Two Italian Roses come home. by Helga Brichet.
Many rose lovers who have visited the Fineschi property at Cavriglia, in Tuscany, are undoubtedly familiar with the gazebo over which, today, the two white and two yellow forms of the R. banksia, single and double, are guided. Here too is to be seen the hybrid “Purezza” – a truly marvellous sight in flower – bred by the Italian Quinto Mansuino in 1961 by crossing “Tom Thumb” with the R. banksia “Lutescens.” Mansuino is only now perhaps gaining just recognition for his work, particularly that involving the Banksias.
After eight years work only six plants resulted from the two single-flowered Banksias being crossed with “Lamarque,” “R. bengalensis” – fl. roseo (presumable “Old Blush”), “Fortune’s Double Yellow,” “Safrano” and two other unidentified cultivars. Of these the only plant to produce flowers was named “Ibrido di Castello”, the issue of R.banksia “Lutescens” x “Lamarque.” Dr Ragionieri describes the plant as hardier than its mother but less vigorous, the branches almost without prickles, the double white, very fragrant flowers about 7cm. in diameter borne singly or sometimes in clusters. They bloom successively and last several days “ to perfection.” This cultivar has recently been described by Charles Quest Ritson as “perhaps the prettiest of all the Banksian roses…. the flowers...cream at first fading to white, fully double, sometimes with a button eye, but always with many small petals inside…Their smell is delicious, a mixture of tea and violets.” Brent Dickerson also mentions this rose, citing information published by Trevor Griffiths in 1986. In fact, while no others plants could be traced in Italy, it seems to have travelled as far, certainly as Australia, and perhaps New Zealand, where Griffiths had his famous nursery. For when I mentioned to David Ruston – whose treasures in Renmark are today Australia’s National Collection of Roses – how sad Prof. Fineschi was at having lost his only plant of “Ibrido di Castello,” he replied “But, I have it!” Unfortunately, in the 2003-2004 inventory of David’s collection, this cultivar no longer appears and seemed irreparably lost. Some four or five years ago I met the fledgling American nurseryman Paul Zimmerman on his first visit to Cavriglia, and by chance related the above story. Paul was convinced that the “Ibrido di Castello” was still to be found in the USA and promised to investigate. Indeed it had survived there and Paul sent me two minute plants. One died, but the other has slowly but surely progressed. Hopefully by the end of this year a plantlet may return to the gazebo!
The second rose in question, to tell the truth, did not see the light of day in Italy, but its creator was very much Italian, and his fascinating life merits a digression. Emanuele Orazio Fenzi was born into a prominent family in Florence in 1843 and, although he inherited a bank from an uncle, it early became clear that he preferred botany and horticulture, turning the ancestral summer residence, Villa Sant’ Andrea in San Casciano, into a veritable botanical garden. He served in various honorary positions, also becoming President of the Royal Tuscan Society for Horticulture. And it was he who had reported the unexpected appearance of the single white and yellow flowers from the seeds of Dr. Baroni’s double Banksia in the Gardeners’ Chronicle of 1878. Clearly Fenzi’s heart was not in finance, for in 1891 the family bank failed. Thus in the same year Fenzi, his wife and three of their six children prudently emigrated to the USA, where he changed his name to Dr. Francesco Franceschi. (Today his granddaughter there, Gina, goes by the name of Franceshi Fenzi.) Here he was at last able to pursue the true passions of his life undisturbed, and in 1893 established the Southern California Acclimatizating Association in Montecito, where he wished to bring together in this Mediterranean climate exotics from around the globe. His particular interests included tropical fruits, especially avocado, loquats, persimmon and feijoia, but also bamboos, palms, cycads and numerous other plants with ornamental qualities.
In 1904 he acquired 40 acres of land on Mission Ridge, Santa Barbara, and there built his home, Montarioso, establishing another nursery, later known as the Montarioso Nursery, with the help of his son, Cammillo and his daughter Ernestina. Fenzi was a linguist and over the next years, thanks to an extensive, worldwide correspondence, he imported a vast quantity of foreign plants into California. He is today justly revered as one of its pioneering plantsmen. Certainly he must have been aware of work being done in Europe with the species rose R.gigantea, the seeds of which had first collected by Gen. Sir Henry Collet in Burma in 1888. The French Director of the Lisbon Botanic Garden, Henri Cayeux, crossed the gigantea with “Reine Marie-Henriette” to produce the hybrid gigantea, “Etoile de Portugal,” which flowered for the first time in 1903. He then used it as a pollen bearer, crossing it with “Souvenir de Léonie Viennot,” which produced “Belle Portugaise.” This magnificent – and fertile - variety was imported by Fenzi and gradually spread throughout the southern United States. Today it would appear to be the only hybrid gigantea created by Cayeux still in existence, and indeed popular, in the right climatic conditions. Another amateur rose breeder in Santa Barbara, the Rev. George Schoener, relates that, according to Cammillo Fenzi, his father however preferred importing seeds of the species R. gigantea directly from India around 1904. From these he produced a few hybrids, two of which were named after his properties, Montecito and Montarioso, both being the issue of the crossing R. moschata x R. gigantea, and tending very much to the mother plant. In 1913 Fenzi and his wife moved to colonial Libya, where the Italian government had offered him a position to develop an agricultural programme and introduce plants of agricultural and horticultural value. His untiring interest in plants led him to establish a nursery there also, and he was soon joined by Ernestina, who left the Montarioso Nursery in the hands of her brothers, Cammillo and Franco. Emanuele Orazio Fenzi died in Tripoli in 1924 at the age of eighty-one. “Montecito” would seem to be the only cultivar bred by Fenzi, which has withstood the vicissitudes of almost a century in his neglected Santa Barbara botanical collection, that somehow survived decline, lack of maintenance, depression and the world wars. This prodigious rose, a true historical memorial, may today be admired in the Huntington Botanical Gardens in California. It has also been imported into Italy a few years ago – Fenzi would surely have been delighted to know it flourishes in the country of his birth.
Notes: Castello is the name of Dr. Ragionieri’s hometown near Florence. A double white Banksia labelled “Banksia Baroni” is still to be found in the Municipal Rose Garden in Rome.
The Fenzi family clearly appears to have been related to that of the Corsini, for a nephew named Guido Corsini visited the Franceschi family and stayed with them for some time “in apparently impoverished simplicity.” A few years later an American friend (brother of the narrator, Popenoe) visiting Florence and decided to pay a call on his Italian acquaintance. “He came up against a marble palace, the magnificence of which rather startled him. Still it was the address Dr. Franceschi had given him…” Upon enquiring as to where Guido Corsini might be found, the liveried butler replied: “The Marquis is in.”
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However, on
the same gazebo until perhaps fifteen years ago, there used to be
another, less well-known Italian Banksian hybrid, “Ibrido di
Castello” (1920), the creation of Dr. Attilio Ragionieri. In an
article in The Gardeners’ Chronicle” of 1924 Dr. Ragionieri relates
having received two plants of the single Banksias, one white and one
yellow, descendents of those raised by the Director of the Botanic
Garden dei Semplici in Florence, Paolo Baroni, seeds harvested in
1868 from the double white R. banksia “Banksia” which had
annually produced an amount of fertile seeds. Cross fertilization
with the few available early-flowering roses proved frustrating for
Ragionieri, and rarely resulted in fruits and even more rarely in
fertile seeds – in one season from the seeds of fifty fruits, only
one plantlet was produced.