a rose named "café"

order: rosales
family: rosaceae
genus: rosa
species: chinensis + multiflora
cultivar: "Café"

First Story

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24 May 2016

This wonderful brownish peach/apricot-colour rose is a gift that I got to pick for myself 3 years ago. Although its scent is not as magnificent as some of my other roses, its unusual colour was reason enough for me to decide to take it. This is a remontant polyantha rose hybrid that was bred by Reimer Kordes in 1956. Its parents are R. 'Golden glow' x R. kordesii and R. 'Lavender Pinocchio'. Flowers are fully double with very soft petals. They remind me of vintage lacy dresses of a fine lady such as this one.

I planted it in the sunniest spot of our garden where we are trying to establish a rose bed to complement our 90-year-old neighbours' aged modern roses across the street. If it were a competition, our roses would lose in many different levels. Level one: our young plants will first need years to establish before they can look anything as robust as our neighbours' roses. Level two: when I see how disease resistant our neighbours' roses are while ours habitually get spotted leaves, I think the general health of our roses should definitely improve. It might be the advantage of the modern genes or their lawnless garden which is simply more hygienic for growing roses. Level three: those modern roses easily last twice as long as our historical roses. Although, our roses do win on the level of fragrance which seems to be absent with those modern roses. And though our roses are not as vibrant as those modern roses, I love them for their more natural appearance.

shrubby cinquefoil

order: rosales
family: rosaceae
genus: dasiphora (potentilla)
species: fruticosa
cultivar: 'Kobold'

First Story

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2 august 2012

Cinquefoil belongs to the rose family, a family that is distributed in all continents except Antarctica. Just as I'm writing this text, I discover that it's no longer placed under the genus potentilla, which is kind of sad. Now I'll have to remember not to call it a potentilla, but a dasiphora... So if it's not a potentilla, then it's not a cinquefoil, not a "five leaves".

Well, well... whatever dasiphora means, it still has five leaves, or as the germans call it, "five fingers". The reason I got this plant is because it has five fingers on each hand, just like I do. I ordered this plant online in late winter, even before the garden centres started bringing in different plants for sales. I simply transplanted it into this larger pot, although a bigger pot wasn't necessary. I first let the new shoots grow long and bear flowers. After the first flush of flowers, I pruned it back to make a rounded silhouette. I saw that our neighbours also have a same plant in their garden. A big rounded bush with flowers lasting until now. I wonder if mine would have given me more flowers had I not pruned it back that early. However I think the pruning was necessary, because the bush gets out of shape very easily, if it's to be kept small.

I found that this plant prefers the soil to be more on the wet side than on the dry side. When it's almost dry, some of the leaves will just wilt. You may not notice it right away, but it will show up a couple of days later. So the whole thing becomes a little unsightly. I'll thin out some of its volume in spring to allow light and air to penetrate into the inner part. I'll also prune back hard before the first shoots appear, so that I don't have to prune it so soon after the first growth and allow it to flower longer.

Update

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September pruning.

Throughout the growing season I've been pinching back new growth every now and then. Now that the growing season is coming to an end I thinned out the plant for one last time this year. In spring next year some of the major branches have to go.

Update

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2 february 2014

In 2013, I mainly let my cinquefoil plant grow uninhibited, skipped trimming completely and supplied it pellets of mixed dung frequently. At the end of the year, the branches have become long and thick. After leaf fall it was time to tidy up. I first began by cutting back the excessively long branches. Then I proceeded to remove crossing branches.

By this time the soil surface is completely covered with two species of moss, one of which sent up a crowded mass of long, decorative sporophytes.

streibs findling cotoneaster

order: rosales
family: rosaceae
genus: cotoneaster
species: dammeri
cultivar: 'streibs findling'

cotoneaster with berries in the last days of 2013.

Cotoneaster is one of my favourite genera. It belongs to the rose family, like most of other fruiting trees we have in the garden. There are different forms of cotoneaster from small trees, low bushes, knee-high groundcovers to ground-hugging ones. They bear small white flowers from late spring to early summer, of which the ovaries slowly swell into red rounded fruits by early winter.

