Sometimes there are sights that just stop you in your tracks – and here’s one of them, a Banksia rose growing on a back street fence in the Gate Pa area of Tauranga. If I hadn’t been visiting the house across the street, I would have missed it. And that would have been a shame because seeing it brought me a great deal of pleasure.
Named for Dorothea, the wife of botanist Sir Joseph Banks, the first plant to be brought to Britain was the white variety sourced by William Kerr in 1807 from Canton (now Guangzhou) in China. Kerr (died 1814), a Scotsman, was the first professional Western plant collector in China and had been sent by Sir Joseph, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
According to the entry for this plant at the Sir Joseph Banks Society website, the true species is thought to be Rosa banksiae ‘normalis’, later found growing through central and western China, which has single, yellow-white flowers, with just 5 petals. However, the more familiar varieties are its offspring ‘Alba Plena’ (white) and ‘Lutea’ (yellow).
The yellow version – which is thornless – arrived in Britain in 1824, collected by J D Parks (John Damper Parks, c1792-1866) for the Royal Horticultural Society in Calcutta’s Botanic Garden, India, and was the first yellow climbing rose to flower in Britain. ‘Lutea’ was given an Award of Garden Merit by the RHS in 1960.
Banksia roses were distributed around the British Empire reasonably early with the William Hayes Nursery in Nelson, New Zealand, listing both the white and yellow forms in their 1860 catalogue, while an 1862 plant auction in Wellington also offered both forms.
The world’s largest rose bush (Guinness-certified) is in Tombstone, Arizona and is a white Banksia rose that arrived as a cutting from Scotland and was planted at a boarding house in 1885. The boarding house became a hotel (Rose Tree Inn) and then a private residence in 1954, although the patio and backyard remained open to the public. The building and yard are now the Rose Tree Museum, celebrating the aged plant, and there’s a viewing platform to appreciate the blooming canopy.
The rose covers nearly 743 square metres and the town holds an annual Rose Festival to celebrate the plant’s flowering. Read more of the story here.
Sandra's Garden 