The Cherokee cultivated this 'wild white rose'. They were, after all, a settled people—gardeners and farmers. In 1804, Thomas Jefferson noted in his journal for the 29th of April, "planted seeds of the Cherokee rose from Govr. Milledge (John Milledge of Georgia) in a row of about 6. f. near the N.E. corner of the Nursery. Goliah stuck sticks to mark the place."
The Cherokee rose is found from North Carolina south into Florida and west into Texas. There are gaps in the rose's American history. Native to China, the rose was introduced in 1759 probably by an English planter (plantation owner). Sometime thereafter, both the Cherokee and settlers planted the roses around their homes.
The Cherokee rose is easy to propagate from cuttings, a hand-me-down plant from gardener to gardener. It is robust and tolerates droughty soils. It thrives despite neglect and persists around old homesites. Where the rose finds climate and soils suitable, it escapes. It is not surprising then that when Andre Michaux found it growing wild, he declared it native to the southern U.S. In 1803, Michaux published its name as Rosa laevigata, the smooth rose.
The Cherokee rose is anything but smooth. The strong canes grow to 5 meters or more and are armed with large, reddish-orange prickles. Even the hips are bristly. The evergreen leaflets are in threes. The flowers arise singly along the canes in early spring. In "The Flowering Shrubs and Trees of Hong Kong", G.A.C. Herklots wrote, "...this species is at its best during the last ten days of March and the first ten days of April." The jin ying zi blooms about the same time in Florida.
In 1838-39, the rose became symbolic of the genocide called the Trail of Tears. By legend, the rose was said to spring from the tears of mothers unable to save their children during the forced winter march. In reality, the reliable Cherokee rose was sold through southern nurseries shortly before and after the Civil War. In Alabama's 'Black Belt', the counties with the deepest, most productive soils, the rose only furthered the abject poverty. It colonized hundreds of acres rendering the land useless for crops and pasture.
The confusion of the Cherokee rose's nativity lasted well into the twentieth century. In 1916, the Georgia legislature passed a resolution which read in part, "Whereas, The Cherokee Rose, having its origin among the aborigines of the northern portion of the State of Georgia, is indigenous to its soil, and grows with equal luxuriance in every county of the State, Be it therefore...resolved...adopted...and declared to be the floral emblem of the State of Georgia."
Such a rose, the jin ying zi—wild, adopted by natives and a state, a nuisance, an old garden rose that remains behind to testify where a gardener once lived. No one today in their right mind would plant this robust rose for only 20 days of flowers in the early spring.
But if you grow roses in a warm climate, then a bit of the Cherokee lives in your garden. It was the seed parent of John Fortune's rose, Rosa X 'fortuniana'. It is the understock for grafting the myriad of hybrid roses that grace southern gardens. The Cherokee parent of the rootstock imparts vigor to roses that otherwise could not grow in the heat and humidity.
(Compiled from: "Wild Roses", Peter Beales, Botanica's Encyclopedia of Roses, Gordon Cheers, Mynah Press through Random House of Australia, 1998; "91. Rosa laevigata Michaux", Cuizhi Gu, Chaoluan Li, K.R. Robertson, et al, Flora of China, Vol.9, Page 380, eFloras.org,; "The Flowering Shrubs and Trees of Hong Kong, Part V, Rosaceae" G.A.C. Herklots, The Hong Kong Naturalist, June 1934; "Georgia State Flower: Cherokee Rose", State History Guide, 2003; The Garden and Farm Books of Thomas Jefferson, Robert C. Baron, ed., Fulcrum Inc., Golden, Colorado, 1987; "Phylogenetic Analyses of Genus Rosa: Polyphyly of Section Pimpinellifoliae and Origin of Rosa X fortuniana Lindl", S. Matsumoto, H. Nishio, Y. Ueda, H. Fukui, Third International Symposium on Rose Research and Cultivation, N. Zieslin and H. Agbaria, eds., Acta Horticulturae, 2001; "Rose of the Month: Fortuniana", Malcolm Manners, The American Rose Society, 1998.)
