So true, Jeri. It's a shame that some of the best roses out there, like Mel's Heritage and Annie Laurie McDowell will forever be "boutique" roses known only to aficionados...just because they never had a big commercial push by one of the huge rose houses. Those two roses are better than 90% of the climbers introduced "commercially" in the last 10 years.

Jeri-Thanks for the post, I actually fell through the Houzz rabbit hole and stumbled upon your original post on Mel's Heritage, it is absolutely stunning. If only scent could travel through the internet! I was actually also curious what the white climber you have combined with Mel's Heritage on the arbor? I don't think it's pictured above but I saw it on your thread.

Hey Fig, it will be hardy for you, it's made it through 2 horrible winters here for me!

FYI - Rogue Valley Roses has Mel's Heritage in stock. They sell the small bands, though. They list Annie Laurie McDowell, but say it's out of stock. I joined the waiting list...

Jeri - how big does Mel's Heritage get for you? And you say it's best deadheaded - what happens if you don't?

Birdsloveroses, I tried to message you but it appears you have that turned off. RVR will NEVER have Annie Laurie McDowell. Where in Southern California are you? I don't want you to post it here, but you may private message me here or email me at this screen name at America On Line. Annie does better budded and perhaps there are ways of making things work... Kim

Roseseek - thank you - I'm new here. Not sure about the messaging thing...will have to check

It worked, it's on! I've emailed you. Thanks! Kim

Hutchae84 Zone 8b/PNW -- FYI ... The white rose on the arbor with 'Mel's Heritage' is 'Sombreuil, Cl.'

In faith, if you want a white Climber, I don't know anything that is superior to it. This plant is about 30 years old, and it's not what it was, but the blooms still take my breath away.

So does the fragrance.

When we were exhibiting, and we all thought it was an Old Garden Roses, we won many Dowager Queen trophies with it.

Birds .... I don't really know how large it could get. Not Rambler dimensions. But it's wichurana heritage makes it want to be a ground-cover, so you do have to tie it up.

If you don't deadhead it, it takes a bit longer to re-bloom. And doesn't rebloom as evenly as if you had it start from "clean." But it will re-bloom, all the same. And the repeat becomes greater as the plant matures.

It is more apricot in cooler weather, and a paler pink (closer to the color of 'Mlle. Cecile Brunner') in hotter weather.

Thanks Jeri - Wow it's gorgeous. I'm thinking of it on a hill in a rather in-accessable spot so I don't really want to have to dead head. But I could if I had to...and if I had one of those long-handled pruner thingies...

Those pictures...make me want it even more!

Jeri, who sells a good version of the climber Sombreuil?

Another worthy consideration for a replacement is Perfumed Breeze. It has the same delicate twining manner of CB with lovely clean foliage. But it is a dependable repeat bloomer with large pyramidal pendulous clusters and heavenly fragrance.

I agree with everything said above. Just thought I would post a pic of my Cl CB from the year when it bloomed at the same time as banksia lutea. Usually they take turns, and the CB does not bloom until the banksia is finished.

Jackie

Stephanie -- ALL .... ALL of the available clones of 'Sombreuil, Cl.' are virused. So there's not a lot of difference. Since you're in California, I'd try Burlington Rose Nursery.

Though, there are others.

https://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.5858&tab=16

That's an amazing plant, Jackie. What holds it up? Do you have scaffolding to keep it off your shingles and provide support? My Cl Cecile Brunner is growing in quite a lot of shade now. It goes up really high into trees and cascades down. I think it has one of the sweetest blooms. I'd grow Mel's Heritage if I had room.

This is my son's Cecile Brunner in Thousand Oaks, CA. Blooms all season. The arbor rotted out years ago. Between the massive canes and what's left of the arbor, it manages to stay upright. He continually cuts it away to keep the opening clear.

Stephanie - I got my 'Sombreuil, Cl.' from Roses of Yesterday and Today in Watsonville. Of course that was back in 1996, but it doesn't have any virus as far as I can tell. I don't know if they are still in business nor whether they still offer it...

