Vita Sackville-Westさんのイラストまとめ

There seems to have existed once a rose known as the Velvet Rose. Nobody knows with any certainty what particular rose was meant by this name, but it is supposed that it must have been a Gallica. Nobody knows the place of its origin:

For evidence of its antiquity we can trace a long enough pedigree through history, mythology, literature and art. It has its name in Sanskrit; it appears in sculptures in Assyria and Egypt; it is mentioned in the Old Testament and in the Odyssey. https://t.co/kSIcFuktGK

[Some Flowers'37] The original zinnia, Zinnia elegans, was introduced into European countries in 1796, and since then has been ‘improved’ into the garden varieties we now know and grow. https://t.co/G0IE1JG9J6

[Some Flowers'37] Rosa moyesii is a Chinese rose, and it looks it. If ever a plant reflected all that we had ever felt about the delicacy, lyricism, and design of a Chinese drawing, Rosa moyesii is that plant.

I suppose her alleged femininity is due to her elegance and neatness, with her little white shirt so jimply tucked inside her striped jacket; but she is really more like a slender boy, a slim little officer dressed in a parti-coloured uniform of the Renaissance.

—trying to make her way home from the little colony at the foot of Table Mountain. The canny Yorkshiremen picked them up, since when Vallota has always been familiarly known as the Scarborough Lily. https://t.co/h2XaK9wj8p

The only question is which rose are we to regard as the true York-and-Lancaster? For the one which most people hail cheerfully by that name in gardens, very often turns out to be not York-and-Lancaster at all, but Rosa Mundi.

[Some Flowers’37] Rosa Mundi —The Wars of the Roses being fortunately now over, making one war the less for us to reckon with, we are left to the simple enjoyment of the flower which traditionally stmbolizes that historic contest.

Why the Christmas rose, which is white, should be called black in Latin I could not imagine until I discovered that the adjective referred to the root; but I still cannot imagine why people do not grow both these varieties more freely. https://t.co/7x4onUA1Z9

[Some Flowers'37] Like the other members of its family, the stateliest of them all—Fritillaria imperialis, the Crown Imperial—has the habit of hanging its head so that you have to turn it up towards before you can see into it at all. https://t.co/p2wGuA4NGG