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Expert Opinions: The American Rose Society
The American Rose Society aims "To increase the general interest in the cultivation and improve the standard of excellence of the rose for all people." Whether you grow one rose or acres of them (whether you are an amateur or professional), you will find it delightfully profitable to belong to the American Rose Society. Already nearly 2,000 folks seem to have found it so, and are sending in the names of their friends from every part of our great country.
The highest ambition of the American Rose Society is to serve its members. This it strives earnestly to do. It stimulates and fosters the holding of exhibitions in every available rose center, and heightens the interest by awarding Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals, or Certificates of Merit for prize exhibits.
It holds annually one or more rose exhibitions, usually in connection with some large flower-show.
Tickets for such shows are sent free to all members. Local societies are organized, in affiliation with the parent body, with consequent advantages to associate members. A complete file of available roses and registry of new ones of merit is constantly maintained, preparatory to the publication of an official catalogue in the near future. Important rose test-gardens are established at Hartford, Conn.; Washington, D.C.; Ithaca, N. Y.; Minneapolis, Minn.; and Portland, Ore.
Results obtained in each separate climatic zone are thus available for the enlightenment of members.
The American Rose Society also publishes the American Rose Annual. It is ably edited by J. Horace McFarland, of Harrisburg, Pa., and is available to members only. It contains, each year, a comprehensive record of rose progress in America, with original, helpful, up-to-date information. It is beautifully illustrated in color and sepia, and contains about 180 pages. Membership is annual, at $2, and life, at $50. For further information or enrollment, address Editor, "How to Grow Roses," West Grove, Pa.
AMERICAN ROSE SOCIETY Fragrant Roses By Dr. W. VAN FLEET "Agreeable fragrance is one of the most valued attributes of the perfect rose, though many indispensable species and varieties do not possess it in marked degree, and not a few are either odorless or even distasteful to the sense of smell.. .. "The wild roses of North Europe mostly have faint fragrance or are scentless and the same may be said of our Middle West and Pacific Coast species, though there are a few exceptions in the extreme Northwest. "True rose-fragrance arises from the presence of rose-oil or attar, a volatile oil elaborated in the petals of the blooms just before opening. It appears most abundantly in the cells near the base of the petals, yet is present in such small quantities that it usually requires a ton and a half of fresh plucked rose petals to produce a pound of oil which resembles brownish butter. "Roses of the hardy, free-flowering Rugosa type from Japan, which grow well in America, typify rose-perfume in its most pleasing form. Some of the hybrid Rugosas are also very fragrant, while others, although fragrant, have not the intense fragrance of the single-flowered Rosa rugosa rubra (red) and R. rugosa alba (white). "Attar of roses is secured from the fresh petals of fragrant roses by the ordinary process of distillation and condensation used to recover all essential or volatile oils produced in nature It exists in such small quantity, however, even in the best perfume varieties, that it remains in solution in the water of condensation that comes over from the still and must be washed out or redistilled several times before it may be skimmed off, as with more abundant oils. These first waters, however, are most deliciously scented, and, in this country at least, would be more valuable as true commercial rose-waters than the attar itself when extracted from them. "There is one remaining entrancing rose-odor-the despair of perfumery chemists-that of the Sweetbrier foliage after a rain. It cannot be recovered by any known process and lives and dies with the occasion during which it is perceived. • "Rose aromas are not congenial to all persons, and occasionally an individual is found to whom they are annoying, and even hurtful, in the way of causing catarrhal symptoms; but to the overwhelming majority of gardeners, fragrance is a prime requisite for the thorough enjoyment of a rose bloom."