I don't know much about rooting cuttings, but if it can be done with mine I am willing to try...

ROYAT is in business, but it isn't exactly the same people. It's still parts of the family, but Patricia Wiley passed away several years ago and it was last owned and operated by her son, daughter and some cousins, from what I have read. http://rosesofyesterday.com/

Birds. Your ROY&T 'Sombreuil' IS virused. Trust me on this. Their clone has been tested. And tested. (pm me if you have questions on this.)

I am not too worried about the Rose Mosaic virus that some rose strains have. There are several strains of RMV, as far as I know, and often you never see it unless the plant is stressed. Many years ago as a graduate student in microbiology, I came across a description of a method used to get rid of RMV from roses like Somreuil, where no virus free clone could be found. They grew a potted rose in an incubator with lights and turned the temp up as much as the rose could stand while still being able to make active tip growth. Then they would snip off the newest growth and dip it in a sanitizer and place it in a sterile Petri dish with growth medium and hormones. This they would coax it into a new plant, hopefully free of virus. Apparently the plant tissues on the new growth can be virus-free. The heat stunts the virus’ growth enough to give the rose the ability to outrun the virus at the growing tip. Basically, they used plant tissue culture techniques on the newest growth that was, hopefully, virus free. This doesn’t always work, since some roses apparently don’t like this heat treatment.

That's what Malcolm Manners' program has done for years and how the Foundation Plant Services Rose Collection was created. https://fps.ucdavis.edu/roseselections.cfm

I used to live near Heirloom Roses and I probably investigated this topic after reading about how they will only sell roses that have been virus-indexed, ie. no RMV. I had a few potted roses purchased from them while I was a graduate student. Then life took me away from gardening until a few years ago when I got a drip system for the yard here. I couldn’t keep much going with just hand watering for the first few years in this house.

Roseseek, and I probably read it from their program!

Thanks everyone.

Maybe this isn't the proper place to ask - but...

What does RMV look like - how can you tell if you have it?

What does it mean for your other roses?

Stephanie . . . I guess you haven't heard my Heriloom/RMV story . . . FWIW, they didn't (maybe they do now?) claim that they tested everything. They claimed that Own-Root plants could not be virused. (Mind -- my philosophy is that I would prefer virus-free roses, but if the only way I can grow a rose is virused, so be it.)

So ... I bought two plants of 'The Dark Lady' from Heirloom. They only grew about 12 inches tall in a year, but oh-well . . .

Then, we had an unusually cold winter (for us) and the roses in that area all actually went dormant. So far, so good.

When everything leafed out in the spring, those two plants leafed out and looked just like a paisley scarf. You've never SEEN such virus!! We decided to remove them ... but a friend said that we REALLY should notify Heirloom that their clone of TDL was virused.

This was before the days of on-line commerce, so at my friend's insistence, I called them.

Did you ever meet John Clements? I think he has now gone to his Final Reward . . . But I still have to say ... what a Horse's Posterior that man was!

He told me very very nastily that it was impossible for those plants to be virused, because their Mother Plant came directly from Austin in England. (There IS RMV in England, btw, FWIW.) So after he yelled at me for a while, he said that he would not believe it unless it was tested.

Accordingly, I told him I would send him cuttings. Which I did. I'm not sure that was even useful, but I did.

Quite a long time later, we came home to find the phone message light blinking. When I picked it up, a LOUD YELLING VOICE said:

"HELLO! THIS IS JOHN CLEMENTS. YOU WERE RIGHT THEY'RE VIRUSED!

<PHONE SLAM>".

When we dug them up, we found that both plants were BADLY infested with root gall. (I subsequently found that every plant we'd ever gotten from them had the same problem.) The current management, of course, may have corrected that problem.

