Cabbage Rose
R. centifolia
PICTURE SOURCE Les Roses, Volume I (1817)
ORIGINAL BOTANICAL NAME Rosa centifolia
ORIGINAL FRENCH NAME Rosier à cent feuilles
CURRENT BOTANTICAL NAME R. centifolia
COMMON NAME Cabbage Rose
OTHER NAMES Provence Rose, Holland Rose, Hundred-Petalled Rose, Rose des Peintres
CLASS Centifolia
ORIGIN 16-19th century; Dutch breeders
FLOWERING Once-flowering; summer
SCENT Strong, sweet fragrance
GROWTH Tall shrub, 6-7 feet (1.8-2.1 metres) high
AVAILABILITY Still in cultivation
For more information, don’t miss the introduction page; ‘Centifolia – The Old-Fashioned Cabbage Rose'
At left; picture of the original Cabbage Rose, R. centifolia, painted by Pierre-Joseph Redouté, portrait 002 out of 170, Volume I of Les Roses.
This rose is still alive and well today and can be obtained from specialist rose nurseries. It is a sturdy shrub with a tall, spreading, sometimes sprawling habit covered in large, soft, green leaves and in the summer, pink, very double, cupped flowers.
Redouté and his botanist friend, Thory, describe it as being a shrub some 6-7 feet high ‘studded with a multitude of straight, unequal thorns’. Its flower they describe as ‘rounded in shape and composed of numerous rose-tinted petals, becoming more deeply tinted as they approach the flower’s centre’. And the leaves as being arranged in groups of ‘five leaflets, rarely seven’, dark green in colour and ‘deeply and almost doubly dentate [serrated]’.
They suggest that it is essential to prune the shrub well in February [in their French climate] to keep it ‘very small’ so that ‘beautiful flowers in the greatest abundance’ will be achieved later in the growing season.
This is a very sweetly perfumed rose, its attar used by the perfume industry.
