Rugosa Uber Alles

tephralynn predicted it, and now it hath come to pass. A plant that looks suspiciously like The Rose From Hell is coming up in a new spot alongside the paved driveway.

The Rose From Hell is a rugosa rose shrub with the most beautiful, and fragrant, big pink single roses. Its official name is Nearly Wild, assuming the "Nearly Wild" lived and what we have isn't just coming up from some even more wild root stock. Sometimes that happens. So many of your commercial rose plants are grafted. If the graft dies, the root might not, but what comes up from the root isn't what you thought you were getting.

Whatever it is, The Rose From Hell earned its name from its horrific thorns, sharp and plentiful enough to discourage even the rabbits and the deer; its ability to survive, nay, even thrive in conditions that should kill off any self-respecting ornamental plant; its ability to shrug off insect attacks (even total destruction only results in even more, even greener canes and flowers) and its relentless expansionism. It sends runners under the ground and comes up in the damndest places; against the pine tree, in the middle of the lawn, and of course all up and down the paved driveway beside which I planted it.

So Rose From Hell coming up alongside the driveway is nothing new. What's new is that this time it came up along the SOUTH edge of the driveway. Which means it took a deep breath and took a dive beneath a 14-foot-wide concrete slab, to come up again on the opposite side.

I'm impressed.