Frank Riethmuller was an Australian rose breeder.

Toowoomba

The last child of poor German immigrant farmers, Francis Lewis Riethmuller (known as Frank) was born on 10 February 1884 in Glenvale, then a village near (now a suburb of) Toowoomba

Toowoomba, Queensland

Toowoomba is a city in Southern Queensland, Australia. It is located west of Queensland's capital city, Brisbane. With an estimated district population of 128,600, Toowoomba is Australia's second largest inland city and its largest non-capital inland city...

, Queensland. When dealing with Germans, he reverted to writing Riethmüller. In Australia, the first syllable is pronounced Reith but never spelt that way.

Chronically prone to bronchitis, Riethmuller had to live mostly outdoors. He spent two years as a State-funded pupil at Toowoomba Grammar

Toowoomba Grammar School

Toowoomba Grammar School is an independent, non-denominational, day and boarding grammar school for boys, in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia....

: every surname in the class was Anglo-Celtic except his. He worked 1898–1905 as an assistant teacher at Glencoe, Queensland, Glenvale and Charters Towers

Charters Towers, Queensland

Charters Towers is a city in northern Queensland, Australia. It is located 137 kilometres inland from Townsville on the Flinders Highway. In 2006 the population was 7,979 people, some 450 fewer than in the 2001 census. During the last quarter of the 19th century the town boomed as the rich gold...

, a gold-mining town.

North Queensland

Moving to Charters Towers was the start of a life-long search for somewhere to breathe properly. Eventually his bronchitis became so bad that he spent 1906–07 back at his parents', too sick to work. He returned at 23 to Charters Towers and worked 1908–13 as a bookkeeper to a butcher; bad health brought the job to an end, as it did most of his Queensland jobs. Charters Towers was said to be "good for his asthma"; it also had a big German-speaking population. Writing and speaking German, and devoted to his German inheritance, he may have found the First World War difficult. He was probably too unwell to join the army, though he trained in the CMF. Many people of German descent were persecuted, though Riethmuller was not interned.

From 1914 to 1918 he worked mostly as a Townsville tobacconist's shop assistant, sometimes as a clerk on a station outside Richmond. Two of these North Queensland businesses would have been good fronts for illicit betting shops, but only his later career implies that may have been the case. At any rate, for the rest of his life he presented the appearance of a well-bred and well-dressed gentleman, comfortably off.

Career in Sydney

After four months of enforced idleness boarding in a Brisbane pub, he moved in 1918 to Sydney and found a job as a "confidential clerk", code for a bookmaker's penciller. It was open-air work he was outstandingly good at and he never looked back.

He is a mathematical genius and is able to tell a bookmaker by a glance at his sheets how he stands in regard to any particular race.

As well as recording bets, he had to collect losing ones on Monday, settlement day. This was work for which his calm and gentlemanly manner was an asset. Riethmuller was making £1000 a year for working two or three days a week when the average annual salary of a clerk was about £370. He was possibly a silent partner in the bookmaking business as well. It was an income and career he kept up through the depression and the war till he retired in 1945. He allowed people to infer that he was clever with shares, but he made safe investments in land, treasury bonds, banks and firms as safe as banks.

Riethmuller only had two employers, both very well known Sydney bookmakers. Jim Hackett was the between-wars equivalent of Bill Waterhouse post-war; Riethmuller worked for Hackett until he resigned to travel in Europe in 1928. When he returned he worked until he retired for Frank Alldritt. Both employers were willing to travel during the war to Canberra to testify on Riethmuller's behalf. Alldritt disclosed that at the end of the day's racing he divided his entire takings uncounted between Riethmuller and his other clerk and provided each with a signed blank document for the bank.

