Remontancy is the ability of a plant to flower more than once during the course of a growing season or year. It is a term applied most specifically to

roses A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be e ...

, and roses possessing this ability are called "repeat flowering" or remontant. The term originated in the nineteenth century from the French verb ''remonter'' or 'coming up again'.''Dictionary of the English Language'', Collins, 1979, p1235 Roses which lack this ability are termed "summer flowering", "once flowering" or non-remontant. Few wild rose species possess remontancy; notable exceptions being ''

Rosa chinensis ''Rosa chinensis'' (), known commonly as the China rose, Chinese rose, or Bengal rose, is a member of the genus ''Rosa'' native to Southwest China in Guizhou, Hubei, and Sichuan Provinces. The first publication of ''Rosa chinensis'' was in 1768 b ...

'', ''

Rosa rugosa ''Rosa rugosa'' (rugosa rose, beach rose, Japanese rose, Ramanas rose, or letchberry) is a species of rose native to eastern Asia, in northeastern China, Japan, Korea and southeastern Siberia, where it grows on beach coasts, often on sand dunes. ...

'' and ''

Rosa fedtschenkoana ''Rosa fedtschenkoana'' is a species in the plant genus ''Rosa'' in the family Rosaceae. Some authorities consider it a synonym of ''Rosa webbiana''. It is native to the foothills of the Ala Tau, Tian Shan and Pamir-Alai mountain ranges in cen ...

''. As remontancy is considered a desirable horticultural characteristic, it is preferentially selected for by rose hybridisers. Remontant roses descended from ''Rosa chinensis'' have been grown in China for at least a thousand years,Quest-Ritson, C. & Quest-Ritson, B., ''The Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Roses'', Dorling Kindersley, 2003. but the first garden roses in Europe to possess remontancy were the autumn damasks, which first appeared in the seventeenth century with the introduction of the

cultivar A cultivar is a type of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and when propagated retain those traits. Methods used to propagate cultivars include: division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue culture, ...

'Quatre Saisons'. Recent DNA research has shown that these damask roses resulted from crosses involving ''

Rosa gallica ''Rosa gallica'', the Gallic rose, French rose, or rose of Provins, is a species of flowering plant in the rose family, native to southern and central Europe eastwards to Turkey and the Caucasus. ''Rosa gallica'' was one of the first species of r ...

'', ''

Rosa moschata ''Rosa moschata'', the musk rose, is a species of rose which has been long in cultivation. Its wild origins are uncertain but are suspected to lie in the western Himalayas. Description ''Rosa moschata'' is a shrub (to 3m) with single white 5&nb ...

'' and the remontant central Asian species ''Rosa fedtschenkoana''. When forms of ''Rosa chinensis'' were introduced into Europe in the late eighteenth century, subsequent hybridisation between these and the European roses eventually led to the wide variety of remontant garden hybrids which are available today.

References

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