The same affliction also applies to rose literature, my seriously overpopulated collection being extended by the fascinating story related by Andrea di Robilant in Chasing the Rose.
This is not your run-of-the-mill rose book, full of botanic facts, technical details and beautiful pictures of beautiful roses.
Instead it is a true story of the Italian author's search for a rose that dates back to the days of the divorced wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Empress Josephine,
a compulsive collector and grower of hundreds of roses at her Chateau de la Malmaison until her death in 1814.
Di Robilant's book is based on his fascination with a rose he dubs ''Rose Mocenigo'', named after his great-great-great-great-grandmother Lucia Mocenigo, who was a close friend of Josephine and who treated Malmaison as her second home.
When Lucia left Paris in 1814 and returned to Venice, she took with her a collection of rose seeds, cuttings and plants from her friend. And, in a family estate/village known as Alvisopoli, created by her husband Alvise, she planted them all.
Sadly, Alvisopoli fell into disrepair, to be converted into a low-income housing project in the 1980s. When author di Robilant made a ''belated pilgrimage'' to the old family property he found a beautiful rose growing in an area of scrub.
He was given a cutting and planted it in the garden of his home in Rome. The rose thrived and after he discovered, by accident, an old diary belonging to Lucia Mocenigo, he is ''transported to a world that seemed in the throes of a mad love affair with roses even as it was falling apart.''
Di Robilant's quest to trace the ancestry of this pink rose begins.
The search leads him on a remarkable journey, in which he meets all manner of rose experts and interesting characters, providing him with more than enough material to help write this excellent book.
Dave Cannan is ODT day editor and an Otago Rose Society committee member.