Further education

At the same time as starting a new career, Riethmuller began a series of attempts to acquire a serious education in the Humanities, first at the University of Sydney, later at the University of Heidelberg. He made two long trips to Europe – Belgium, France, Switzerland, England, Germany, Italy – in 1928 and in 1931. He attended a one-month course in Conversational French at Grenoble in 1928. He also attended a six-week course in 1931 in German language, art, painting and architecture at the Institute for Foreigners at the University of Berlin. He made detailed plans to visit Germany again in 1937, but his attempt to enrol at Heidelberg perhaps foundered on the increasing Nazification of Germany, perhaps on his worsening health. At any rate, he was a student at the University of Sydney in 1927 and was back there in 1929. He spent the Second World War between roses and race meetings as a university student of Italian and German (two of the three enemy languages). He continued to enrol in subjects of general cultural interest until 1949 (when he was 55) but was always desultory, often sick. Of the 24 subjects he enrolled in over 22 years (including re-enrolments), he failed to sit eleven, sat but failed seven, passed five and got a credit in one. He led people to believe he was an Arts graduate who had also studied botany and "genetics at the University of Sydney.” If so it was doing independent reading in the library. He did eventually complete a major in German. And he did eventually leave most of his estate to the University for medical research.

Here is someone who feels under-educated wishing for prestige by association. But at the university Riethmuller met Professor EG Waterhouse, learned in German, French, Italian and Japanese, innovative architect of house and garden, the world's greatest expert on the genus Camellia and a camellia breeder. Riethmuller was proud to call him "a personal friend." Mrs Olive Fitzhardinge, the self-described "amateur hybridiser" of roses lived till 1939 in Warrawee, the suburb next to Riethmuller's, but there is no record of their having met.

Internment

For 20 years Riethmuller lived in the now vanished world of respectable Sydney boarding houses and residential hotels. He had rooms in five such places between 1918 and 1938, including nine years at "Wiesbaden" (at which a number of Germans stayed) in Bondi, and seven years at "Wychwood" in Turramurra

Turramurra, New South Wales

Turramurra is a suburb on the Upper North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Turramurra is located north of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Ku-ring-gai Council...

 on the North Shore. It was run by a Miss Hambledon, born Leontine Hamburger to German-Jewish parents in New York. She was 14 years older than he; they became friends. Occasionally they could be heard talking in German.

Counsel. Has she ever told you that she has lived in Germany?

FL Riethmuller. She has said she lived in Germany before coming here.

Your main discussions with her were about Germany?

FLR. No, they were not.

What particular matters were you discussing with her?

FLR. Chiefly gardening.

Rose gardening?

FLR. I was a dahlia crank at that time.

What are you now?

FLR. I have switched on to roses now.

Unfortunately Miss Hambledon did not disguise her support for German expansion in Europe (though most of her relations in Germany had long since fled). Boarding house gossip put her words in Riethmuller's mouth. Then when war came in 1939 "fifth column hysteria" turned gossip into reports of sedition, German and Italian books into enemy propaganda. Dinner at his new house was overheard as a celebration of the German occupation of Paris. He never knew the identities of the neighbours, boarders and servants who reported him; he surmised gambling debts had made some people into enemies. After two months of police investigation, Riethmuller was arrested on 20 August 1940 and interned under National Security Regulation 26.

He spent 130 days all told in Long Bay Gaol, and in camps at Orange and Hay in country NSW. Of that time he spent 11 weeks in camp hospitals and Orange base hospital. Riethmuller's prison camp admission card ("Report on Prisoner of War"), dated 18 October 1940, incidentally gives the best documentation of his life history to that date.

Eventually he was able to force things to an inquiry ("lodge an objection") at which no good reason for detaining him could be sustained. Witnesses attested to his loyalty to the Empire and the Australian way of life. His interest in things German was part of his gentlemanly interest in culture generally. He admitted that his spoken Italian, French and German were not much good, but he made an excellent show of correcting official translations of German documents found in his possession. Allegedly he had had spy maps drawn of the La Perouse radio transmitter and the Chullora railway workshops; they turned out simply to be a plan of his own house and its Wireless Weekly radio aerial. German names in his address book were shown to be long-lost or never-met contacts beyond any hope of forming a spy ring; one made Riethmuller's suits at Anthony Hordern's. Above all the committee of inquiry was impressed by the commitment of his investments and property to the Australian economy. Riethmuller's will at that stage left most of his money to Australian public hospitals.

