Rosa ‘Annie Vibert’

Horticultural & Botanical History

Bred by Vibert in 1828, but I have found no reference to the rose in the Victorian literature.  The description is similar to the freely available ‘Aimée Vibert’, synonym ‘Bouquet de la Marié’, also introduced by Vibert in 1828.  It is possible that ‘Annie’ is a corruption of ‘Aimée’ but the first reference I have found to ‘Aimée Vibert’ in the Macarthur papers is a notebook from about 1863.  Mrs Gore describes Vibert’s ‘Sarmentous Noisette’, with middle-sized, very double, flesh-coloured, almost white flowers, which could be Annie Vibert.  Certainly the description of sarmentous growth is very reminiscent of the growth of the modern ‘Aimée Vibert’.

History at Camden Park

Listed in the 1850 and 1857 catalogues [T.900/1850].  Obtained from Kew Gardens, brought out from England by Captain P. P. King in 1849.  Regarded by Macarthur as new to the colony.  [ML A1980-3].  ‘Aimée Vibert’ was described growing in the private garden of Charles Moor, Director of the Sydney Botanic Garden, in 1864.  [NSW Hort. Mag. vol. 1, p.44/1864].

Notes

In 1854 Thomas Rivers wrote: ‘Noisette Roses have declined in favour; there are, however, still a few distinct and pretty varieties quite worthy of being retained in the rose garden.  The two pretty white roses, Aimée Vibert and Miss Glegg, the latter slightly tinted with rose, are among them; they are both dwarf and compact in their habits, and form pretty bushes.’  Elsewhere he comments that the dwarf kind of Noisettes, such as Aimée Vibert and Fellenberg, make pretty bushes for beds.  Paul recommends Aimée Vibert for pot culture or as a standard, and in the first edition of The Rose Garden considers it to be good for bedding.  It is difficult to reconcile these descriptions with the rose grown today under this name.  Typical of modern descriptions is that by Thomas in 1994 in The Graham Stuart Thomas Rose Book: ‘It is a climber to 15 feet when trained on a wall or a shrub, but can well remain as an ordinary loose bush, covered with some of the most beautiful rose foliage, dark green, deeply veined, glossy, long-pointed and serrated, and gracefully poised.  Great, branching, nearly thornless, brownish shoots are thrown out during the summer, bearing a truss of blooms at the end, and clothed well in leaves. […] It is, after all, the only perpetually-flowering rambler of any quality.’  This is clearly not the rose described by Rivers and others 150 years earlier.  The mystery is explained by William Paul, writing in The Florist in 1869:  ‘If by skilful and natural cultivation the vigour of a rose can be increased and maintained (witness Climbing Aimée Vibert and Climbing Devoniensis) surely it is probable that the converse is equally true, that by unnatural and unskilful cultivation the vigour may be diminished and lost.’  As early as 1863, in the 2nd Edition of The Rose Garden, he describes ‘Aimée Vibert Scandens’ as resembling ‘Aimée Vibert’ but of more vigorous growth.  It would seem that the original dwarf bush rose has been lost, probably well before 1911, as Les Plus Belles Roses au début du XXe Siécle describes ‘Aimée Vibert’ as a vigorous climbing rose.  The rose sold today should be more correctly called ‘Climbing Aimée Vibert’.  [Rivers (1854, 1857, 1863), Paul (1848, 1863, 1888, 1903), Amat].