Renowned Rosarian Coming to Charleston SC
Dr. Malcolm Manners will be at Cypress Gardens February 22 to give a lecture in the morning
at Fruitmania GS and he will give a program in the afternoon on Old Garden
Roses at 2 pm. Tickets for just Dr. Manner’s rose program will be $10 which
includes admission to the Gardens.
Dr. Malcolm Manners is a Professor of Horticultural Science
at Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida, where he teaches courses in
general horticulture, tropical fruits, horticultural pests and diseases, plant
physiology, and plant nutrition. Since 1984, he has managed FSC’s rose mosaic
virus heat therapy program, which cures roses of virus disease and makes
healthy propagating material available to the nursery industry.
In conjunction with that program, he manages a collection of
approximately 200 rose varieties, in two campus gardens and the college
greenhouses. Most of the certified mosaic free old garden roses now grown in
the U.S. came through the Florida Southern program. In 2013, Dr. Manners was
honored as a Great Rosarians of the World.
The Great Rosarians of the World™ lecture series was founded in 2001 to
honor and celebrate the men and women who have contributed to our understanding
and love of our national flower, the Rose. In 1990, he imported a collection of
Bermuda’s “mystery roses,” and it is from FSC’s gardens that much of the U.S.
stock of these roses has been propagated. He has also worked closely with
molecular biologist D. Nancy Morvillo at Florida Southern, researching the
relationships of various roses, especially the older Noisettes, with DNA
analysis.
