Unexpected Fragrance: Scented-Leaf Roses
Many of my favorite plants for fragrance don't have scented flowers. A favorite from childhood is Black Cottonwood. When the leaves unfurl in the spring you could swoon from the scent. The buds contain a ruby resin which is richly fragrant, perfuming the air quite a distance from the trees. Large trees can drip this sticky red dew in the fall till the ground under them looks bloody. Picking the buds will leave your fingers aromatic all day, but you will have to compete with the deer for them: tasty, I guess, but soapy to me. And what does this have to do with roses?
Rosa primula, the Incense Rose, has the same intoxicating fragrance in its leaves. Misty or rainy summer mornings waft the scent about the garden. Its large single yellow flowers, the first rose to open here, before the wild ones even, are softly scented but you must put your nose into them to find that. The foliage is small and full like burnet but thorny on the back of the leaflet sprays. Rosemary Verey, in The Scented Garden, says to plant R. primula by your door, and she's right. The scent in the first sunlight of a summer morning is not to be missed. I save a few branches when I prune (this gets to be a large creature--5 feet or more and I of course planted it next to the sidewalk) and dry the leaves for pot-pourri. It takes heavy gloves for this! Another lovely aspect of Rosa primula is its tall, glowing red stems and (many) red thorns. Normally shaped, unlike R. sericea pteracantha's monsters, they are beautiful in the sun and against the snow. First year thorns are translucent. As the canes age they darken like Siberian dogwood. The stems' stiffness lend an air of formality. The hips are blackish but my deer eat them before they ripen. The plants are slow growing when young, but third year plants get too large for me to ship, shooting up surprisingly fast while I am weeding elsewhere! An Asian native; hardy to -25ºF here.
Three other roses I grow are fragrant in their leaves. (This is in contrast to the Moss roses which carry similar scents but only in the mossed parts.) The most well known is the Sweet Briar, R. Eglanteria, which has been grown in gardens for centuries & probably longer. Brightly apple scented and a big festooner in my garden, it drapes a clump of delphinium 'Summer Skies' in a pink flowered shawl that matures to hundreds of large red hips that stay on all winter. A rain shower or even a brush with the sprinkler will reward you with fragrance. The flowers are single, large & open over several weeks: very showy. She has hooked thorns on arching canes suitable for clambering on fences & could be trained as a climber or on a pillar if you chose. This is a large sumptuous rose that needs no apology for size or rambunctiousness. It can go to 8 or 9 feet if it likes you. It doesn't make thickets but sends out emissary runners. This would make a great hedge, especially mixed with other flowering shrubs. The hips are large enough you could use them for tea or jam.
Sweet briar hybrids' leaves are often scented as well, including the British 'Penzance Briars' which widen the bloom color palette: they include deep rose pink, scarlet, yellow and double pink. I have yet to find a source of the hybrids on their own roots stateside but I'll keep looking: 'Lady Penzance' and 'La Belle Distinguée' look very nice in Beale's Roses.
My first scented-leaf rose, R. glutinosa, would fit more easily in a small garden. Slowly growing to about 2 feet, the leaves are smallish, deep green, sticky top and bottom, deeply serrated and wonderfully truly pine scented. The small flowers are pink fading to white in the center and open a little before Rosa Mundi. The hips are outstanding--big, brilliant red, they look like bristly maraschino cherries or Christmas lights and also are retained all winter. They're sticky-fragrant too and enclose their seeds in a furry nest.
The whole rose is very bristly and sharp but no big thorns. That a rose hailing from Spain and Portugal would be bone hardy in North Idaho is amazing, but I've never covered them and never had any dieback. This is a slow enough grower you probably wouldn't want to whack branches off it for drying, but a few leaves tucked in your pocket will still be fragrant the next day.
The third is Rosa davurica, of no common name but related to R. cinnamomea. It sports hazy (bloomy like rubus spp.) red stems and dusty-blue-reddish leaves which have a distinct though not heavy scent of cinnamon/spice. In the seed beds I can distinguish between these and the seedlings of 'Terese Bugnet', rugosa children & often the same color, by their fragrance even before they leaf out all the way. Mine haven't flowered yet but the blooms are reputed to be pink to purply-red. In my climate this is a slender, vase-formed plant of restrained growth.
Another quality of these roses is their disease & pest resistance, perhaps because of the scent glands. Rosa primula will even fend off deer to some degree. Gardening organically in a hard climate shows off the virtues of these roses: no mildew, no blackspot, no dieback, no spraying, no covering, no fuss. They offer year round interest even here in Idaho (those that are tall enough to show above the snow!).
Most fall in the sections Pimpinellifoliae and Cinnamomeae. According to Roy Genders in Scented Flora of the World, the incense category also includes r. cinnamomea plena and r. ecae; r. wintoniensis has pine scented leaves; r. graveolens has the Sweet Briar scent, r. multibracteata is said to have a 'sharp fruity scent' --appley or not I can't say. Rosa roxburghii's hips smell of ripe pineapple, and Rosa setipoda is reputed to go whole hog and bear apple scented flowers, sweet-briar scented leaves (when crushed), and pine scented stems.
Bulletins when they happen: I hope to try them all.
Except for Rosa Eglanteria, these roses are hard to find. I grew my stock plants from seed. This is a slow process, taking three to four years to reach flowering size and some varieties have weird germination requirements, but even the teeniest seedling is obviously a rose: tiniest prickles, crooked stems & pleated foliage from the first true leaf on and the fragrances are there from the beginning. If you are looking for something different for the herb garden, for a welcoming gatestop plant, or for an exuberant creature to add life to the garden in or out of flower, treat yourself to one of these.
c. 2001-2007 Judith Miller