No doubt his release (10 December 1940) was just, but the matter was complex. Why would a man who grew up in Queensland speak till the end of his life "with a faint German accent"? Because he was asserting an identity. For years Riethmuller had been saying to fellow lodgers "I am German." He never meant to hide his Australian birth. Rather he was positioning himself in the tradition of German culture. Still, it was a politically loaded thing to say: such German Ausländer were the pretext for Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938

German occupation of Czechoslovakia

German occupation of Czechoslovakia began with the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's northern and western border regions, known collectively as the Sudetenland, under terms outlined by the Munich Agreement. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's pretext for this effort was the alleged privations suffered by...

.

Turramurra

Riethmuller's diaries confiscated by the security police show that he was growing roses (from Hazlewood Brothers) in Turramurra from 1932. In the mid-1930s he was more interested in dahlias and cactuses, renewing his interest in roses in 1937.

In 1937 he bought land (probably the land he was already using) a few streets from Miss Hambledon's boarding house. The same year he built a house on it. He was joined there by his unhappily married sister Sophia Bischof (1878–1972) and her third daughter Elsie (1910–2004), who stayed till both her uncle and mother had died. A sign on the front gate said “Miss E. Bischof dressmaker” but mostly Elsie was the housekeeper. Riethmuller made health plans in 1940 to move to a higher and drier property in Bowral or Moss Vale but nothing came of them.

A next-door neighbour 1937–1939 remembered him as a homebody who, when he was not prostrated by illness, spent every day working in the garden.

Ayliffe's, a local rose and carnation nursery, supplied him with roses from 1938 and pruned them. Riethmuller was thus at least 54 and living in Turramurra when he made his first known rose crosses; 61 when he retired to full-time rose breeding in 1945; 66 when he released his first rose for sale. “His large garden is packed with roses, a fair proportion of them of his own raising.” Apart from his own seedlings, most roses he is known to have bred from are of German origin. He also bred from a couple of roses by Alister Clark

Alister Clark

Alister Clark was an Australian rose breeder. -Biography:Alister Clark was the son of an immigrant Scottish tenant farmer who did well in Australia, leaving his family with several outback cattle stations and “Glenara,” a big property in a valley north of Melbourne. His children knew Europe well...

, and emulated Clark's refusal to pamper seedlings: “He used to give his roses a post-pruning spray but didn’t spray at all otherwise. So his seedlings had to be disease-resistant to survive.”

In the early 1960s Roger Mann was his teenage pupil:

The colour shot of Frank Riethmuller [shown on the right] is as I remember him. He’s standing in his back garden, in his 'rose garden' — actually a big single bed that occupied about half the area, and which held most of his collection. (I think the camera is looking towards the back and that roof is his back-door neighbour’s.) It held not only his own roses, but anything that took his fancy, so those HTs in the picture aren’t necessarily of his own breeding — he had quite a catholic taste in roses and grew quite a few of the currently popular ones. I remember he had ‘Isabel de Ortiz’ (then brand-new), ‘Peace’ and ‘Buccaneer’.

At the very back next to the fence he had his nursery beds, compost heaps etc and the shed, next to which was a huge bush of what Miss Bischoff called 'the Nabonnand rose', which I suppose was ‘G. Nabonnand’. It was a splendid sight in mid-winter, when the main rose beds were all pruned and smothered in manure and straw. The ground sloped from front to back and there was a flight of steps up to the back porch where we’d sit and talk, and camellias growing against the house there.

