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CounterPunch
January
4, 2003
Blue's Clueless
by CHRIS CLARKE
Accuracy and fairness are important tenets of
journalism, and so let me start by saying that not all rosarians
are insane.
This assertion may be hard for the non-rosarian
to believe. Given the thousands of available plants with which
a gardener might become obsessed, cacti or begonias or natives
or heirloom peppers, why would anyone in his or her right mind
choose the hybrid tea rose? This most disease-prone of plants
is a pesticide salesman's dream come true.
That's not hyperbole. You can trust me:
I used to sell pesticides. Were it not for hybrid tea roses,
my employers might have gone bankrupt. There were regular applications
of systemic insecticides. There were fungicides to control the
ubiquitous fungal diseases: black spot, powdery mildew and rust.
Occasionally, I'd sell soil fumigants to people replacing their
old, ailing hybrid teas with newer, not yet ailing hybrid teas.
Our repeat customers would develop whitefly infestations after
insecticides had killed all the predatory insects in the garden.
We'd sell them stuff to kill the whiteflies, which--as whiteflies
only go away if you stop spraying--constituted a job security
measure on our part.
And all for what? Rows of thorn-covered
sticks poking oddly out of the ground. Sometimes a few leaves
adorn the sticks, generally with unsightly spots on them. Why
one wouldn't just plant ocotillos and be done with it is hard
to fathom.
"Why, the blooms, of course!"
will cry the defensive rosarians in the crowd. And while hybrid
tea blossoms pale before the brilliant red trumpets of an ocotillo,
they're lovely flowers. Mostly. If botrytis doesn't get them,
that is, and if black spot hasn't sapped the plant's vigor, and
if rose decline hasn't sent the entire garden into a downward
spiral. And if you don't insist all of them smell like roses.
Some hybrid teas do carry a faint scent vaguely resembling the
heady aroma characteristic of the genus from which they were
whelped. There are trade-offs to consider here. With hybrid teas,
one must, generally, choose between fragrance and what rosarians
refer to as "disease resistance," which means the variety
being discussed will actually have some green leaf surface showing
through the black spot.
It gets worse. So monomaniacal are hard-line
rosarians that they permit no other plant to contaminate their
gardens: not a sprig of alyssum, no turf, no spring crocus or
narcissus may defile their rows of thorn sticks, all identical
except during that fleeting season of sterile scentless bloom.
Such rose gardens seem less garden than farmer's field, like
rows of brussels sprouts with plowed soil between them--except
that brussels sprouts farmers plant cover crops, come to think
of it.
Still, not all rosarians are insane.
Maybe even most of them aren't. Most that I've met lately, for
instance, are rethinking that whole sterile soil between the
rows thing, interplanting their roses with herbs, or spring bulbs,
or even tomatoes. Old rose species are continuing the comeback
they started about two decades ago, with vigorous, brilliantly-scented
gallicas and dog roses gaining favor as tough, droughty hedges
with tasty hips. The Lady Banks rose (Rosa banksiae) has become
nearly ubiquitous in the Bay Area, and rightly so: a tough climber
covered with long-lasting flowers, which--in the white form--even
smells like a rose. In many nurseries, hybrid teas are now outnumbered
by floribundas, which bear smaller, generally more fragrant blossoms
on "disease-resistant" plants that actually seem to
resist disease.
And promising new rose selections are
hitting the nurseries as well. A dozen varieties of ground cover
rose are for sale nowadays ("Red Ribbons" is a nice
one, almost overplanted lately), and then there are such specialties
as the deep-shade-tolerant native Rosa californica: light on
bloom, but an interesting form in a traditionally hard spot to
garden. As rosarians tend toward diversity in their plantings,
and a sense of perspective in their garden plans--with even hybrid
tea fanciers making room for other living things on their properties--the
truly insane rosarian is getting harder and harder to find.
Which is why I was surprised, a few weeks
ago, to read an item in the paper describing rosarians working
with genetic engineers to create something never before seen
in nature: a blue-flowered rose. Vanderbilt University researchers
are splicing human liver enzyme genes into roses, hoping that
the enzyme will turn the flowers blue. Apparently, black spot
isn't enough: these guys want roses to get liver spots as well.
In the story, San Francisco rosarian
James Armstrong was quoted as saying "It would be nice to
see a blue rose, and the only way that1s going to happen is through
genetic engineering." I too think it would be nice to see
a blue rose, assuming that blue is the variable kind of color
naturally produced by most plants, a result of a complex interplay
of genetics and cellular chemistry, benign viruses and sun and
soil and temperature. (If the white coats succeed in breeding
a rose that looks as if it has been dipped in blue dye, then
I can suggest an easier way to get there.)
Let's look at the larger picture. I also
think it would be nice to have salad vegetables that fertilize
themselves, but I'm not about to ask Burpee to splice horse genes
into my tomatoes so that I can plant "Manure Girls."
Part of growing plants--indeed, part of growing UP--is recognizing
the limits within which one has to work.
True, gardeners do fight these limits
as much as anyone, what with our tarps, mulches and anti-transpirant
sprays, our lath houses and protected south-facing walls.
But it's one thing to try to get your
radishes to weather a cold snap. It's another thing to try to
get your radishes to grow peacock plumage.
Despite my radical environmentalism,
I am not a knee-jerk "anti" when it comes to genetic
engineering. I was excited when I heard of the new Vitamin-A-precursor-enhanced
"Golden Rice," intended to help alleviate nutritional
deficiencies in developing countries. (Of course, it turned out
a body would need to eat a hundred pounds of the stuff a day
to get the beta carotene contained in a medium-sized carrot,
but that's beside the point.) I'm intrigued by thoughts of splicing
malaria immunity into Anopheles mosquitos, which might save hundreds
of thousands of lives a year. Where a world problem exists that
could reasonably be alleviated by genetic research, I'm all for
at least considering it.
That said, what, exactly, is wrong with
a world that lacks blue roses? There are plenty of blue-flowering
plants that do just fine in the same conditions as hybrid tea
roses: right off the top of my head there's ceanothus, bearded
irises, lobelia, delphinium. Alyogyne flowers even look more
or less like single roses.
The only reason I can think of for having
any interest at all in a blue rose is really wanting blue flowers
in your garden, but for some reason being utterly, pathologically
unwilling to plant anything other than roses. But that would
be . . . what's the word I'm looking for?
Insane.
Chris Clarke is
the editor of Faultline:
the magazine of the California environment. He can be
reached at: cclarke@faultline.org
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