THE origin of the moss rose is the subject of a paper by Major Hurst and Miss M. S. G. Breeze in the recent issue of the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society. The moss rose differs from the cabbage rose only in the much greater development and branching character of the glands on petioles and sepals and the branching of the latter. The cabbage rose has been in cultivation for more than 2000 years, and the earliest record of the moss rose is from Carcassonne, in southern France, where it probably originated as a bud-mutation from the cabbage rose at least as early as 1696. The mossy character has since arisen independently from two other varieties of the cabbage rose.

Thus, in 1775 the Unique Rose appeared in a garden in the eastern counties as a tinged-white variety, and in turn gave rise to the “Unique Moss” through a bud-mutation in France about 1843. The Rose de Meaux is a miniature variety of the cabbage rose which may date from about 1637. A moss-mutation appeared from this in the west of England in 1801. Both the moss and cabbage rose are sterile, and there is little doubt that all these derivatives arose from the old cabbage rose as bud-mutations. The records show that at least seven bud-reversions from the moss rose to the cabbage rose occurred in the period between 1805 and 1873. In the half-century following 1788 seventeen varieties of the moss rose appeared, one of which was single and fertile and extensively used in crossing. Twelve of these bud-mutations are parallel to corresponding earlier variations in the old cabbage rose. Bud-mutation is therefore a frequent phenomenon in Rosa Centifolia under cultivation, and there is, as the authors suggest, a direct connection between this condition and the sterility. The evidence indicates that the mossy character is in all probability a simple Mendelian dominant.