Naming a single favorite is difficult, but or the time being I’d have to go with Stephen’s Big Purple - it has OUTSTANDING fragrance and can pass it on to descendents (Melody Perfume, Outta the Blue, Old Port, Old Spice, etc). Big Purple’s ancestors are a mixture of mildly and strongly fragrant, but maybe more importantly it is a deep Mauve.
For me it is surprisingly healthy and tough for such a large flowered, intensely fragrant, intensely colored, long stemmed rose
Forgot to mention that Big Purple has a double dose of Lavender Pinnochio and a closer, single dose of the gallica Superb Tuscan in its background - probably the roots of its scent.
RBx
A rose that is popular locally, and which has grabbed my attention for having wonderful fragrance (in our hot muggy climate) when most roses are failing, would be Belinda’s Dream. She’s VERY healthy, very heat and humidity tolerant, fragrant, and has nice flower form. I don’t have her in my garden currently and have never tried to breed with her – as a basic rose pink, she’s not necessarily a very interesting parent…
She’s a very nice fragrant landscaping rose though.
Both parents, Jersey Beauty (a wichuriana, I believe) and Tiffany are reportedly fragrant.
A 1992 Basye rose according to Helpmefind which has no listed descendants yet.
Belinda’s Dream has nearly no fragrance here in this low desert climate. It must need humidity? I’ve heard other reports of frgrance but I would never know. It seems moderately happy here but it’s not outstanding. It seems to be sterile. It’s supposed to thrive in Florida from what I’ve gathered.
Here in WV (we do have humidity) the fragrance is not strong, and the fertility is even weaker. I’ve tried BD as a seed parent several times without luck. Once something had begun to look almost like a hip before it turned brown and mushy. Here its pollen is between scarce and non-existent. At the least, it’s low-return-on-investment as a parent. Time would be better spent with others which yield seed more easily. It is a pretty rose, but suffers a lot from fungus on the blossom here and is often just a misshapen wad of brown petals drooping on the end of the stem after 2 days. I’ve heard it does very well in dry climates. Location, location, location . . …
My favorite rose for fragrance is not known for its strength of perfume. It’s Garden Party. I don’t even know the correct description for the fragrance of Garden Party . . . classic tea rose?
The fact that Garden Party is the pollen parent for Double Delight demontrates possible influence on the inheritance of fragrance, even though Granada is more often considered the more fragrant parent.
Cathy
‘Neige Parfum’ is my all-time favorite for fragrance. I had ‘Neige Parfum’ in bud in an open convertible at 75 MPH (I was moving to Georgia and I HAD to take some of my roses with me) and I could still catch the INCREDIBLE scent.
I think ‘Kazanlik’ is terrific for pure Damask scent. It’s one of the roses Attar of Roses is distilled from.
‘Noble Anthony’ and ‘Evelyn’ were strongly fragrant, too. ‘Noble Anthony’ was sweet and damask-y, ‘Evelyn’ was peppery.
Here near Atlanta, ‘Lasting Love’ has great scent and ‘Margaret Merril’ is swell, though the white petals get red freckles if water drops on the petals are hit by sunlight. I hate the way that looks.
Well Peter, you got me a tad curious. I didn’t have the time or means to get too scientific about it, but started randomly looking under HelpMeFind “strong fragrance” in the advanced search. “Sterling silver” had a number of offspring on the list. I suspect “Fragrant cloud” would too, if only because it was used so much… I was actually surprised to see how many “strong fragrant” progeny came of two “mild fragrance” parents…
It would also be kind of interesting to see if in the strong fragrance roses, one particular color was disproportionately represented. (My impression is that deep reds and mauves seem to be prone to fragrance, but I have no emperical info to back up that hunch…)
IF you’re curious, follow up on that curiosity, and write about what you find. And what ancestry did you find behind those “mild fragrance” parents?
Fragrant Cloud and Sterling Silver are both closely related to Peace. Peace is interesting because it is not too far from Rosa foetida bicolor if my memory serves well. I noted that many modern bush roses (like the masses of Peace lineage) very rarely have certain scents. There is an Austin rose that is sooooooooo strong but I absolutely hate the smell. I think it is Tamora? It smells like fresh, plastic diapers! Ive smelled it before, too, but never in any roses with the Peace lineage.
Peace was definitely in the lineage of several, but then it is in the lineage of most every modern rose, so any generalizations there would be pretty meaningless without a comparison of less fragrant roses…
Peter, I am slammed with stuff to do, but will try to procrastinate a little more if I get the chance!
what would be interesting is if one could access the HelpMeFind database with a program which could compare conditions in the entire database and come up with statitistics…
It wasnt a generalization. I was responding to this: “I was actually surprised to see how many “strong fragrant” progeny came of two “mild fragrance” parents…”
So while Peace may not be a heavy hitter in the sniffer category, I see no reason why it wouldnt produce highly fragrant roses. There are a lot of various snifffers in it’s background. I was wrong though. It is close to Rosa foetida persiana and not bicolor.
Jadae,
In reading your earlier post, my first reaction was one of “by golly, that’s true! Peace might be the source.” But then the extent of Peace’s use occurred to me.
I was the one who was guilty of generalization! I was just thinking out loud.
As I say, it occurs to me that the number of fragrant progeny is relatively meaningless. The percentage thereof is what matters, and that would be a tad more difficult to determine.
It seems like the majority of my most fragrant roses have Crimson Glory in their ancestry somewhere. Double Delight (from both sides), Mr Lincoln, Tiffany, Granada, Bayse Blueberry, etc all descend from Crimson Glory.