Tombstone's Lady Banksia

In the patio of the Rose Tree Inn in Tombstone, this famous Lady Banksia bush was planted when Helldorado town about ended its blood-and-thunder chapter in the history of the west. Each year it sends forth hundreds of thousands of blossoms to fill the desert air with fragrance. Each spring thousands of travelers come to see it bloom.

Lady Banksia a very pretty thing indeed came from far away Scotland to Tombstone, during the afterglow of the early boom-days, for the sole purpose of beautifying the drab, adobe-walled patio of a mining man's home.

That this prim but dainty climbing white rose quietly but purposefully fulfilled her mission is attested by the fact that she is still there, after more than a half-century, gracing the patio with her charm and beauty.

Tombstone's heyday treasure-chest of silver and gold was delved into by the eager hands of investors both nearby and far afield, among them being some stout-hearted Britons, whose capital helped to ferret out wealth in the rugged hills.

One such enterprise was the Old Guard Company, the prospectus of which had attracted the adventurous pounds sterling of the Star Syndicate of London. One day this Syndicate sent a Dr. George C. Willis to Tombstone to represent its interests there, and it was his tragic destiny to be murdered by a quick-shooting disgruntled associate, in front of the OK Corral and Livery stable, in Allen street.

Another such representative of foreign capital was H. M. Gee, who also was sent out from London to look after his firm's equity to use an idiom of the time and place “the argentiferous and auriferous dips, spurs, angles and appurtenances” of the mining exploration in which it had ininvested. But not only did he avoid dying in a blast of gunfire in the busy streets, but enjoyed a pleasant tenure there, because he was accompanied by his Scottish bride.

When these newlyweds arrived in town, Tombstone had overcome its growing pains and was enjoying a comparative peace and dignity following two major fires, while it presumed to try to forget about its gory youthful reputation.

Geronimo and his bloodthirsty Apache band had been captured; the Earps had scattered; their triggerman, Dr. John H. Holliday, had coughed away the last of a misspent life in a tubercular ward; and Curly Bill Brocious had ceased shooting at preachers, due to having died of lead poisoning or measles or had fled over the nearby frontier, anyway, he was gone.

Crime's belligerent red laugh had retracted to a mere smirk when Mining Man Gee and his wife took up residence in a sturdy one-story structure at Fourth and Toughnut. But, regardless of this and despite the shady cottonwoods along some of the streets where sump water gurgled down the gutters from the mine on the hillsides; although the waxen "Candle of the Lord" bloomed on the slender stalk of the abundant yucca round about; although the myriad of saguaros gave man a brief springtime glimpse of their lily-like flower; and the redtipped ocotillo waved gently in the breeze the lack of lawns and parks, of bluebells and heather, may have made Tombstone seem to the Scottish girl harsh and drab. Perhaps Mrs. Gee expressed such a plaintive note in a letter to her homeland, for there was sent from her native heath a shrub which she knew, which she planted in the adobe-walled patio; and it flourished, grew through the years to its present treelike proportions, and each succeeding springtime has poured forth a profusion of snowwhite flowers.

A native of China, the Banksia rose is a definite species by itself, and is believed to have been carried to the British Isles by some forgotten windjammer which sailed the seven seas more than one hundred twenty-five years ago. When transplanted to the United States of America, it was found to thrive out of doors in the south, in California and the southwest. This slender, picturesque climbing shrub grows rapidly, with a glossy dark green foliage in three-leaflet groups, with few thorns; and during its once-a-year prolific blooming season, from April to May, it showers forth an amazing profusion of white blossoms, with a perceptible violet fragrance.

Its flowers approximate one inch in diameter or about the circumference of a fifty-cent piece and are grouped together in clusters, with each bloom supported by a pedicle or stem. Each such group of these little white roses is called an umbel, because the supporting stems of each bloom, fanned out from the stalk, resemble the ribs of an umbrella. In fact, the "rose tree in the desert" in the patio of the Rose Tree Inn, spreading its thick foliage over the large supporting arbor, gives the impression of a huge green and white umbrella.

Tombstone's white Lady Banksia is no less a poem than which proclaims: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," and it has richly earned a share in the tribute paid to the Rose by the ancients in the Sapphic ode which sang: Would Jove appoint some flower to reign In matchless beauty on the plain, The rose, (mankind will all agree), The Rose, the Queen of Flowers should be. Its beauties charm the gods above; Its fragrance is the breath of love; It shines in blooming splendor gay, While zephyrs on its bosom play.

About the time of the planting of the white Lady Banksia in Tombstone, the yellow banner of the gold standard was hoisted over the White House, which proved to be an insignia of sorrow for the silver centers of the west. When the Harrison Act depressed the price of silver, mining became greatly curtailed. During the shutdown at Tombstone, underground water flooded much of the workings; there was a run on the banks; and two of the large mining plants, the Contention and the Grand Central, were destroyed by fire.

Pursued by these catastrophies, many Tombstoners joined a general hejira to other places-but Lady Banksia, which came to grace the mud-walled patio, remained and has continued each springtime ever since to mingle her sweetness with the desert air. For more than fifty years she has fulfilled her lovely mission, until now the little root from over the seas has grown a trunk of more than forty inches in circumference, to a height of nine feet, from which countless branches spread out and cover an area of more than 250 square feet, over an arbor supported by fifty posts. She begins in the first part of April to put forth her white buds, and in the course of the season bears literally hundreds of thousands of fragrant blossoms. The white Lady Banksia was not "born to blush unseen and waste her sweetness on the desert air." It is renowned far and wide as "The world's largest rose bush," where 150 people can easily be seated in its shade at one time and has been seen by thousands of travelers who have stopped to enjoy the hospitality of the Rose Tree Inn-which was once the abode of the mining man from London and his Scottish bride.

Tombstone's famed Lady Banksia rose bush, brought from Scotland fifty years ago, will be in glorious bloom in April. Said to be the largest rose bush in the world, it has a spread of two hundred and fifty square feet, with a stalk nine feet high and forty inches in diameter. Its story is one of adventure and romance.