Garden plants and their hunters – John Champney
Sometime after the turn of the 19th century, a South Carolinian rice farmer, John Champneys received a blush china rose (Rosa chinensis) from his friend and neighbour, Philippe Noisette.
Feeling adventurous, Champneys crossed this China rose with what is believed to be a musk rose (Rosa moschata) and the liaison between the two resulted in ‘Champneys' pink cluster’, the first major contribution to the rose family by an American grower. Champneys then presented seedlings of ‘Champneys' pink cluster’ back to his friend, Philippe Noisette.
Noisette had come to Charleston from France, via Haiti, in the early 1800s and served as the superintendent of the South Carolina Medical Society's Botanical Garden. He was a distinguished horticulturist in his own right. Noisette sowed the seeds from his gift, developing the blush rose Noisette, which he sent to his brother Louis, a nurseryman back in Paris. Louis knew immediately that they had a hit on their hands and raised as many of the roses from seed as he could, hiring people to guard them at night for fear that they would be stolen from his nursery before he could launch them onto the European market.
Champneys' pink cluster, the blush rose Noisette, and the many seedlings raised from them both, established a new class of roses named Noisette which travelled across the United States and parts of Europe like wildfire. The roses, with their soft pink shades and glorious fragrances are still produced, reproduced and hybridised today.
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