CROATIAN FLORA – ROSES, Bistrica

BISTRICA The Bistrica variety is a shrub rose of upright growth and golden-yellow flowers with a pleasant scent. It can be used as an ornament in the garden or as a cut flower because the cut flowers stay fresh in the water for a long time. Bistrica belongs to the so-called hybrid tea roses. Hybrid tea roses are the largest and most widespread group of roses, popular due to the great variety of colors and shades of flowers and frequent flowering. They are also very popular as cut flowers since their stalks are strong, straight, long and erect and mostly bear a single, beautifully shaped flower. The size of the flower varies from 8 to as much as 18 cm in diameter. The flowers are characterized by a pleasant scent. The height of the shrub depends on the variety and varies from 40 to 150 cm. It is believed that the first hybrid tea rose was the La France variety, which was discovered by accident by gardener Pierre Giullot in 1867. It combines a number of desirable properties: repeat-flowering, elegant buds that open into large flowers and good resistance to frost. The development of this group was greatly contributed to by the Englishman Henry Bennett, who began with the systematic hybridization and selection of roses in 1879. Since then, the number of new varieties has grown rapidly and nowadays the majority of newly created varieties of roses comes from the group of tea roses. The creator of the Bistrica variety is Josip Rogin (1947-2020), a writer, gardener and rose-enthusiast. Rogin has dedicated his entire life to roses, and during decades of rose hybridization and cultivation, following the example of the famous English rose breeder David Austin, he created a Croatian collection of roses with more than 20 new varieties. Some of them are grown in the Botanical Garden of the Faculty of Science of the University of Zagreb. The Bistrica rose was bred from the Doris Tysterman variety, a tea rose with orange flowers combined with a yellow hue. The Bistrica variety was named after the shrine of Our Lady of Bistrica in Marija Bistrica, where in 1994 it was first promoted for the Feast of the Assumption.