Follies

When people ask me which roses I grow, I rattle off varieties that I'm sure will meet with their approval--Queen Elizabeth, Mister Lincoln, Pristine, Iceberg--as many of my best bets as my memory can dredge up.  I never volunteer the names of those varieties that I know would raise some eyebrows among fellow rosarians.

All serious rose aficionados I've ever met grow at least one rose variety that they know they really shouldn't.  A friend of mine pampers his Tropicana even though he knows perfectly well that more recent orange roses put it to shame.  Some people grow inferior varieties because they're loyal to the first roses they ever planted themselves.  Other gardeners stubbornly persevere with puny bushes simply because their occasional blooms are exactly what they think a rose should look like.  My pet folly is Alabama.

Here's what Modern Roses 9 has to say about Alabama:

HT.(Weeks; int.  Weeks Wholesale Rose Grower, '76.)  Mexicana X Tiffany.  Bud long pointed, globular; fl. large (3I/2-4in.) dbl. (25 petals), high centered to cupped, fragrant (tea), pink, white.  Fol. dark, leathery.  Upright; intermittent bloom.  Pl. Pat. 4008 pink blend.

Here's what I have to say about Alabama:  when it's on, which is far too seldom, it's stupendous.  It makes me take another look at Color Magic, my admitted favorite rose.  Like Color Magic, Alabama is a pink blend, only darker.  It's also the quintessential English Box rose.  Large blossoms that look as though they're made of taffeta swirl their intense rose pink petals around a bull's-eye center.

In stating that Alabama's bloom is intermittent, Modern Roses 9 is being particularly kind.  Stingy is more like it. Its bushes go into remission and act as if they don't know that they're supposed to re-bloom.  When they finally do, their blossoms usually have crooked or weak necks.  But every so often, they remember how to get everything together, and, oh my, what a bloom!

The other evening I came in from the cutting field cradling a basket of roses in my left arm and holding an Alabama queen in my right hand.  "Here," I announced, "is why we grow Alabama," as I held the stately stem for all the processors to see.  "Where's the rest?" a particularly snippy processor asked.  "Oh, they had weak necks or just weren't right," I answered.  "And that's why we shouldn't grow it," he retorted.  I knew he had me; there was no use arguing.

I know countless people who grow Cecile Brunner, some who say it's their favorite rose and that is/was their grandmother's too.  For my taste, Cecile Brunner is insipid, but I've learned not to say that to those who cultivate this son of a polyantha.

If you've fallen in love with some obscure rose for whatever reason seems okay to you, have it.  Just don't get carried away.  I'd be in sad shape if I had to depend on Alabama for a steady supply of flowers.  So I keep just a few bushes and secrete them among reliable bloomers.