Google has quite a few good images of RMV in roses. https://www.google.com/search?q=rose+mosaic+virus&client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=ALeKk03O9CWqv5MfnInmt2ThVZyAKEId1w:1598637860013&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiryJSOvr7rAhVxKH0KHTxmDrQQ_AUoAXoECA0QAw&biw=1623&bih=842

Some roses are more susceptible to it than others. Some are more adversely affected than others. Some strains are more virulent than others. Some roses have multiple strains while others have none, one or a few. It's a group of viruses lumped together under a common name. Depending upon all of that, and what other virus like infections the plant contains, and how severe the conditions under which the plants are grown are, they may simply express symptoms sporadically (or pretty much all the time) or they may never express them, or not for decades, then something occurs which triggers them, leading you to believe infection JUST occurred. It may, or may not, weaken the plant to other infections or attacks, or damage from other causes, including extremes in heat and cold. There are many instances of plants being grown for literally decades, then expressing symptoms. I'm sure there must have been instances of a plant never expressing them but being tested and found infected, but Malcolm could better address that. Can you prevent infection? YES. If you obtained an infected plant, it's because someone propagated from an infected plant. If the mother plant is infected and it isn't heat treated and cleaned, then everything you propagate from that plant will be infected. If you bud a clean rose to an infected stock, the resulting plant will be infected. If you bud an infected plant to a clean stock, you also have an infected plant. If you propagate from either of those cases, the results are also infected. No matter what hype you read, "own root" does NOT equal "virus free", period. If the source of the cuttings was virused, SO ARE THE CUTTINGS. Can it "spread" in your garden? Very highly unlikely, though I absolutely expect a tirade of posts from a well known virus conspiracy theorist to be made to PROVE all manner of odd, weird, strange and highly improbable scenarios just MIGHT occur similarly in soybeans or wild grasses or petunias that MIGHT, SOMEDAY indicate that MAYBE something similar MAY occur in roses. But. all of the anecdotal evidence indicates, no, it doesn't spread by any other means than propagation. Ralph Moore, who operated Sequoia Nursery for seventy years and grew roses for nearly ninety, spoke many times about trying to deliberately spread RMV. He deliberately used dirty tools; grew clean and infected plants in the same pots; and did any and everything he could think of to spread it by any means other than propagation and he stated he was never successful. He created the rose Pink Clouds, which he introduced in 1956 as a shrub rose. Sequoia Nursery maintained a large block of Pink Clouds plants to provide all of the standard stocks they required for mini and traditional standards. A dozen years after they closed and Pink Clouds had been grown by others than Sequoia, Malcolm had it tested and found it to be clean from RMV. Why? No one had ever budded to the mother plant. Cuttings were taken and own root plants raised to be budded to or share, but the mother plant was maintained without ever having been budded ON, or TO.

Atmore Lamarque is documented as having been grown on the Atmore family mansion in Fillmore, CA since 1869. It was tested and found to be clean from RMV. It is possible to maintain roses without RMV infection and it doesn't require outrageous precautions.

And to expand on that, roses which we have found in old cemeteries have been tested, and found to be free of virus, and I am joyful that I have several of those roses in my own garden.

"George Washington Richardson" is a good example. Evidence at the site where it was found indicates that the rose was planted at some point after 1884 ... and it has proven to be virus-free. It's also a match for the rose found in Santa Rosa, where the Richardson family also lived, which was later identified as 'Mlle. de Sombreuil'. Thus, any plants started from this rose will be virus-free.

----

HOWEVER " . . . No matter what hype you read, "own root" does NOT equal "virus free", period. If the source of the cuttings was virused, SO ARE THE CUTTINGS. . . . "

So, any roses grown from cuttings from my 'Sombreuil, Cl.' will be as virused as the mother plant. Just as will any roses grown from cuttings from my 'Fourth of July'.

Yes everything Jerijen and Roseseek are saying makes perfect sense to me as a microbiologist. Seems like the collection of viruses know as Rose Mosaic Viruses act a bit like herpes viruses. They can hide for many years and then when the plant is stressed they make themselves known. Jerijen, I am sure the crow gall was part of the stress that manifested the hidden RMV in your The Dark Lady roses. Well at least he admitted they were virused! It’s wonderful that the biologists at Davis are attempting to remove the viruses from some of the lovely older roses. Do you know if they tried Sombreuil? I am almost certain that when people talk of a rose clone ‘declining’ it has just been acquiring multiple hidden viruses. Removing the viruses brings back their vigor. I was deciding between Microbiology and Plant Biology as a student. I am happy with my choice, but I do get a little wistful thinking that I could have done research on roses. Attempting to remove viruses from infected rose strains sounds fun. Maybe in my next life :-)

Stephanie ... Malcolm Manners at Florida Southern College has virus-indexed 'Sombreuil, Cl.' I'm sure any nursery so-inclined could obtain it there.

