“This large family is found in all parts of the world, but especially in the northern temperate regions. It varies so much that some botanists think it should be split up into several families.
“Roses are probably the best known and best loved of all garden flowers. But, though they have given their name to the family, they form only a very small part of it. Much more important to man are the fruit-bearing trees: apple, pear, cherry, plum, peach; and the berry-covered vines: strawberry, black-berry, raspberry. Almond fruits look much like apricots, but their seed is the nut we eat. Rose fruits (hips) are edible and were used in England during World War II as a valuable source of vitamin C.
“Medicines are derived from a number of the plants in this family: almond, wild-cherry, peach, blackberry. The leaves of burnet are a delicate addition to salads. And the wood of some trees — cherry, apple — is valuable for furniture and engraving.
“Our gardens and countrysides are full of beautiful members of the family…”
Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees… this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloomers flushed with their brandy. A curious gladness shook me….
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This is the second of two posts featuring a variety of early summer roses from Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens. The first post is Some Perfect Roses (1 of 2). For the photos in this post, I zoomed in for a close look at some of the details of individual flowers, filling the frames with rose petals and buds.
I was recently amused to learn that what we call rose “thorns” are technically not thorns at all, but the botanically correct term is “prickles” — because there is a scientific difference between thorns, spines, and prickles, described in some detail in the article How Did a Rose Get Its Prickles? Well, maybe so, but rewriting the famous Poison song to Every Rose Has Its Prickles doesn’t quite work, does it?
“Roses are the favorite flower of the Christian and the Muslim worlds: varying hugely in color (but famously never blue), shape, and scent, and are loaded with cultural significance and symbolism. The ancestral rose, Rosa gallica, may have been pink, but it threw up genetic combinations for red forms early and was stable enough to be still very important in rose breeding. It dominated the gene pool of the rose until the nineteenth century….
“‘Old’ roses flower only once every year, in early summer. The Chinese R. chinensis, however, carries genes for repeat flowering, so its introduction brought about a revolution in rose breeding. However, the repeat flowering habit was recessive, which limited the breeding possibilities in the early nineteenth century, in addition to which hybrids between this species and others were usually sterile….
“[A] fertile cross was achieved in France in the 1830s and gave rise to the hybrid perpetual group. As well as flowering only once, ‘old’ roses were also only available on a spectrum from crimson to white. It was not until the 1820s that the first yellow rose species were introduced to Europe and the United States, but it took many decades before successful hybrids were created….
“The French Joseph Pernet-Ducher (1859- 1928), regarded by many as the greatest rose breeder of all time, created the first yellow roses; his hybrid tea class ‘Soleil d’Or’ of 1900 was the first ‘real’ yellow, as opposed to the wishy-washy yellows of previous attempts….
“Importations of roses from China were frequent during the nineteenth century; often they arrived on cargo ships bearing tea, which led to the roses which were bred from them to be dubbed ‘tea’ roses. Many had a touch of yellow, were well scented, and, unlike the flat blooms of traditional European roses, had a slight point in the center of the flower. This point gave each flower a very different character to what people were used to — and made the flower look particularly attractive just as it was about to burst out — a bud that spoke of promise as well as beauty. “
A single flow’r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet — One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret; ‘My fragile leaves’, it said, ‘his heart enclose.’ Love long has taken for his amulet One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get One perfect rose.
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The roses featured in this post (and the next one) played a supporting role in one of my previous posts (see Orange and White Irises — and Creamsicles!), where I got them to pose as background color for the irises. You can see one of those irises in the first three images below, and get a sense of how many many-colored roses formed a border around them.
But with their long and complex cultural history, the roses deserved some attention of their own — so after finishing up my iris photography, I took their pictures too. They all may have been new plantings in this section of Oakland Cemetery’s Gardens, or I may have just passed them by or missed their blooming season in previous years — but they were a delight to see and the combinations of yellow, red, white, and orange colors were fun to photograph. Plantnet identified the roses in these photos with several possible variant names, including Austrian Copper Rose, Wichura’s Rose, Tea Rose, and French Rose — which probably reflects the color varieties as well as the varying flower structures you can see in the photos.
The quotation from Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding at the top of this post provides a widget of early rose breeding history, including mention of an “ancestral rose” called Rosa gallica from which most of our modern roses were hybridized and developed. Rosa gallica presents a simpler form than the roses in this post — typically with a single row of flower petals similar to a dog rose or even anemone flower — but its genetic characteristics made it possible to create variants with other colors, flower forms, and blooming frequencies. In The Rose: A True History, author Jennifer Potter describes this rose as “the foundation species from which most of our garden roses have evolved.”
Now you know a little about the origin story of roses!
“The Blackberry Lily spreads wide its distinctly spotted tepals (look-alike petals and sepals) as if to draw attention to its short-lived beauty, as each blossom lasts only one day.