The front garden was fairly conventional, with a low brick front fence with some floribundas — ‘Eutin’ among them as I recall — but mainly other plants behind it; the bed was fairly narrow and shaded by the street trees. The house was set close to the south boundary, and there was a curving path to the front door lined on one side by maybe a dozen roses, among which I remember ‘Sunlit’ and ‘Marjory Palmer’. It led into a bed at the corner of the house which had ‘Cara Bella’, ‘Honeyflow’ and ‘Claret Cup’ with ‘Spring Song’, and down the north side of the house where the land was a bit wider were half-a-dozen original plants of ‘Titian’ trained espalier and reaching the eaves … I remember asking him why he’d registered it as a floribunda when it was so obviously a climber, and he said he hadn’t realised at the time that it would grow like that. Which seems a bit odd if he’d had it in his nursery bed since 1937.

Riethmuller died at 81 on 23 April 1965, bequeathing to the University of Sydney the proceeds of the sale of his house and garden: in 1972 they realised over $80,000, a big sum at the time. No. 21 Eastern Road, Turramurra is now buried under four concrete-slab units; plenty of clipped box and ficus but not a rose to be seen.

Friends and relations

John Flynn was a doctor friend Riethmuller used to exchange drinks with at Tattersall's Club after the races. Dr Flynn told the 1940 internment tribunal:

He is a very mild mannered man. He is very mild in regard to matters that might be regarded as political, in fact, he had very little interest in politics … He is interested in poetry, architecture, gardening and so on. … I have never known him to use coarse language or to lose his temper. He was always courteous to such an extent that it was outstanding … He was a genial, well-mannered, good citizen.

Queensland great-nieces old enough (and young enough) to remember their honeymoon visits to Sydney in the 1950s say "He was a lovely, sweet man, mainly interested in his wine collection and his roses." If it matters any more, he was rather tall, lean and blond, going grey in his fifties. He had a "long Riethmuller face," blue Nordic eyes and a mouthful of gold teeth. Most memories of him reveal unfailing generosity to others. He waived all rights to royalties from roses he released for sale.

Above all, despite having lived away from his family for 27 years, Riethmuller took in his sister and her spinster daughter and supported both till the end of their lives, far beyond his own death. His sister lived on this support for 35 years, his niece for 67.

Riethmuller was a lifelong bachelor and there is no record of his having made any deep attachment beyond family and friends, usually married women. He was particularly close to his nephew Max Riethmuller (1912–1972) who, like him, never married.

Though he maintained strong family contacts, no rose is named for anyone in his family (most unusual for a rose breeder). Several are dedicated to socially prominent Sydney women. 'Carabella' was named for a Rose Society friend, Belle Marsden, probably Agnes Belle nèe McMahon, Mrs Edward John Marsden (1915–1998). However, it is important to note that two other dedicatees may have lived in Carabella Street, Kirribilli – one of several instances of Riethmuller names doing double duty. 'Evelyn Buchan' was Mrs John Buchan (probably Evelyn Amy nèe Ennis 1900–1976) of 67 Carabella Street, Kirribilli, a garden and house, since demolished, on a double block overlooking the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron. Both Mrs Marsden and Mrs Buchan were experts in floral art, Mrs Marsden at the Rose Society, Mrs Buchan at the Horticultural Society. 'Carmel Bice' may have been the Lorraine Carmel Bice who died in 1953; more likely Mrs CM Bice of 49 Carabella Street, Kirribilli. 'Denise McClelland' is said to have been a garden club friend of Elsie, Riethmuller's niece. She was perhaps Miss Denise Ann McClelland who died in Moss Vale in 1963. 'Florrie Joyce' was probably Caroline Florence née Pople, Mrs Colin Joyce (1906–1995) of Asquith, though the name may have referred simply to the American ballet and vaudeville dancer of the Twenties. 'Pearl Costin' was perhaps Alice Pearl née Clarke, Mrs Henry James Costin (1891–1967) of William Street, Turramurra at one time. 'Elaine White' was perhaps Elaine White (1923–1991) of St Ives but more likely a well known 1950s and 1960s Channel Nine presenter and Women’s Weekly journalist in Sydney. 'Lady Woodward,' born Amy Weller and known as Bud or Buddy, was the wife of Sir Eric Woodward, then Governor of NSW. Then as now, convention required the Governor to be patron of the Rose Society, and convention required the Society to dedicate a new rose to his wife. 'Ngarla' was probably named for Ngarla Kunoth

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, also known as Ngarla Kunoth , is an Australian Aboriginal activist.-Early life and education:Rosalie Kunoth was born in 1937 at Utopia Cattle Station in the Northern Territory of Australia to parents of the Amatjere people...