HOWEVER . . . Even if a nursery has access to a VI clone, any plants from it will be virused if they are grown budded onto virused 'Doctor Huey' rootstock -- as most commercially-grown roses are, in the U.S.

And, FWIW, one rosarian I know, who used to operate a small rose nursery, spent a small fortune on VI clones of some roses, from Davis. They all died. So, yeah, not all roses seem to stand up to the treatment.

Back to the original...we were in Casmalia today, the location of the Superfund Site on the Central Coast, and where The Hitchin' Post, a famous old barbecue restaurant is located. Low and behold, between the restaurant and the hovel beside it is a huge old Cl. Cecile Brunner! LOL! Googlemaps' image is 12 years old, but you can see the plant there in that image. It was flowering today. I didn't take my phone, so no photos of today. I'm actually not quite sure where in the house the phone is. I traditionally only use it for GPS while driving and I knew where I was going and didn't need it.

@Stephanie, 9b inland SoCal Angel Gardens in FL has... ahem...that rose that I will always call Colonial White. There's a possibility that they got theirs from Malcolm. I would ask if I were really wanting Somb...er...Colonial White, lol. All their roses are own-root, so if they got their mother plant from Malcolm it should STILL be virus-free.

And, I just remembered this photo, which I took and posted to HMF in 2010. These were the old greenhouses at Sequoia Nursery with their mountain of Cl Cecile Brunner eating the deteriorating frames shortly after the nursery closed. This is the caption I posted with the photo.

"Enormous, old Cl. Cecile Brunner taken at the old abandoned Sequoia Nursery site, March, 2010. Even without irrigation for the hot, dry summer, the plant responded to the winter rains and continues trying to slip cover the decaying green house for support. If you can't grow this rose, you are trying not to!"

John, I will always think of it as "Colonial White."

That was the name I strongly urged the ARS folks to accept, but I'm afraid that was a bridge to far. They were having enough trouble accepting the fact that it wasn't a Cl. Tea Rose.

Ok so my job for tomorrow is to check all my roses for RMV.

My takeaway from all this discussion is:

Even if a rose has RMV it may not affect it and it may act normal?

If a rose has RMV it will not affect any other roses unless it is used for propagation.

My plant of Sombreuil, Cl. does have RMV because it came from a virused mother plant, even if it doesn't look bad (I will check).

And...my Sombreuil, Cl. is really named 'Colonial White'...I guess that's ok...

Thanks, everyone!

Pretty much. Living where you live, any RMV is likely to not make any difference, unless you exhibit and can't get your perfect flowers without the paisley leaves. And, some people call it Colonial White, while most still call it Sombreuil. The TEA is Mlle de Sombreuil. And, the only plants that will be affected by RMV from a plant which is used for propagation are those propagated from it. If you wish to check for RMV, you need to study them all, daily, from now on. It's entirely possible to have infected plants in your collection and NEVER see symptoms. Hence, unless you're going to propagate from a plant, don't worry about it.

I have been enjoying this thread! Both for interesting virus discussion and AMAZING pictures of Cecile Brunner!!!

Jeri, I really, really love my...Colonial White, lol. Anyone with half a brain, and who has ever grown both teas and wichuriana hybrids would KNOW that CW isn't a tea, it's a wich hybrid (even if we don't know the rest of its lineage), and should never have come within a mile of the name "Sombrueil", much less "Mme de Sombrueil". So confusing to have kept part of the incorrect name, and made it official! It doesn't even look like the historical paintings of MdS! How anyone mistook it for a climbing tea boggles the mind. I'm totally with you.

