Get a whiff of these

FRAGRANCE disappeared from modern, large-flowered roses about the same time tailfins appeared on cars. Popular roses of the day such as ‘Olympiad,’ ‘First Prize’ or even ‘Peace’ became short on scent. The search for bigger, brighter roses with a long vase life and good disease resistance shoved fragrance aside. The genes responsible for fragrance were unfortunately linked to the genes that prevented rich, saturated colors, such as a brilliant red, pure orange or deep yellow. To get these colors, breeders “inadvertently sacrificed fragrance,” said Tom Carruth, the breeder at Weeks Roses, a wholesale grower in Upland.

To this day, florist roses, which are distinct from garden varieties, seldom have any scent. To get that long vase life, one must forgo fragrance. Ditto with disease resistance. Yet the lack of fragrance is almost a fatal flaw, so connected is it to roses. People sniff a rose on impulse.

“First they look at the color of a blossom and then they stick their noses in it,” said Carruth. “Roses with no fragrance have all the romance of an artichoke.” Scentless roses “lose the emotional connection.”

But fragrance in garden roses is making a comeback. First came the David Austin English roses, which had old-fashioned fragrance as well as their old-fashioned good looks. Then a couple of years ago, it began to creep back into more modern roses, such as the big-flowered hybrid tea ‘Barbra Streisand,’ and into floribundas, including the cleverly named ‘Scentimental.’ In 2004, there is an All-America Rose Selections winner that is powerfully fragrant, the orchid pink ‘Memorial Day,’ developed by Carruth. It is said that one cut bloom can perfume an entire room. ‘Honey Perfume’ is another of this year’s All-America roses, and this apricot yellow floribunda has a strong, spicy fragrance.

Once fragrance is removed from a breeding line, it is difficult to get back. Like blue eyes in humans, fragrance appears to be a recessive gene, meaning that it takes back-and-forth inbreeding to get it. But roses are genetically complicated plants, with complex chromosomes, resulting from millenniums of cultivation and selection. Even the simplest crosses are impossible to predict. One could cross two fragrant roses and end up with a scentless wonder or a powerfully fragrant rose. Because they are genetically complicated, they are not good candidates for genetic engineering. Carruth points out that rose breeding is “actually pretty primitive.”

“There’s no genetic manipulation by lab technicians in white coats,” he said. It’s simply a matter of selecting certain parents to encourage desired traits, such as color or size. It’s a big gamble, “chance wrapped in luck,” as one author put it. Carruth just finished planting the last of 140,000 rose seeds that resulted from crosses made in summer. They will be grown and evaluated and 10 years from now, a very few, maybe only two, will become worthy new roses. This month’s crop is the class of 2014.

One of the parents that is reintroducing fragrance into roses is none other than our own native Rosa californica, which makes brambles beside summer-dry stream beds and wet places in Southern California. Though it is dark rose in color, it’s bringing true purple into roses, a process begun by Jack Harkness in Britain. The intense spicy fragrance is a bonus. Two new purple roses, the shrubby ‘Route 66’ and ‘Midnight Blue,’ have a strong clove fragrance. “It’s like sticking your face in a jar of cloves,” Carruth said.

The spicy smell of cloves is only one of several rose scents. ‘Memorial Day’ has the classic “hybrid tea perfume,” or damask scent. But there are several rose fragrances found in newer roses. “They may not smell like the roses you remember, like Grandma’s did,” Carruth said.

There are even a few that smell bad, an odor called myrrh, “though I’d call it closer to cat box myself,” Carruth said. Rosa foetida was supposedly named for its fetid odor, and the variety ‘Bicolor’ or ‘Austrian Copper’ has been used in breeding orange and yellow roses.

Other rose scents might smell like fresh-cut apples or citrus blossoms (what some call the “Lemon Pledge perfume”), or licorice or fruity like fresh raspberries. There are even some that smell like grapefruit. These are all distinctive rose fragrances, though not everyone can smell them equally.

“I have to have someone else test-smell the yellow roses,” Carruth said, so he can tell if he has a winner or not. It’s a bit too ephemeral for him.

“Every nose smells it own rose,” he added with a chuckle.

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The smell of success? The Gs have it

The pink Memorial Day rose is one of the few fairly modern floribundas, grandifloras and hybrid teas noted for fragrance. Some have won the Gamble Award for fragrance, symbolized by the letter G, from the American Rose Society.

F=floribundas

Gr=grandifloras

HT=hybrid teas

G=Gamble Award winners

Angel Face, mauve lavender F

Barbra Streisand, lavender HT

Chrysler Imperial, dark red HT, G

Crimson Glory, dark red HT, G

Double Delight, red blend HT, G

Fragrant Cloud, orange red HT, G

Full Sail, bright white HT

Granada, red blend Gr, G

Just Joey, apricot HT

Lagerfeld, lavender HT

Memorial Day, orchid pink HT

Mister Lincoln, red HT

New Zealand, soft pink HT

Perfume Delight, rose pink HT

Pristine, white with pink blush HT

Scentimental, red-striped F

Secret, pink blend HT, G

Sheila’s Perfume, pink blend F

Sunsprite, dark yellow F, G

Sutter’s Gold, orange blend HT, G

Tiffany, pink blend HT, G

Valencia, apricot HT

White Lightnin’, white Gr