Rosa incognita
Some girls just don't know when they're not wanted. We dug this baby out this spring and quite a job it was too. The root was so thick and woody we had to go at it underground with a pruning saw! But even that wasn't enough to keep it from coming back.
I'd given this rosebush a chance when I moved in, in case the lack of flowers was due to a lack of care. But after a season of pampering, there still wasn't a single flower to be seen and it was obvious this was a rose coming back from rootstock. Despite my respect for tough survivors like this one, I do want at least a minimum of a show, so out it came.
Not that I'm surprised it came back. We'd left chunks of root in the ground, because it was just too hard to dig it all out. I'll just keep cutting it back until the root has starved to death, much as I do with other perennial weeds. I'm very leery of adding more toxins to the environment and snipping it back every now and again really isn't that much of an effort.
Technorati tag: Roses
2 comments:
Wow! What a tough rose.
I plan on moving an ancient Terese Bugnet rose this winter/spring. I think it is growing on it's own roots, but I still don't want any remnants to regrow in the current spot. I guess I had better prepare to battle leftover suckers.
It was a toughie all right. It was growing in a rather dark corner, with no watering, no winter protection, no mulching, no fertilizing, no nothing. The last people here were most emphatically non-gardeners.
Root stock is chosen to be hardy and vigorous and that it was! If it had actually produced flowers for me, I would have let it stay out of sheer respect.
I suspect Therese will probably not go down without a fight either. She's known to be very tough - a very popular rose in Canada.
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