Even though Mr Wyant gave the supposed parentage when he introduced it, it's as dubious as his claim to have hybridized it, lol. I for one think he pilfered it, then had to make up a lineage. But there's no doubt CW/S is a 20th century rose, no matter who bred it or who its parents are.

It's still a gorgeous rose.

We now return you to your previously scheduled broadcast...

Hey John -- Wyant is known to have taken a Hybrid Tea introduced by a neighboring hybridizer as 'Uncle Joe' and introduced it as his own creation, under the name 'Toro' (so, you see, he really WAS a scoundrel).

So . . . he had ANOTHER neighbor who did quite a bit of breeding with R. wichurana . . .

Wyant introduced "Colonial White" a few years after that guy passed away . . . Hmmmmm . . .

Birds . . . Not SEEING virus on a rose doesn't mean it's not there. It can "hide" for decades, and not appear until the plant is stressed. I know this, because I've seen it happen.

Jeri, I feel somewhat vindicated in my opinion of Mr Wyant now, lol. I've always thought that anyone who would list Mme Hardy as a parent had to be either dishonest or clueless (or both), since Madame Hardy is sterile :D

That's kind of like an "oopsie" when the wife comes up pregnant a year after hubby had a vasectomy, hehe.

IF everything went as proposed, and IF the information is ever made public, HOPEFULLY the DNA test was run with "Sombreuil", Mme Hardy, New Dawn and Dr. VanFleet. That was supposedly run when the Schmidt's Smooth Yellow test was completed. I hope we all live long enough for the results to be published.

BWAH-HAHAHA ... John, you're right on target.

When we were all having the discussions that led [eventually] to ARS's acknowledgement that "Colonial White" was not a Tea, Jolene Adams remarked that she'd learned that Wyant's daughter had spent her last years in a convalescent home in the Bay Area. Jolene said she wished she'd known, in time to talk to the lady, and learn whether or not she knew ANYTHING at all.

Kim ... You're right. It's just something I'd love to know . . .

You haven't heard anything about Schmidt's, either, I suppose. Great rose . . .

No ma'am, not a thing.

Thank you.

I found only a couple of leaves with yellow wavy lines - paisleys - all the new foliage was perfect. So I won't worry about it. I'll just keep watering and fertilizing and hopefully "Colonial White/Sombreuil, Cl." will be happy.

It's amazing that people think they can pull the wool over the eyes of the experts. What guts it must take to actually go through the process of introducing a "new" rose that you really stole from someone else.

I hope DNA testing can help with some of the mysteries of Rose Heritage...

Well, AFAIK, no one's done it for a good 65 or so years . . . So there's that..

Well, perhaps more of an accident than larceny, but there was the Whit Wells' seedling , Memphis Music, which was actually Abracadabra, along with several others associated with it, as explained by this reference from Help Me Find. "I believe this rose (Abracadabra) and Memphis Music are actually the same rose that has somehow been given two names, and which has now been claimed by two breeders. I grow them side by side and they are identical in growth habit, bloom cycle and bloom size. And they even have the same sports (Top Contender is Frisco, Memphis Magic is Black Beauty). Abracadabra should have been classed as a mini-flora to begin with . It is not big enough to be a hybrid tea, even under perfect growing conditions.

If anyone growing this plant has seen an Abracadabra bloom bigger than about 2 and a half inches across under garden (not greenhouse) conditions, let us know. Or better yet, photograph it and put it here with something that shows how big it is in the photo."

Kim, you're being your usual magnanimous self. "Accident", my foot, lol.

"I'll go with larceny, for $400, Alex".

Too funny, John! LOL! I have read people write that Mr. Wells had "issues" and could actually have possibly confused rooted plants with seedlings. Not ever having met, corresponded with nor dealt with the gentleman, I have no idea, but it certainly looks "suspicious".

I guess it happens. A friend sent me a HT he loved, and which he had rooted for me, and it turned out to be 'Belle Story.' The GOOD news is that I love the thing, and I have it to remember him by.