Rosa Pimpinellifolia, The Scots Rose. (1)

Many years ago, a dear friend, an octogenarian at the time, offered me a tiny rose sapling which the birds, no doubt, had helped to seed onto her drive. I took it home and potted it up, nurturing it carefully till it was sturdy enough to be planted out. She had referred to it as one of the cabbage roses, so-called because the flower-heads bear numerous thin overlapping petals.

I have learned since that it has a fascinating history, long associated with Scotland, and is known as a cheerful little Scots Rose or Burnet Rose, greatly favoured by Gertrude Jekyll, who frequently used them in her gardens. Scottish nurserymen were the first to raise the double forms of this species, named on the RHS database as Rosa Pimpinellifolia. In Scandinavia it is associated with Midsummer and is known as the Midsummer Rose or St John’s Rose.

A Rose-Bud By My Early Walk

A rose-bud, by my early walk,

Adown a corn-enclosèd bawk,

Sae gently bent its thorny stalk,

All on a dewy morning.

Ere twice the shades o' dawn are fled,

In a' its crimson glory spread,

And drooping rich the dewy head,

It scents the early morning.
Robert Burns.