 (born 1937), star of the film Jedda, which came out at the same time. 'Chip's Apple Blossom' was given unnamed to Edith 'Chip' Smallwood (1915–1994), who became Mrs Wilfred 'Bill' Farram and a well-known Sydney figure. The point is that, to the small and neat Miss Smallwood, he gave a small and neat rose.

There are signs among other names of a light-hearted view of the world, even a 'Gay Vista.' 'Kwinana' may have been a gift to a South Australian service club, but its colour alludes to the burn-off flames of the Kwinana oil refinery. 'Claret Cup' has masses of cup-shaped flowers, claret coloured. 'Galah' was the same pink as the breast feathers of a galah. 'Spring Song' was the Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

 Song Without Words familiar to a hundred years of piano students.

People with breathing disorders often idolize sport stars; Riethmuller admired "great" racehorses. His roses 'Alma,' 'Filagree' (misspelling of 'Filigree'), 'Gayness' and 'Helios' were all named after 1940s racehorses. 'Gay Vista,' 'Honeyflow' and 'Titian' were 1950s racehorses in Australia. 'Esmeralda' (misspelling of 'Esmerelda'), 'Plaisante' and 'Rubens' were 1950s horses in England or France but whether Riethmuller's roses were named after them is hard to tell.

Afterglow

Riethmuller's unmarried niece and housekeeper Elsie Bischof outlived him by nearly 40 years. Elsie had long been an enthusiastic and knowledgable member of the NSW Rose Society. She returned to Toowoomba in 1972 and made his roses widely known there. Elsie's main social group was the Lutheran church, in which disapproval of gambling, and thus horse racing, would have been usual. Consequently she seems to have played down the gambling money on which she herself lived for 67 years and played up the beauty of the Riethmuller roses. Elsie's embarrassment would have been deepened by the reputation of her brother Frank

Francis Bischof

Francis Erich Bischof was a police commissioner in the Australian state of Queensland from January 1958 until his resignation, on the 13 February 1969, amidst allegations of corruption...

, Chief Commissioner of Police in Queensland 1958–1969, whose notorious corruption involved vast race-gambling debts.

After Riethmuller died, Elsie often showed people interested in the roses, 'Titian' especially, around Eastern Road (the property remained her mother's to use till she died). When Elsie moved to Toowoomba, however, she seems to have taken Riethmuller's Lambertianas and floribundas with her but left the hybrid teas behind. Why Elsie did this is at present unknown. Perhaps it is significant that every rose bearing a woman's name has been deleted from the canon (Lady Woodward is the only exemption). In old age she was given to claiming ‘Esmeralda’ was not a Riethmuller rose because it was named after a woman. Her constant advocacy seems to have been the main reason those she took with her survive.

Perhaps the leading rose thinker in Australia after the Second World War was the registrar of new varieties, AS Thomas. His book Better Roses went through many editions. The 1969 edition, in its chapter "Australian and New Zealand Roses," lists 80 "highly prized cultivars." Twenty are roses by the great Alister Clark. Next in importance come the roses of Riethmuller: 'Esmeralda,' 'Gay Vista,' 'Plaisante,' 'Silverelda,' 'Snow Spray,' 'Spring Song' and 'Titian.'

By the 1990s the passage of time once more threatened the survival of Riethmuller's remaining roses. The task of collecting and cultivating them was taken on by Phillip Sutherland of Golden Vale Nursery, Benalla. His plants came partly from NSW collectors but also from relations and friends of Elsie in Queensland. He also is responsible for the survival of Riethmuller's only extant hybrid tea, Lady Woodward. Golden Vale closed in 2011, but the plants he sought out are now safely established in public collections.

