Frau Karl Drüschki (Hybrid Perpetual) [Merveille de Lyon x Mme Caroline Testout] (SJH)

An American catalogue said, "Its only fault is an overexuberant growth for a small space. It requires hard-hearted pruning to keep it of manageable size." Druschki and the other vigorous Hybrid Perpetuals are not "overexuberant" in Europe, not solely because they are budded from flowering wood, which in itself has a tendency to moderate the growth, but mostly because they are budded on a rootstock, R. canina, which, not being overvigorous, checks the exuberant tendency. This practice is the counterpart of that in which special rootstocks are used to produce dwarf fruit trees. A pear variety, for instance, that grafted on quince will always remain a bush, may grow into a large tree when grafted on some other rootstock.

Lambert says it is a grave error to bud Hybrid Perpetuals on Multiflora, which forces an extraordinary wood growth at the expense of bloom. As Hybrid Perpetuals are coming back into use in Germany he is now experimenting with various rootstocks to dwarf the Hybrid Perpetuals on the same principle as dwarfing fruits. I wonder what kind of Druschki plants would grow if budded on R. rouletti, which experiment I am going to do this summer.

Peter Lambert by J. H. Nicolas