Rosa

Abstract

This chapter is included to provide an instructive contrast to those dealing with, for example, Clematis, Gentiana, Primula and Rhododendron. In those cases, China has provided, for each, large numbers of species which can, in many cases, be taken into Western cultivation with little or no genetic modification at the hands of breeders. The story for Chinese roses is different. Here, relatively few species were involved but which, early on, entered the main stream of Western rose improvement. While, as will be shown, repeat flowering was a major Chinese contribution, it was not the only one. We do, however, need to recognise how, from early in the nineteenth century, it was outside of China that its roses were drawn into the sharply focussed objectives of commercial rose breeding.