Fragrance

To talk a little bit about fragrance. I’m not an expert in describing fragrances, but I’ve been thinking about it lately.

I have a R. carolina x R. centifolia that I was describing to myself as an “oh my god” type of fragrance, and sure enough when I picked a blossom the first person to smell it said “oh my gosh.” Strong, with the undertone of sourness that gives the fragrance body.

The fragrance of Will Alderman is very similar, which I find interesting because the two roses seem to have very different backgrounds. I’ve made some crosses between the two just to see what happens.

The fragrance of Oso Easy Fragrant Spreader seems to come from the wichurana heritage. Sweet and powdery without any sourness, it is a fragrance that seems to float on the wind more easily. Ultimately it can be cloying in its sweetness, so I’d like to cross a rose with this fragrance with something that has more sour, citrus tones.

Double Delight might be the king of fragrance, and I’ve thought before that I loved it, but there are some hybrid tea undertones to the fragrance that almost add a plastic, artificial tone. I think I prefer my carolina/centifolia seedling’s fragrance.

Morden Sunrise had (always past tense for that dog, unfortunately) a lovely and distinct tangerine fragrance. Probably comes from the Hazeldean side, I was going to say, but I see on HMF that Sunsprite has a strong fragrance. I’ve never smelled Sunsprite…does it have those tangerine tones?

Musk roses or polyanthas (correct me if I’m lumping too much together) have what to me is a somewhat unpleasant lipsticky smell. I can see it adding some nice wafting element to another type of fragrance in breeding, but otherwise it leaves me uninspired.

R. woodsii has a lovely smooth, sweet smell. My patch of R. acicularis always seems to remind me of raspberries, and I’m not sure if it’s coming from the foliage or the flower.

One of my Blue for You x Commander Gillette seedlings ended up with a very strong and pleasing fragrance. I believe that BFY provided the sour, citrus notes while Commander provided the smooth and sweet species smell. To me, Blue for You’s fragrance on it’s own isn’t that pleasing…it’s like the citrus element without anything sweet to back it up. Unfortunately this seedling is quite unhealthy.

So, where do I turn to create either a healthy, reblooming, fairly hardy die-back rose or a non-suckering, fully hardy, once-blooming rose that has good health and a fragrance, as someone on this forum once said, to slay the gods?

It would be fun to hear any of your thoughts on issues related to fragrance.

So far I do not have a clue on purposefully recreating a great fragrance. It seems somewhat random on which volatile oil(s) joins with what ever other oil(s) to create something that will slay the gods. The closest I have to a ‘turn around and track down that fragrance’ is a completely modern seedling (with a few famous for their fragrances parents/grandparents) that smells somewhere between lily-of-the-valley and fresh lilacs, depending on how old the flower is and how warm the surrounding temps are. And then there is the Gemini X Prairie Peace that can knock your socks off, if not quite slay the gods. The chemistry of volatile oil recombining and inheritance seems a bit unpredictable. Can the genetic and molecular mechanisms that regulate these traits even be reliably reproduced? I would love to think that it is possible, but with something short of a degree in genetic theory/applied physiology/biochemistry or more.

Reading your impressions of B4Y’s scent is interesting, Joe. To my nose, here, it is heavily spiced, Honey Crisp Apple. Carolyn Supinger from Sequoia Nursery, used to (may still) make all manner of wonderful concoctions to win the local fairs with. One of her most delicious was a jar of heavily spiced apples. They were good enough to just rub all over you! Blue for You smells like a jar of Carolyn’s spiced apples. Yup, sniffing it makes my mouth water and my stomach growl! Eyes for You has much of that same scent.

I suppose not only is fragrance affected by growing conditions, people’s noses may pick up scents in individual way. It would be nice if you could fly out here and smell my BFY, Kim, to see if the fragrance is the same to you here. I’ll pick you up in Fargo and you can sleep on our couch.

All I can think is to use fragrant roses in crosses and hope for the best. There are some types of blossoms for which I insist there must be a scent. Those double, old-rose blossoms of lavender or blush pink. I would toss a seedling like that out just for not smelling nice.

This morning my fragrance cross was Innocencia Vigorosa x Will Alderman.

With all these metaphors floating around, if I accomplish my fragrance goals I’ll end up lying on the ground smeared with canned apples, surrounded by dirty socks and dead gods.

Too funny! But, you don’t have to cross scented roses to obtain highly scented seedlings. Pretty Lady has virtually none and John Jelinek’s Crested Abundance isn’t heavy, but combining the two resulted in intense scent.

