Spectacular Pink. Rubus spectabilis, Salmonberry or Shewy Bramble, Stadspark, Groningen, The Netherlands
This is the Shewy Bramble imported to Europe in 1827 and soon grown here from seed collected on the West Coast of North America by David Douglas. Disappointed, the then premier botanist of England, John Lindley (1799-1865), wrote in Edwards’s Botanical Register (1831): “… it was supposed to be one of the most valuable species in his (= Douglas's, RP) collection. The plants, however, that have hitherto flowered are by no means so beautiful as they were expected to be. Their petals, indeed, are of a rich deep rose colour, and the foliage is of a bright fresh green; but the blossoms are produced too sparingly to cause a striking effect… We, however, feel confident that R. spectabilis will, as it grows older, vindicate its claim to beauty; for in the wild specimens we find the leaves three or four times as large, and the flowers produced in great profusion.”
This North-American Rambler had first been described by the English-German naturalist Frederick Traugott Pursh (1774-1820) in his great flora of 1814. He’d forecast it to become of ‘the first rank in ornamental gardening’. A decade later in 1824, our Douglas – that ‘untiring traveller’ some of whose exploits I mentioned exactly a year ago today in a description of Ribes sanguineum – saw our Rubus not far from Fort Vancouver in the West and he collected its seed, sending it to Ireland and to England. There his patrons of the Royal Horticultural Society were sorely disappointed...
I don’t know exactly when Rubus spectabilis, Salmonberry, was introduced to The Netherlands. This particular plant is in the new area of the Stadspark in Groningen which is a decade or so old. Its stalks were still bare a few days ago, but yesterday this delightful, and to my eye: spectacular blossom and its foliage had freshly opened up.
Spectacular Pink. Rubus spectabilis, Salmonberry or Shewy Bramble, Stadspark, Groningen, The Netherlands
This is the Shewy Bramble imported to Europe in 1827 and soon grown here from seed collected on the West Coast of North America by David Douglas. Disappointed, the then premier botanist of England, John Lindley (1799-1865), wrote in Edwards’s Botanical Register (1831): “… it was supposed to be one of the most valuable species in his (= Douglas's, RP) collection. The plants, however, that have hitherto flowered are by no means so beautiful as they were expected to be. Their petals, indeed, are of a rich deep rose colour, and the foliage is of a bright fresh green; but the blossoms are produced too sparingly to cause a striking effect… We, however, feel confident that R. spectabilis will, as it grows older, vindicate its claim to beauty; for in the wild specimens we find the leaves three or four times as large, and the flowers produced in great profusion.”
This North-American Rambler had first been described by the English-German naturalist Frederick Traugott Pursh (1774-1820) in his great flora of 1814. He’d forecast it to become of ‘the first rank in ornamental gardening’. A decade later in 1824, our Douglas – that ‘untiring traveller’ some of whose exploits I mentioned exactly a year ago today in a description of Ribes sanguineum – saw our Rubus not far from Fort Vancouver in the West and he collected its seed, sending it to Ireland and to England. There his patrons of the Royal Horticultural Society were sorely disappointed...
I don’t know exactly when Rubus spectabilis, Salmonberry, was introduced to The Netherlands. This particular plant is in the new area of the Stadspark in Groningen which is a decade or so old. Its stalks were still bare a few days ago, but yesterday this delightful, and to my eye: spectacular blossom and its foliage had freshly opened up.