Roses

Riethmuller is known to have released 26 roses in all. Ten are currently available; many have been lost. Most of those we still have are remarkably well bred: healthy, hardy, well-formed and floriferous.

Floribundas

Floribundas are typically stiff shrubs, smaller and bushier than the average hybrid tea but less dense and sprawling than the average polyantha. The first of Riethmuller's surviving floribundas, and the best, was 'Titian.'

Mr. Riethmuller studied genetics at the University of Sydney to further his knowledge, taught himself Spanish in order to correspond with Pedro Dot

Pedro Dot

Pedro Dot was a Spanish rose breeder.-Biography:Pedro Dot was born on 28 March 1885 outside Barcelona on the rose-growing Monistrol estate where his father was estate manager. His early experiments in hybridising roses were encouraged by the Marquise of Monistrol and the Countess of Sástago...

, and is a constant correspondent with Kordes (in German) and of other hybridists in England, Italy and America.

Riethmuller used Kordes' roses as breeding stock. In return the Kordes firm acted as Riethmuller's agent in Europe, where at least 'Titian' among his roses became well known. Riethmuller released 'Titian' in Australia in 1950, though he said he had bred it in 1937. Given his preference for German stock, it was probably a cross between a Kordes hybrid tea such as 'Crimson Glory' and a Kordes floribunda such as 'Eutin.' But

he told us 'Titian' was a fluke he wasn't trying for and he had no idea of the breeding. It was one of about 200 he had cross-pollinated and thought so little of it he didn't bother to record the cross in his book.

The flowers are semi-double and open out flat to a muddled centre and an old fashioned shape, like a Bourbon rose … it makes an excellent ever-blooming rose in warm climates like Australia's, and a sturdy, tall bush in cool climates like northern Europe's.

Riethmuller registered 'Titian' as a floribunda but others quickly realised it grew best as a short climber. Kordes' firm subsequently patented a climbing sport ('Tizian'), though that was more to secure European royalties than due to any change in the rose. Kordes particularly valued the resistance of 'Titian' to disease. It is still the most widely grown of Riethmuller's roses and easy to get from nurseries.

Roger Mann:

I remember him showing me [in the early 1960s] an unnamed seedling out of ‘Titian’ x ‘Elmshorn’, which I thought was nicer than its pollen parent — bigger flowers, darker and brighter colour. Again, I don’t think it was ever introduced. I remember his pointing out that it had inherited the almost square leaflets of ‘Titian’.

'Kwinana' came out in 1962. With it the Riethmuller floribunda reaches the height of sophisticated artifice, everything about it carefully designed for decorator effects. Nothing else makes sense of its still rather shocking red-orange colour.

Lambertianas

Lambertianas descend from roses created by the German breeder Lambert in the 1920s using Rosa multiflora. Riethmuller adapted them to make mounds of perpetually flowering clusters of single flowers. They are all between knee and shoulder high: neither climbers nor dwarves nor ground-cover. The new type added colour and strong low shapes to garden structure. 'Spring Song,' a chance Lambert seedling, came out in 1954. From it he bred 'Gay Vista,' 'Honeyflow' and 'Esmeralda,' all released in 1957; Carmel Bice’ and ‘Elaine White’ in 1959, both now lost; 'Carabella' (or 'Cara Bella') in 1960; 'Claret Cup' in 1962. 'Carabella' in particular grows easily from cuttings and is always in flower.

'Carabella' is the best of the billowing shrub roses [he] bred from the old Lambertiana 'Gartendirektor Otto Linne' … The flowers are borne abundantly and continuously in large clusters of 10–30 right through the year in warm climates.

Peter Cox and others have pointed out that 'Carabella,' like 'Titian,' can easily be grown as a pillar rose, some examples reaching 2.5 metres. Bentall's 1937 hybrid musk 'Ballerina' is similar, but grown side by side 'Carabella' is bigger, healthier, more floriferous and with bigger clusters; 'Ballerina's' petals shade to a deeper pink and the scent is muskier.