'Streibs Findling' is a cultivar of the dammeri species with dwarfed character. Its growth is the tightest of all different cultivars I've encountered so far. I acquired this plant at the end of 2012. One year's growth is between 10 to 15 cm, which is not impressive at all if compared to other dammeri cultivars, but more or less meets my expectation. Small leaves of less than 1 cm are dark green, shiny and obovate. They are held alternately in a prostrate manner. The flowers are borne singly. The decorative red fruits are kept throughout the entire winter.

This is an absolutely stressfree plant, so there isn't much to mention about its care. If planted in the ground, it can even be used for xeriscaping. It's completely frost hardy and looks its best even when partially hidden under a thick blanket of wintry snow. 

three-toothed cinquefoil

order: rosales
family: rosaceae
genus: sibbaldiopsis
species: tridentata
cultivar: 'Nuuk'

flower close-up 2012.

This is a mat-forming evergreen from the rose family, looking a lot like potentilla and dasiphora. Three palmately arranged leaflets are each dented at the tip. The leaves turn yellow, orange and red in the winter. In fact, as I first brought this plant home in late autumn 2011, its colourful foliage was such a show. I had it in a pot at first, but later decided to plant it in the garden next to our maple tree. It seemed to be very cold-hardy, as it survived the harsh winter with no damage at all. In the spring, it flowered profusely. Its flowers grow on mid-length stems and have 5 white petals. The star-like green tepals are rotated at an angle against the petals, so each leg is visible from the top. Its white filaments end with amber disc-like organs. Both foliage and flowers are lovely to look at. I'd like to arrange a kusamono with this plant at some point in the future, especially for autumn/winter display.

colourful foliage in late autumn 2011.

flower buds opening in spring 2012.

miniature roses

order: rosales

family: rosaceae

genus: rosa
species: ?
variety: ?

I got this mini rose from a DIY chain in November 2011. It was put on a bargain cart along with other withering plants. Instead of the usual price of 2,50 eur, I only paid 50 cents.

Since this is my very first rose, I had absolutely no idea what I should do to make him happy. I did a long research online but couldn't come to a conclusion from the vastly disputed opinions. Some people were very skeptical of its survival. Some say that roses won't thrive indoor and suggest to plant them out in garden. At this time of year, all the plants usually go to sleep outside while the days become shorter. I didn't think the roses were going to withstand the cold, so I decided to keep it indoor on the south-facing window sill and planned to postpone its winter dormancy.

First I took the plant out of the plastic pot with 6-cm diameter, replanted them into a slightly larger pot with their rootball untouched. Then I proceeded to trim off the deseased leaves. Afterwards, the plant did look happy and healthy. This is what it looked like:

roses newly transplanted into a slightly bigger pot.

I've been keeping my roses between 16 and 21 °C, cooler at night than day, which is recommended by an article I found over the internet. It also recommends humidity between 40% and 60% with air circulation. One mistake I did was misting the plant when the sun was shining brightly. As a result, the flower and flower buds got burnt and had to be pruned. I haven't misted them since. And even when I water, I avoid getting the leaves wet.
One week after having them, I finally seperated the 3 roses. I spent hours removing the soil from the rootball very carefully until each of them was barerooted, gave each of them a root cut, one third off the total length of each root system, including the taproot. Each is planted into their separate pot in a mix of regular soil and pumice.

Months have passed. They seem to have liked the way i handled them. After they were deadheaded and repotted, these tiny roses have grown bushy. One of them is giving me a new bloom now. I took a picture with the three of them together. If you compare with the previous photo, you can see how much they have grown.

separated roses. from left to right: number 1, 2 & 3.

One thing I noticed is that they don't seem to mind the heater underneath the window sill. Of course they don't get full blast from the hot air current. As a rule, I try not to let my plants be exposed to it. I just hold my hand over the heater unit next to the leaves, and if the air feels cool, then it's okay. Otherwise, I place a wider board underneath the pots.

>Observation
The leaves are alternate, each oddly pinnate, usually having 5 serrulated leaflets, sometimes 3, seldom only one at tip.
New growth is red in colour which slowly fades away and leaves behind its green.

>Info
Wikipedia says: "Miniature roses are often marketed and sold by the floral industry as houseplants, but it is important to remember that these plants are largely descended from outdoor shrubs native to temperate regions; thus, most miniature rose varieties require an annual period of cold dormancy to survive."

>>Update:

blooming rose number 1 on valentine's day 2012.

rose number 2 in bloom july 2012.

rose number 3 in bloom july 2012.