you know Ann, you and I live close to one another, so I know where the cities you're writing about are located. I had a similar experience this summer with the rose I found in the abandoned lot behind my house. It was about 10-15 feet off the road, and unfortunetly, there was a leaking water pipeline that ran through the same area. One day I came home from work after its spring flush, and the entire vicinity had been backhoed so that the county could get to the leaky pipe.

I had tried so many times since I moved into the house 4 years ago to get it to propigate and posted pictures to see if it could be identified, but to no avail. I was able to get one cutting I took from it to bud, but it then died shortly after.

I see what looks like the same large bloomed pink centerfolia(?) growing in areas throughout Seymour and South Knox County...so obviously others have been able to propagate it...just not me (of course!:)) It makes me wonder where the original bush is located???

I haven't noticed any red "field" roses...they all must be up in your neck of the woods! I would love to see a picture of your rose that has been lost!

~Tammy

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:273438}}

WOW. And --SOB!--

Jeri

So gorgeous, and so sad it is lost.
Diane

What are your "trash" trees in that area? Here they are the California Weed Palm, Alianthus, Trash-Ash, Eucalyptus globulous, and Nicotiana glauca.

Tammy,
Next spring we need to get together and try to find some of the others. I do have some centifolias, so I'll watch their buds and try to get together when your valley's in bloom.

hoovb,
Sadly, alanthus is one of ours as well. We also have miles and miles of hackberry (those small seeds do take all too well), and privet hedge is invasive here as are assorted honeysuckles. One honeysuckle is just beginning to be a problem and is more woody and more invasive than the much hated Japanese honeysuckle (in part because it produces hundreds of seeds per stem.) That honeysuckle is proving to be more of a pest than R. multiflora in the Appalachian Mountains.

I visit the locally planted Old Garden Rosebushes like I visit freinds, often in a circuit, to see the Perle d'Or and unknown ultra fragrant pink H.P. planted by a lawyers office, the Mutabilis on the hillside and a duchess de Brabant across the street from the local Catholic church.
Around July I went to visit that old and large (c. 6 feet in all directions) 'Duchess de Brabant'.
IT HAD VANISHED!!! Not a root left!
I was shocked clear down to my marrow.

Really... you know how shocked you feel during that moment when you've discovered that you've lost your wallet or purse?
That's how I felt.
I stood there for several moments in disbelief, despite the obvious fact.

In its' place was a planting of drought tolerant succulents. I wonder if I had told the property owner that a large plant of Duchess de Brabant' is a drought tolerant plant. I wish I could have saved it.
A few months earlier the lady who owns the property told me that the previous owners of the house had brought that rosebush all the way from their home in New Orleans, to Richmond, California.
I contemplate the long road your red rose might have traveled upon to get to where it was planted, and the Centifolia too.
Someone loved those roses, once upon a time.

Luxrosa.

Yes Ann, we should hunt down these roses and try to save them! I bet many of them have been passed down from generation to generation through cuttings!

Luxrosa, that was a beatiful story about the way the rose traveled from New Orleans to CA...I just wish it didn't have a sad ending...and it makes me think about where my centerfolia could have come from!

On a positive note, after I posted yesterday I took a quick walk out to the field where my pink centerfolia was growing, and it looks like there may be a very little bit of the rose that has remained possibly through suckering(but do centerfolias sucker?? I know gallicas do...) though not at all the 10 feet wide monster it has been...but it's a start...