Last week Ted and his team planted the rose Lubra in the Australian Leaf. It is a Hybrid Tea rose bred from Ophelia and Alistair Clarke’s Black Boy. It was bred by Mrs Olive Rose Fitzhardinge and released on the market in 1938. Lubra does not refer to any particular aboriginal maiden. The name alludes to it being a darker and more elegant descendant of Black Boy.
Mrs Fitzhardinge came from a wealthy New South Wales family and started breeding roses in 1920. She was the first Australian to patent her work. Patents were the precursor to Plant Breeders Rights, protecting the plant and its name. (PBR came in in 1987). She bred twenty thousand seedlings in ten years of which only 12 were satisfactory. With changing fashions, only four of the 12 are known to be in existence and two of these are in danger of extinction. The four are Warrawee, Lubra, Prudence and Lady Edgeworth David.
We have Warrawee as well as Lubra in the Leaf. Warrawee was named after the gated suburb (and society) where the Fitzhardinges lived from 1917 to 1937. All Sydney North Shore suburbs had aboriginal names and Warrawee was originally only a railway station.
If you wish to see Lady Edgeworth David you will have to go to Bacchus Marsh where the rose is in the Maddingley Park, Nieuwesteeg Heritage Rose Garden, collection. At present the only known plant of Prudence is held by John Nieuwesteeg at Yellingbo in the National Plant Collections Register of significant Australian rose cultivars. Appointments only.
If you wish to know more about Mrs Fitzhardinge, I suggest you google her. There is a very good Wikipedia article there. An interesting lady.
