Duchesse de Brabant

3 years ago

My DdB was not looking well, and then we discovered that its water supply had been turned off inadvertantly. A good example of what a good fertilizer water is for roses - a couple of weeks after we turned the water back on, it put out 3 new shoots from very low on a large cane. Our quasi-resident doe got to one of them before I thought to spray them with Liquid Fence (rotten eggs). Pics of the other two are below. This rose is a rooted cutting of one of the ancient ones we inherited from my DH's ancestors. I will always remember when I first saw it. One bloom of DdB was sticking out from the middle of the 15 ft long Le Vesuve bush. I knew NOTHING about roses then (35 years ago), but was intrigued about why the large bush had suddenly put out a pale pink, cupped bloom. I crawled under LV, and found to my astonishment that there was another rose bush trying to survive under and behind it! It took me another 10-15 years to find out the name of both roses, and when they both eventually started to decline and die, I rooted both of them. I always like thinking that the new plants growing in my garden are most probably only one generation from the old ones which were, as near as we can tell, planted in the 1920s.

Jackie

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Comments (6)

Sheila z8a Rogue Valley OR
3 years ago
That is a lovely survival tale Jackie.
Ingrid_vc zone 9b, San Diego Co. inland
3 years ago
Those are both roses I grew and loved so your story definitely struck a chord, Jackie. The duchess must have drawn a mighty sigh of relief when it was finally extricated from the rather thuggish Le Vesuve. In the right conditions the latter can attain a magnificent (and sometimes rather scary) size, as you know.

Duchesse de Brabant is a very versatile rose. In the picture below she was grown as a lovely bush but later another version of her also became a climber against my house wall.
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jacqueline9CA
Original Author
3 years ago
Yes, Ingrid - she is very versatile, and also an Earth Kind rose which has been in commerce since 1857. The first pic below is of the top of this same bush, and the second one shows how we can also enjoy DdB blooms on a bush of Mme Joseph Schwartz, (a sport of DdB) which has sported back to DdB on part of it.

Jackie
Vaporvac Z6-OhioRiverValley
3 years ago
Loved this rose when I had it explanation point
Ingrid_vc zone 9b, San Diego Co. inland
3 years ago
Jackie, that first photo of DdB is magnificent. I loved my Mme. Joseph Schwartz too but I don't remember mine ever reverting back to the duchess.
jacqueline9CA
Original Author
3 years ago
The first time I noticed that our Mme Joseph Schwartz (which was planted in the 1970s by my FIL) had thrown out a cane of DdB, it was in the 1990s, and there was a controversy about whether MJS was a seedling, or a sport of DdB. Ha! controversy solved, as I guess lots of people had the same experience, and now it is officially a sport.

Jackie