The Butterfly Rose at Elizabeth Farm

This is rosa mutabilis, also known as the Butterfly Rose, a shrub-rose found in the house’s eastern garden. One of the China roses, it’s also known as rosa chinensis mutabilis.

The ‘mutabilis’ in the name refers to the changing colour: the 5-petalled, single-form flowers start orange, then open to a soft pink. Unlike many flowers that fade as they age, they then darken to a magenta. The colours bounce of the new stems and foliage which are a red-bronze colour. Growing in an open habit and up to 6 feet in ideal conditions, it flowers throughout the year except in cold winters.

In China they are known as Yuejihua - ‘month season flower’¹ - a reference to their year-round flowering. At Elizabeth Farm it’s rare to see rosa mutabilis without at least a few blooms, except when it receives its annual winter trim, and they are used in vases inside the house. China roses began to appear in European gardens as far back as the 1500s, and in the late 1700s new varieties together with tea roses arrived in Britain. In 1843 a China rose was listed in the catalogue of William Macarthur’s nursery at Camden Park.

In 1825 Edward Macarthur in England sent 2 large boxes of plants to his brother William in Sydney, including 20 roses. A China rose – likely the pale pink variety also growing at Elizabeth Farm today – became a popular garden plant around Parramatta. In 1848 Elizabeth Macarthur wrote to Edward that:

…The China rose introduced into the Colony by your dear father, is now blooming into [a blaze?] of beauty around the Garden fences and in various places now almost in every Cottage – yet though become common it is still a lovely plant – and Evergreen – the foliage soft and flexible and yielding flowers, more or less, throughout the year – We have a variety of other Roses – sweet scented – and beautiful in their season – but not so enduring…²

The butterfly rose is a hybrid of the China rose; the World Federation of Rose Societies (R. chinensis mutabilis was entered in its hall of fame in 2012³) records that it was identified ca.1894 by the Henri Correvon, a Swiss botanist, in the famous gardens of Isola Bella, an island in Lake Maggiore, Italy.

Grow this scented rose in full sun and dead-head to encourage new flowers - though if left the spent heads will form an orange-coloured hip.