“A native of China, the Blackberry Lily has escaped cultivation to become widely established in North America. Showy flower sprays appear in the midst of fan-shaped clusters of long, narrow, flat, medium-green leaves. Pear-shaped seedpods form in late summer. When ripe, they split to reveal a cluster of shiny blackberry-like seeds, the source of the plant’s common name; the spots, of course, lend another name — Leopard Lily. A species of a different genus also goes by the name Leopard Lily; Lilium pardalinum, native to California, has somewhat similarly spotted tepals that curl. Its range does not overlap with that of Iris domestica.”
“This genus is native to China, Japan and northern India. The plants look like iris, with fans of quite wide leaves. Given a moist, humus-rich soil they will grow outdoors in temperate zones and should survive most winters, but they are not long-lived plants. There is just one species, B. chinensis, which usually grows to 60cm (2ft) when in flower.
“The inner and outer petals are very similar except that the inner ones are slightly smaller, and the flowers open flat, facing upwards. The petals are orange, spotted with red at the base, and are attractive but not showy. This plant is called blackberry lily because the seed pods open to reveal shiny black seeds.”
Here’s one of the images from the galleries below, where you can see some of the unique features of Iris domestica that add to its photographic charm but also serve important botanical purposes. As the flowers age, the petals fold and twist in on each other, forming a tight spiral that retains much of the color from the underside of each petal. This change may occur within a few hours of blooming, as Iris domestica flowers often open and close within a single day.
Coincidentally, they share this trait with daylilies — and their aging process is another example of flower senescence, as I described in one of my previous posts, Red and Yellow Daylilies. This is a complex chemical and biological process, one that enables the plant to conserve energy and retain water, as the spiraled flowers will consume less energy and require less water. The plant can then redirect that energy and water toward the growth of other flowers and stems.
In the classic iris book The Genus Iris by William Rickatson Dykes, the author describes the process for Iris dichotoma, a closely-related iris that exhibits the same behaviors:
“This Iris probably produces more flowers on each stem than any other Iris. The stem is much branched and even the branches often issue in pairs at the same point. Moreover from each spathe as many as five or even more flowers are produced in succession. Each flower, unfortunately, lasts only a few hours and often only opens in the afternoon… However, such is the profusion of flowers that there are usually four or six to be found open at once on each plant.
“Another peculiarity of this Iris lies in the fact that it does not begin to bloom until about the middle of August and then continues in flower for about three weeks or a month. Each flower as it dies twists up in a curious spiral and often falls off together with the ovary between which and the pedicel there is an articulation.”
Sounds complicated, of course, but here we don’t worry too much about chemical and biological mechanisms we don’t (yet!) fully understand. You can click the links above for definitions of the three key botanical terms, if you like, but the process (somewhat speculatively) amounts to this:
The aging flower twists in a spiral, possibly to help the plant conserve water and energy. The position of the twisted spiral at the top of the seedpods helps protect the pods from insect or weather damage, until the pods themselves begin to dry out and open to reveal black seeds inside (the behavior that led to the common name “Blackberry Lily”). The seeds are then distributed by any of several seed dispersal methods, including gravity, wind, rain, and creatures like birds or passerby people.
All this enables the plant to make new plants — so I can take pictures of them again next year. Plants are both smart AND photogenically cooperative!
“Blackberry lily (Belamcanda chinensis) is, despite its deceptive common name, actually a member of the iris family. Vigorous, healthy fans of leaves arise from a small rhizome that expands only slowly over time and grows to two feet tall before blooming….
“The valuable foliage is then embellished by open, branched flower stalks rising above the leaves, producing a succession of orange-and-red-spotted, six-petaled blooms. (Hybrids called candy lilies expand the color range to yellow and purples.)
“The effect is like slow-motion fireworks, but the show doesn’t stop there. Swollen seedpods develop through late summer and split open in fall to reveal berrylike clusters of shiny black seeds. These readily germinate the following spring, increasing the size of Belamcanda colonies.”
“This showy member of the iris family is very closely allied to the true irises and indeed will hybridize with Iris dichotoma to produce a remarkable range of intermediate offspring. Belamcanda chinensis is the only species in the genus. The flower, with its six equal perianth segments and three slender style branches, is in fact quite different in structure from that of an iris, in which the six perianth segment are separated into falls and standards and the style branches are flattened and petal-like. The fruits also are rather distinctive, with capsules opening to reveal large black seeds; hence the name Blackberry Lily used in some countries.
“Like Iris, Belamcanda produces a fan of flat leaves from a small rhizome and in summer sends up a branching flower stem from the centre of the leaf cluster. This stem can reach 2.5 metres in wild specimens, but it is usually much less than this in cultivation. Each flower is of rather short duration, but because there is a succession of them, quite a striking display is produced over a considerable period of time. Although individual plants are usually short-lived, seeds are freely produced and the young plants rapidly reach maturity. Belamcanda is a native of China, Japan, Taiwan and the Himalayan region….
“The root has been used to cure sore throats and fevers and is also recommended as an antidote to poisons, in particular the bite of a cobra.”
