Rosa Gallica var Versicolor
狗牙蔷薇
Le Rosier de France
About this plate
Description
Cette belle variété du Rosier de France s’élève en buisson à la hauteur de deux à trois pieds. Ses tiges sont hérissées d’aiguillons d’inégale longueur, les plus longs crochus, et les plus petits presque droits. Les feuilles se composent de sept folioles oblongues, pointues au sommet, arrondies à la base, glabres en-dessus, tomenteuses en-dessous, glanduleuses en leur bord. Elles sont portées par un pétiole velu, quelquefois un peu aiguillonné: il est muni à sa base de stipules simples, aiguës au sommet, entourées de glandes sessiles. Les fleurs, peu odorantes, naissent en général trois ensemble à l’extrémité des rameaux. Les tubes des calices, presque globuleux, sont hispides ainsi que les pédicelles qui les supportent. Chaque pédicelle, excepté celui du milieu, est muni de deux bractées ovales, le plus souvent foliacées et glanduleuses comme les stipules; deux autres bractées, qui ne sont que des feuilles avortées, se font remarquer au point d’insertion de ces trois pédicelles. Les divisions du limbe, courtes, trois pinnatifides et deux simples, sont pointues au sommet, cotonneuses à l’intérieur, et couvertes, à l’extérieur, d’un duvet entremêlé de glandes sessiles. La corolle, toujours semi-double, jamais pleine, se compose de pétales d’un rose-tendre panaché de rouge plus ou moins vif. Le fruit est rond, et devient rougeâtre à la maturité.
Observations
Les panachures qui décorent et font distinguer cette variété disparaissent souvent, et il n’est pas rare de la voir donner une année des fleurs panachées et ne plus produire ensuite que des Roses avec les pétales de couleur unie. Cette disposition de l’arbuste à rentrer en couleur indique que pour conserver cette variété, il faut la greffer souvent. Notre Rose est connue en France sous les noms de Provins panaché, ou de Provins œillet; les Anglais l’ont appelée Rosemonde, du nom de la belle et spirituelle maîtresse de Henri II, roi d’Angleterre. On sait que cette infortunée termina sa vie dans les tourments dont l’accabla l’épouse jalouse et offensée de Henri. Au reste, Rosemonde dérive de l’allemand Rosen, Rose, et mund, bouche, ou Bouche-de-rose. C’est un nom chevaleresque que portaient antrefois et que portent encore aujourd’hui beaucoup de demoiselles en Allemagne.
Le Provins panaché fleurit mieux à l’ombre qu’en plein so-leil. Il réussit très-bien par la greffe; mais les arbrisseaux qu’on élève en franc-de-pied donnent des fleurs plus grandes, et d’un coloris plus vif.
- R. Gallica (versicolor) germinibus globosis; foliolis magnis et eleganter variegatis; pedunculis hispidis; caule et petiolis hispidis aculeatis; foliolis subovatis, subtus villosis. Andr. Ros. Cum. fig.
Twelve ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- upright 1.53 : 1
- published 1817
- Plate 55
Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut, when it flowers, where it came from, who made it — and then the poems and the classics that taught China to see the same flower. Read the twelve in order and the plate opens.
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First Look
真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。
—— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》
Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.
The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles in the upper half. Let the plant stand before you look for detail. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find where the green is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
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Name and Thing
The binomial is Rosa gallica: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Here the epithet gallica means “of Gaul” — the name records the feature the namer noticed first. The Chinese name 狗牙蔷薇 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
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Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 6.7% of the sheet, foliage 10.3%, the cast red. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Roses are shrubs or scramblers with pinnate leaves of three to seven serrated leaflets; the double flowers open in crumpled, inward-curling layers around a small knot of yellow stamens. Filed under green — a moss green, a colour that comes mostly from leaf and stem. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
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Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.53 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 36% of the sheet, centred above centre — the easy measure most florists kept to. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
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Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing.
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Season
Late spring into early summer, peaking in May — the first flush of the garden year. The year 1817 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.
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Provenance
Widespread in the temperate north. Chinese gardeners knew roses since the Han; the ever-blooming modern rose is a nineteenth-century crossing of European and Chinese stock. The volume was made in 1817-1824, when most of this knowledge came from living plants under glass.
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The Book and the Hand
“Les Roses” was drawn by Pierre-Joseph Redouté and published 1817-1824. This plate is Plate 55, book page 55. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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Poetic Resonance
龙头泻酒客寿杯，主人浅笑红玫瑰。
—— 唐·李商隐《河阳诗》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the green the corolla becomes its resting point.
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The Written Tradition
插花不可太繁，亦不可太瘦。多不过二种三种，高低疏密，如画苑布置方妙。
—— 明·袁宏道《瓶史·宜称》
Flowers should be set neither too crowded nor too sparse — two or three kinds at most, tall and low, dense and open, arranged as a painter would compose.
Tradition places roses in the Han imperial park; Song and Ming manuals named the double forms 'Baoxiang' and 'Ten Sisters', and Qing compendia separated rose, rugosa and monthly rose. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.
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Symbolism
In Europe the rose means love and secrecy ('sub rosa'); in Chinese verse the rambling rose leans and clings — lingering attachment rather than ardour. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
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What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
