From “Rosa laevigata” in History of the Rose by Roy E. Shepherd:
“R. laevigata and R. multiflora cathayensis were the first roses sent from China to Europe by the English East India Company, and the former was first mentioned botanically by [Leonard] Plukenet in 1696. How it reached America is not known, but it is difficult to believe that a species as well established as was R. laevigata in colonial times had been introduced by Europeans…. We know definitely that R. laevigata is one of the most ancient and common roses of China, and that it was found in several of our southern states by the first white men to explore those regions.
“The name R. laevigata was first applied to this species by [Andre] Michaux in 1803. He found it in many of our southern states and was firmly convinced that it was a native American species. Many names have been applied to this rose, but the most popular one is the common name Cherokee Rose….
“This very beautiful and distinct species thrives only in the far south, and although it may live farther north, it will rarely bloom…. The large, pure white, single flowers with fluffy golden yellow stamens are fragrant and about three inches in diameter. They are produced in May or June on a vigorous trailing or climbing plant, whose canes are often 15 feet or more in length. The leaflets, 3 or 5 in number, are bright green and highly ornamental. The hips are oblong to round and are densely covered with small prickles.
“Left undisturbed, R. laevigata will make a prodigious growth; a plant in Florida has attained a height of 50 feet and covers an approximate area of 10,000 square feet. In Georgia, where it is quite generally distributed, it has been named the state flower.”
From “American Beauties” in The Rose: A True History by Jennifer Potter:
“The Cherokee rose is not native to America…. It comes from China…. Leonard Plukenet, Royal Professor of Botany and gardener to Queen Mary, first introduced it into European literature under the name Rosa alba Cheusanensis in a work of 1705. How it had spread across the southern American states by the time of Michaux’s journey is a mystery….
“This Chinese native was still masquerading as an all-American champion in 1916, when the Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs persuaded the state legislature to adopt the Cherokee rose as the floral emblem for Georgia…. [The] Georgia state legislature located the original Cherokee rose firmly ‘among the aborigines of the northern portion of the State of Georgia’, claiming that it was ‘indigenous to its soil, and grows with equal luxuriance in every county of the State’.
“Mythic histories continue to stick to this very tenacious rose, linking it to the ‘Trail of Tears‘ that marked the US government’s forcible removal of more than 16,000 Cherokee Indian people from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia, sending them to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. Hundreds of Cherokee died during their trip west, and thousands more perished from the consequences of relocation….
“According to the legend of the Cherokee rose, when the Trail of Tears began in 1838, the Cherokee mothers were grieving and crying so much they were unable to help their children survive the journey. The elders prayed for a sign that would lift the mothers’ spirits to give them strength. The next day a beautiful rose began to grow where each of the mother’s tears fell — white for their tears, and gold-centred in recognition of the gold taken from Cherokee lands….”
Hello!
This is the first of two posts with photos of a Cherokee Rose that I took at Oakland Cemetery in March. The plant’s scientific identification is Rosa laevigata; and while it is sometimes known as Camellia Rose or Mardan Rose, Cherokee Rose is its most enduring and historically significant common name.
Despite having walked by it many times on my trips to Oakland, this was the first time I was able to photograph it successfully while its flowers were in bloom. Unlike many roses that will produce a succession of blooms (sometimes across seasons), the Cherokee Rose has only one short burst of flowers during the spring, most of which will last just a few days. I usually find the flower petals already spent and scattered along the sidewalks, but apparently got there just in time this year.
Here you see the widest shot of the plant I was able to get, where you can also see some of the botanical characteristics mentioned in the two excerpts I included at the top of this post. The plant emerges from the ground toward the lower right of this photograph, in an elevated section of the garden bounded by a four-foot wall, then sends its canes in arcs toward the statue at the left — which, not coincidentally, is where the most sunlight reaches the plant. I estimate that the statue is about 15 feet tall, so we can conclude that the plant has spanned 15-20 feet to get to it, supporting itself along the way with any tree branches, shrubs, or vines it contacts.
It’s a challenge to photograph, partly because it’s only approachable from one side since the space behind the plant isn’t accessible. Its presence in the shade of one of Oakland’s giant Magnolias means that while the plant may benefit from the mottled light that filters through, that same lighting overpowers a sunny-day photograph with blown-out highlights, rendering the translucent flower petals nearly invisible. I was fortunate to have this encounter on an overcast day, which made the background lighting more manageable and easy to further reduce in Lightroom, revealing the plant with sufficient detail. And this meant I was able to capture wider views of the plant — rather than just shooting closeups of the flowers — and use various magic formulas in Lightroom to visually separate the plant from its botanically complicated background.
Since I hadn’t photographed it before, I was unfamiliar with its history because I typically only research plants when I take their pictures. I’ve been quite surprised by the rich botanical and cultural history of the Cherokee Rose, and how much coverage it gets in the sources I typically use, like those from the Internet Archive I excerpted above. Its ambiguous origins in the United States — still indeterminate — are a fascinating part of the plant’s history, given that it was once considered native to the United States but subsequently identified as native only to China. Its distribution map from Plants of the World Online…
… illustrates that precisely, where (colored green) we see the boundaries of its native regions in China, and where it was introduced and propagated (colored purple) to a contiguous region of U.S. southern states and persists in only those states.
Many of these states were among those instituting the Trail of Tears displacement and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans in the nineteenth century, or were states through which those Native Americans traveled as they were forced out of the South. While the plant’s common name Cherokee Rose wasn’t derived from one of the displaced tribes — the Cherokee — it is associated with the plant’s endemic presence on the tribe’s lands. With that in mind, the Cherokee Rose’s connections to the Trail of Tears and the mythical story of how it came into existence with white flowers with gold centers (excerpted above) create an intense relationship between its history, its appearance and botanical attributes, and its presence in a historical memorial garden like Oakland.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