I read somewhere that ‘Sunsprite’ has an “old rose” scent, but I don’t recall it having any particularly notable scent when I grew it in California.

RICA Sombreuil first came to my attention when I read that it has the scent of Scotch Magic Mending Tape, which is reminiscent of lemon drops. On one occasion, at the Heritage Rose Garden in San Jose, some blooms opened with unusually large petals and enlarged petaloids in the center. Sniffing the outer petals I detected sweet apple. But towards the center there was a harsh, lemon-oil odor. From a short distance, the two scents merged into the sweet lemony perfume.
Karl

Sunsprite/Friesia has a medium to strong scent but not at all of old rose (damask). I once read somewhere the description “cinnamon toast” and I think that is pretty accurate. Well, perhaps some lemon curd spread on it, too. :slight_smile:
Jukka

Joe,

I would say you are correct that the fragrance of ‘Morden Sunrise’ (mostly) comes from ‘Hazeldean’, particularly from Rosa altaica, one of the parents of this cultivar. The fragrances are similar.

In my Zone 3 climate, my most fragrant rose is the Damask ‘Minette’. Normally a Zone 4 rose, it came through the winter without any winter kill last winter. I’m using it in breeding programs to develop fragrant roses, of course.

I have a lot to learn about ‘Minette’ in breeding programs though. Crosses done with it in 2015 produced hips and seed, but I didn’t get any germination. From another shrub of this cultivar, the seed of op hips (likely selfed) didn’t germinate either. I used two different methods to germinate the seed too.

This year I also used ‘Minette’ as a staminate parent, crossing it with ‘Morden Centennial’, for example.

I suspect ‘Minette’ is a triploid, but the flowers produce a good amount of pollen.

A lot more attention needs to be paid to develop fragrant roses for cold (Zone 2 and 3) climates, and I suspect it will be up to the amateur rose breeders to do it.

Paul,
Interesting that you mention Minette. It’s a very popular rose of “grandma’s cottages” here in Finland and even more so in Sweden and Norway. It must be the hardiest rose of all with OGR type fragrant flowers. But the flowers are notoriously sensitive to rain, so good bloom is not seen every year here. HMF gives zero descendants to Minette so it could have rather poor fertility. I once collected a few op hips with a few seeds in them but they didn’t germinate. This summer I put Minette’s pollen on Lynnie, just a random try to get its genes passed on.
Jukka, Finland

Just a remark about this description of plastic smell; I find a very similar plastic like smell but much stonger plastic smell in my Tall bearded iris’ and I quite like it…

Mention of that plastic scent and Karl’s comments about Sombreuil reminded me… the petals and stamens often have completely different scents. In many of the species roses I’ve smelled, the scent seems to primarily be coming from the stamens. Try smelling a separated flower - pile of plucked petals versus the little brush of stamens left behind - to really smell the difference.
Rosa moschata is one that I remember with its great clove scent coming from the stamens. If I remember right, the petals on their own were an entirely different scent and not nearly as nice.
The tangerine scent of some of the early blooming yellow roses (like xanthina) also seems to come primarily from the stamens.

I looked closer at a few ‘Hansa’ seedlings from crosses I made last year with several cultivars including ‘Minette’. They are all mixed together in a container. At least one appears to be from a ‘Minette’ cross, so I’m delighted about that. Combining the clove-like fragrance of ‘Hansa’ with that of ‘Minette’, it will be interesting to see what it will be like.

The “Tea” scent to me has always been clean Tupperware and Orthene.

Yikes! I think I’ll avoid any Teas you’ve been sniffing.

‘Hume’s Blush’ was called “Tea-scented” because some folks thought the scent was similar to that of fine Hyson tea. And Hyson tea was thought to have the scent of the Wallflower.

I saw a Wallflower, once, but didn’t feel like crawling on the ground at a public garden to smell it. I have not encountered Hyson tea (fine or otherwise).

That and the ever-present mildew on them and the fried, dried, used Kleenex petals are why I avoided most Teas in the hotter climates. I grow some now (which are thrip and mildew havens) in hopes of using them with the species just to see “what if?” No, I don’t try smelling them. IF I detect anything, I’m sure not to like it and there are plenty of others which do smell good to me, so why chance a snoot full of thrips for “yuck”?

I like the dry, phenolic tea scent of some roses, particularly when combined with other notes. I’m a biochemist by training and I once used p-iodophenol in my work. When weighing it I was puzzled that the smell was so familiar. Then I realized that when very much diluted in the air the smell was exactly like the scent Graham Thomas rose.
Jukka

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