‘Snow Spray’ is another multiflora-leaved Lambertiana sometimes misleadingly labelled a floribunda. It is a highly-scented, very double self-cross of ‘Gartendirektor Otto Linne’, flowering all season and growing a metre high and across. Allowing for its creamy yellow flower centres, it is the closest to an all white Riethmuller rose since the loss of ‘Elaine White.’

'Chip's Apple Blossom' is a dwarf form of 'Carabella,' never registered. If it is true he gave it to Miss Smallwood, he must have bred it by November 1939 when she became Mrs Farram.

The well-known 'Cousin Essie' is not by Riethmuller but a seedling of 'Honeyflow,' perhaps an improvement because its clusters are a purer white but lacking 'Honeyflow's' air of wildness.

Hybrid Teas

Hybrid teas

Hybrid Tea

Hybrid Tea is a cultivar group of roses, created by cross-breeding two different types of roses, initially by hybridising Hybrid Perpetuals with Tea roses...

 are shrubs with flowers high-pointed in the bud, opening to big scented double flowers, preferably recurrently. Riethmuller's 'Lady Woodward' came out in 1959. The deep pink 'Filagree' appeared in 1962; the dark red 'Denise McClelland' in 1964.

Roger Mann reports a red hybrid tea called 'Showboat' grown at Turramurra: "Not sure if he ever registered or introduced it. It was a bit like 'Ena Harkness' in flower, but with an even weaker neck." 'Showboat' may of course be identical to the rose registered as 'Denise McClelland.'

Pernetianas

Riethmuller extended his hybrid tea breeding into Pernetianas. Pernet

Joseph Pernet-Ducher

Joseph Pernet-Ducher was a French rosarian and hybridizer. Born near Lyon, the son of Jean Pernet, he was a third generation rose-grower. In 1879 he began his apprenticeship in the rose-breeding business with the Ducher nursery in Lyon...

 was the first to cross breed hybrid tea roses with the Persian yellow Rosa foetida

Rosa foetida

Rosa foetida is a species of rose, native to the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia. It has yellow flowers with a mild, sour scent many find objectionable, thus the species name...

. Pernetianas often had good scent and glowing combinations of red and yellow. Riethmuller characteristically took a Pernetiana bred by Kordes to make his own. 'Evelyn Buchan' came out in 1959 and 'Silverelda' (no doubt with silver tints somewhere) probably at the same time. Neither is known still to exist. The breeding of the light pink 'Lady Woodward' ('Heinrich Wendland' × 'Elli Knab') suggests it too had been intended to be a Pernetiana.

Sortable list of Riethmuller roses

This list of the known roses has been compiled from Peter Cox, Australian Roses and the online Help Me Find Roses entry for Riethmuller, Frank.

Name	Date	Type	Colour	Extant
Alma	1957	Floribunda	Crimson	Lost
Amore	1957	Lambertiana	Deep Pink	Yes
Carabella	1960	Lambertiana	Single white with pink edges	Yes
Carmel Bice	1959	Lambertiana	Pink blend	Unknown
Chip's Apple Blossom	1988 (named)	Dwarf Lambertiana	Single white with pink edges	Yes
Claret Cup	1962	Lambertiana	Red with white centres	Yes
Denise McClelland	1964	Hybrid tea	Dark red	Unknown
Elaine White	1959	Lambertiana	White	Unknown
Esmeralda	1957	Lambertiana	Deep pink	Yes
Evelyn Buchan	1959	Pernetiana	Pink and yellow	Unknown
Filagree	1962	Hybrid tea pillar	Deep pink	Unknown
Florrie Joyce	1960			Unknown
Galah	1956	Hybrid tea	Carmine-pink, i.e. galah-coloured	Unknown
Gay Vista	1955	Lambertiana	Bright pink with white centres	Yes
Gayness	1955	Hybrid tea	Unknown	Lost
Helios	1960	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Honeyflow	1957	Lambertiana	Blush pink	Yes
Kwinana	1962	Floribunda	Red-orange	Yes
Lady Woodward	1959	Hybrid tea	Light pink	Yes
Ngarla	1955	Lambertiana	Probably dark red	Unknown
Pearl Costin	1959	Hybrid tea	Yellow blend	Lost
Plaisante	1957	Floribunda	Bright pink, lighter reverse	Lost
Rubens	1960	Unknown	Unknown	Lost
Silverelda	1959?	Pernetiana	Pink blend	Unknown
Showboat	no date	Hybrid tea	Red	Unknown
Snow Spray	1957	Lambertiana	White blend	Yes
Spring Song	1954	Lambertiana	Carmine-pink	Yes
Titian	1955	Floribunda	Deep pink	Yes

