Roses with velveteen leaf undersides?

General Discussion
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Does anyone know of varieties/species that have a soft, “plush-like” texture on the undersides of leaves?

I remember a rose at a park near walking distance from my home. This happened several years ago. The plant does not exist anymore, and unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of it/its features. I have not seen one like it again, despite actively searching for it.

I have tried to look up matches through the advanced search feature on hmf for years and have never come up with some convincing lead. Perhaps you could guide me somewhere.

It was likely a rootstock that overtook the grafted variety, as it was enormous, and COMPLETELY thornless. I could not find a single prickle on it. The plant was taller than wide and appeared to climb to some capacity, as it was seemingly growing up a tree that was immediately beside the crown of canes. I’d say the tree preceeded the rose.

Despite the plant’s size even the basal canes were relatively slender, about twice as thick as pencil, for the most part. Fairly straight.

Another thing I remember about the leaves is that they felt “thinner” than others.
They were easy to bruise and if you rolled them up they would turn to an even, wetter, mush consistency, as opposed to when mashing up most “standard” leaflets which are tougher and will keep bits and pieces of leathery “structure”.
7-leaflet leaves were fairly common on it and if memory does not fail me there were occasional 10 ones too. The stipules were fringed.

They had a sheen like some of those “waterproof” fabrics for upholstery, were if you drop water it forms beads and rolls off instead of sinking in? That’s the best comparisson I can come up with.

I unfortunately never got to see a bloom, ever. Which may be a clue in and of itself, as it may be a variety that does not bloom without significant chill. I’m in Northeast Mexico, arid weather akin to USA zone 9-10. Very mild winters wth snow maybe once every 10 years. We’re in December of course and this year the coldest it’s been is like 3C//38F for a couple days only.

The obverse was just matte. I remember both leaves and canes being an olive, lighter green for what that could be worth.

Even if it did not bloom here the other aspects made it so appealing. I thought it would make the perfect rootstock if there ever was one, but despite taking over 50 cuttings while it existed, none took.
Perhaps I was just too inexperienced. Or maybe it really was hard to root and it’s one of those stocks that are grown from seeds? I was fairly clumsy at cuttings back then, truthfully.

Hopefully this sounds familiar to someone. Thank you in advance!

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I doubt it was Rosa tomentosa per se, but I seem to recall some subspecies have the moniker tomentosa in them. Dunno if that helps at all.

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I’ve only seen it on the obverse leaf surface of one of my seedlings.

Phillip, thanks for the tip. At least I now know a better term for it. Tomentum.

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@pendulina use the HMF rose search and enter Toment then click search. You’ll get two pages of rose names (of course many are duplicate listings) containing that as part of the name. Hopefully, something will resemble what’s being sought.

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It could have been Rosa multiflora. Pretty much all of those traits can be found in certain examples of the species.

Stefan

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Thank you!! I had seen the word tomentosa MANY times before and for some reason it never occurred to me that that was what it meant or to look it up. What a dunce lol.

Looking at pictures I actually think it could be a form of R. setigera. Something like setigera ‘Serena’. I guess R. multiflora is not entirely out of the question.
Previously I thought R. blanda was a lookalike and it appears there’s also a tomentosa variety, and a couple understock varieties. It could very well just be a hybrid of some of these, or none of them… I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure since it’s all from memory at this point.

At least I know about a few more varieties with that particular trait, which is pretty great development. And I could try finding one of the above and compare at some point.

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Although there are forms of R. setigera with tomentose leaf undersides and few to no prickles (Serena Group), the high leaflet count and fringed stipules completely rule out that species as an ID. Fringed stipules are essentially diagnostic of R. multiflora ancestry and are not found in R. setigera or R. blanda. A hybrid of some sort would be difficult to eliminate as a possibility but would be equally challenging to determine, and virtually impossible without material to examine.

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Right. Frankly I could be misremembering some details such as the stipules and leaflets. I’m somewhat more certain of the leaflets, but the stipules are a 50/50 really.

It appears blanda can have more than 5 leaflets based on HMF. I see that’s much rarer on setigera but something about the pictures of ‘Serena’ in particular, in HMF justrings very true. Perhaps it’s just a resemblance from afar. As you know some roses are distinctive enough to tell them from a distance, just based on habit or particularities of the foliage (apart from leaflets, such as color, finish, density/sparseness, reverse, position, if they are ‘wavy’, size, etc etc). It just “looks like it” in some way.

But yeah. I will never know for sure but I know I’ll be looking for similars until I croak. Just can’t get it out of my mind.