Monday, May 27, 2019

Wild white

When we had the greenhouse installed in 2016, I ripped out some old rose bushes on that corner of the house. I didn't get all the roots, and they keep trying to come back. But another rose has shown up, too. It's a wild rose, I think, called églantine (sweet briar). They grow all over out on the margins of the vineyard and in abandoned parcels. Their flowers are most commonly pink. These, however, are white.

Our white wild rose being visited by an insect.

So, the question is: where did it come from? I read that the seeds of these plants are distributed by birds, so that's the most likely answer. Why is it white? I dunno. I did notice a few white-flowered églantines out among the pink ones during my walk this morning.

5 comments:

  1. We planted a row of these (pink) to naturalize near a creek bed in Connecticut. I loved them. Got them from White Flower Farm. Loved that too!

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  2. We picked hips from wild roses in two parks and naturalized our dead end so we have the white and the pink - lovely fragrance when people walk by and they only need digging out the wild (unwanted) blackberry vines that are as tenacious as the horse tail. I love fragrant flowers.

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  3. Is that insect so shiny that the scenery is reflected in its shell, or am I seeing things?

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  4. Wasn't Eglantine a staple of the troubadors and their singing? Although I'm not sure if they were singing to someone with that name or about the flower.

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  5. mitch, I don't remember these from the US. I guess I wasn't paying attention!

    sillygirl, blackberries grow wild everywhere around us, and in our hedge. Ugh!

    chris, you may be right!

    emm, I don't know from troubadors! ;)

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