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I had never really thought of these flowers as “slow-motion fireworks” — as they’re described in the first quotation above — but, you know, the description fits. And it fairly well applies to my photos below of Iris domestica from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens, where these little delights tend to grow at the very outer edges of tree-shade, so pick up a lot of filtered sunlight or backlighting. The result is that they glow against dark backgrounds, and the camera does a nice job of capturing the flower petal highlights while keeping the colors and shapes of the stems and buds intact.
As is often the case with popular flowers, you can choose a common name for this one from a long list. Leopard Lily, Leopard Flower, or Blackberry Lily are frequently used, but you could also pick Candy Lily, Freckle Face, Butterfly Lily, or Fire Lily; or replace “lily” with “iris” and have a whole new set of names. They all reflect either the color pattern or shape of the flowers, or (for Blackberry Lily) the plant’s habit of producing fat seedpods that turn black late in the season. “Lily” has stuck as part of the plant’s moniker, though — as we all know, don’t we? — it’s actually an iris. Iris domestica is its proper current scientific name; but that’s a recent enough development in botanical history that the previous scientific name — Belamcanda chinensis — hangs around in a lot of botany or gardening books and other sources. I wrote about the name change history last year: see Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (1 of 3) if you would like to read more about it.
With that previous set of photos, I also wrote about encountering these irises shortly after a long-duration high-wind thunderstorm had passed through the neighborhood, bending many of them to the ground. Some had obviously been broken or uprooted, with the flowers still intact, stems split like cut flowers in a vase. I wondered if they’d return this year, so was glad to find them — even as a less robust crop than I had seen previously. Then again, the presence of fewer flowers gave me a chance to capture singular stems and flowers against their shaded black or dark green backgrounds, so for The Photographer, that worked out nicely.
“Ahhh, gardening. I adore digging in the dirt, especially in my North Carolina garden. I’m a good gardener, probably more from diligence and determination than a green thumb. Nature is so giving….
“With my hands in the dirt and the sun warming my back, I soak in the silence, or hum with the buzzing of a bee, and breathe the subtle scent of honeysuckle twining on the fence. Plucking, pulling, and weeding works muscles needing the activity. I make a cavity for a seed to take root while a Purple Finch lands softly five feet from me to scratch the earth, a bee sucks nectar from a red daylily, and a silky breeze kisses my cheek and stirs my hair….
“How rich I am with all this beauty. I feel at home with nature, in a peaceful small world of my own. Feeling at home and welcome.”
“In 1997, a fascinating event took place for me when I was in a greenhouse in Springfield, Delaware County in Pennsylvania. I thought that the only daylilies that existed were the wild orange ones that grew along the roadside during the summer. From my personal observation of growing certain purple and pink daylilies, they begin to start opening about 1:00 a.m. in the morning and maintain its beautiful color and texture until about 11:00 a.m. Then the flower tissue and color begins to breakdown, and by sundown, the bloom closes forever.”
“A daylily was mentioned under the name Hemerocallis thunbergii by Peter Barr in 1873, as a plant that starts to flower somewhat later then H. fulva (the Europa Daylily), has flowers a clear, beautiful, yellow color, and is 3 ft. tall. This plant was first listed for sale in the catalog of Barr and Sugden in 1873….
“Plants of Thunberg’s Daylily, of the clone widely cultivated and believed to be that named by [John Gilbert] Baker, have a robust and compact habit of growth and are strongly spreading in the crown by short, erect branches. The roots are somewhat enlarged and fleshy. The foliage is medium dark green and ascending-spreading to a general level of about 30 in., and dies in late autumn, usually not until after frost. The scapes are numerous, slender, stiffly erect to a height of about 45 in., and are well-branched above. The flowers are lemon-yellow in color with the tube and the outside of the sepals strongly tinged green…. Flowering is in midsummer; in New York it blooms in July along with the Europa Daylily and after plants of H. flava and H. minor have ceased to bloom….
“Thunberg’s Daylily has an excellent robust habit, attractive dark green foliage, and an abundance of flowers…. Thunberg’s Daylily is rather widely known in American gardens.”
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Here we wrap up daylily photography for 2024 (unless I find some late-bloomers) with three collections, of red, purple, and yellow daylilies.
I found the plants with large yellow flowers in more woodsy areas of Oakland Cemetery’s gardens — growing in the sunny outer edges of some plots of land filled with large trees or shrubs. That they bloomed so well in partly sunny areas suggested that I might be able to grow them in my own mostly-shade garden, so perhaps next spring I’ll look for some yellow companions for my Witch’s Hand Daylilies.
I came across the red and purple daylilies on my way out of the gardens one day, after having already spent a couple of hours in the hot sun on a photography excursion. Both batches were clearly in the late stages of their blooming season, but I held off my desire to get back into air-conditioning and got them to pose for photos. The purple ones probably had only a few more days of blooming left, but I thought it was interesting that — you can see this in the first three photos — the purple color fades to blue as the flower petals wither. While I might have normally skipped photographing flowers with half-dead petals, I liked the contrast between the purple and blue so kept a few of them in my collection.
