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ROSE CARE FOR NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
by Cheryl Frechette, Master Rosarian
by Cheryl Frechette, Master Rosarian
Well, November is a month where there is really not much to do with the roses except to enjoy those beautiful fall blooms and try to encourage the rose plants to go to sleep and rest up before next spring. In my yard in Healdsburg, the roses are blooming profusely, as we’ve had beautiful, sunny days lately. At this point though, we really want to discourage new growth and encourage dormancy. I will no longer deadhead and will thus encourage hips to form, which will tell the plant no more blooming! To tidy up old, unsightly blooms, I just pull the old petals off the blooms and they look better. By the end of November, I will start removing the leaves from the bushes to further encourage dormancy and avoid old, potentially diseased leaves from overwintering on the ground. However, I will still keep to a regular watering schedule until the rains start as the bushes are still active.
Having said that, I cannot help but pick a few blooms as they are so gorgeous! My Marilyn Monroe put up 3 show-level blooms just recently and I just had to pick them for the house.
So, I’m thinking what else about November….Well, the holidays are just around the corner and many of us start thinking about our families and family gatherings. So, I started thinking about the rose and her family relations. For many people, the rose brings up visions of that lovely, high centered hybrid tea, or perhaps the floribunda, or Austin shrub. But, the species roses, or the wild roses created by nature, do not look anything like these. Rather, they typically have anywhere from 4 to 12 petals and look strikingly like the flowers of the apple tree! The reason for this is that the genus Rosa is part of the family Rosaceae, which also contains, for example, the apple and the pear (subfamily Maloideae). That’s right, the family of our friend rose is really comprised of a lot of fruits and other types!
The Rosaceae are trees, shrubs, and herbs comprising about 100 genera and 3000 species. Just to get a better idea of the family of rose in more detail, here are just a few other members of rose’s family, Rosaceae.
You can compare the flower form of these above family members to those in the species rose class and see a remarkable family resemblance! Here are some species roses to check out.
Rose actually has so many family members that we really couldn’t fit them in a nice tidy article like this (or at a holiday table!). Happy holidays to rose and her family!
Photo of Marilyn Monroe is by Cheryl Frechette
A YEAR OF ROSE CARE:
January
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Last Modified: 11/22/11