Cabbage Rose ‘Bullata’

PICTURE SOURCE Les Roses, Volume I (1817)

ORIGINAL BOTANICAL NAME Rosa centifolia Bullata

ORIGINAL FRENCH NAME Rosier à feuilles de Laitue

CURRENT BOTANTICAL NAME R. centifolia ‘Bullata’

COMMON NAME Cabbage Rose ‘Bullata’

OTHER NAMES Bullate Cabbage Rose, Lettuce-leaved Rose

CLASS Centifolia

ORIGIN sport from R.centifolia; bred & named, early 1800s, by M. Dupont

FLOWERING Once-flowering; summer

SCENT Strong, sweet fragrance

GROWTH Tall shrub, more compact than R. centifolia

AVAILABILITY Still in cultivation

For more information, don’t miss the introduction page; ‘Centifolia – The Old-Fashioned Cabbage Rose'

At left; picture of the Cabbage Rose, R. centifolia ‘Bullata’, painted by Pierre-Joseph Redouté, portrait 008 out of 170, Volume I of Les Roses.

Still in cultivation today, this rose is a sport of R. centifolia known for its unusual foliage. According to Redouté & Thory, it was raised in the nursery of M.Dupont. They describe it as a beautiful rose with ‘crinkled leaves or curled leaves, or even with lettuce leaves’. Bullata means ‘blistered’ or ‘puckered’ in Latin and the large soft leaves are the result of ‘extravasation of sap’ a process where the sap leaks into the leaf tissue causing it to swell, pucker and curl the leaf. They describe the leaf as being sometimes ‘so voluminous that the petiole [leaf-stalk] barely supports’ it.

This rose was clearly favoured by Redouté & Thory over the ordinary Cabbage Rose R.centifolia, for having ‘a number of attractive qualities’ lacking in the former. These were a more closely set, less spreading habit, the usual, attractive leaves and apparently even the scent was considered sweeter.

They mention that it is can only be propagated by grafting and ‘thus grown, it is delicate and does not survive long’. The grafts were prepared using R.canina rootstock. In a garden Redouté & Thory created exclusively for growing Centifolias, at Belleville, near Paris, they tried to grow own-root cuttings using the layering method. This was only marginally successful, the resulting bushes being ‘weak, with less attractive flowers’.