Question
Close up of rose
This rose was taken from a cutting at the house I grew up in. It flowers once a year like a banksia, the buds are pink, the flowers open white. The flowers are a little smaller than tennis balls, not tiny like the banks roses I am familiar with, and gorw in clusters of 3-5. They are not fragrant. It is a climbing rose about 25 feet in length, but grows like an octopus. It has thorns, which are like needles, not dense on the stems, but very sharp. The leaves are narrow rather than rounded.
AnswerBecause every year at least 200 roses are introduced then it become only a guess at what the rose is. And there have been many white roses such as you describe over the years. What I can tell you for certain is that it is what is called a Wichuraiana rambler. Because of the size of the flowers, it is a more recent one. There were many of these types bred in France by a man named Barbier starting in the early 1900's. These ramblers grow all over the place and have thin flexible canes and if not trained can become a real messy puzzle. One of the beauties of this type of rose is that you can cut them right back to the base in the spring and they will start all over again. Then you can train it the way you want it to grow.