Where Riethmuller roses can be seen

• The old rose section of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne has 'Carabella' and 'Claret Cup' in island beds.
• The Victoria State Rose Garden at Werribee Park has 'Carabella', 'Claret Cup,' 'Honeyflow,' 'Kwinana' and 'Titian.'
• The National Rose Collection created by David Ruston at Renmark in South Australia has 'Carabella,' 'Spring Song' (sometimes sold as 'Bert Mulley'), 'Lady Woodward,' 'Titian,' 'Snow Spray' and 'Chip's Apple Blossom.'
• The Morwell Centenary Rose Garden in Gippsland has 'Carabella', 'Claret Cup,' 'Gay Vista', 'Honeyflow,' 'Spring Song' and 'Titian.'
• The Adelaide Botanical Garden
  Adelaide Botanic Garden
  The Adelaide Botanic Garden is a public garden at the north-east corner of the Adelaide city centre, in the Adelaide Park Lands. It encompasses a fenced garden on North Terrace and behind it the Botanic Park...
  
  , South Australia has 'Titian.'
• The rose garden in Newtown Park, Toowoomba has 'Titian' and had 'Carabella.' (The website of Toowoomba Regional Council claims these roses were bred in Toowoomba, but this is incorrect.)
• The Kodja Place Roze Maze at Kojonup, Western Australia uses hedges of Australian roses, including Australia's best collection of Riethmuller's: 'Carabella', 'Claret Cup,' 'Esmeralda,' 'Gay Vista', 'Honeyflow,' 'Spring Song' and 'Titian.'

Few Riethmuller roses can be found in collections made outside Australia. 'Titian' and 'Snow Spray' are in the Europas-Rosarium at Sangerhausen in north Germany. 'Titian' and 'Gay Vista' are in the catalogue of the Californian nursery Vintage Gardens.

Articles written by Riethmuller

FL Riethmuller (Turramurra, NSW), "Co-operative Rose Breeding," Australian and New Zealand Rose Annual (ANZRA), 1955, p112.

F Riethmuller (Sydney NSW), "Nora Cunningham," ANZRA, 1957, p135. A puff for the European release of the Alister Clark climber, 'Nora Cunningham.'

Frank Riethmuller (Turramurra, NSW), "Roses from Seed," ANZRA, 1960, p118. Shows how FLR actually thought as a breeder.

Riethmuller in the Australian national archive

The National Archive of Australia is indispensable to researching Riethmuller's career. All his records are listed online under the heading Security and intelligence records. As can be seen in the table below, his name is often misspelt and there is some overlap between holdings in different cities.

Archive series	Date	Barcode	Location	Title	Contents	Available
A1539, 1940/W/3994	1940	6922353	Canberra	Trading with the Enemy Act, 1939 - Mr. F L Riethmuller	FLR's two-page letter asking permission to import two German texts about the German language, the brief official refusal and notification to another official.	Online
C123/1, 2679	1940–1943	3905523	Sydney	Reithmuller, Francis Lewis (Australian)	Seventy-nine pages of Security Service dossier, with lists of foreign books held, translations, public complaints and stat. decs. by complainants, official assessments of FLR as a security risk, record of arrest.	Online
C415, 70	1929–1945	7297693	Sydney	Frank Lewis Reithmuller [also known as Francis Reithmuller]	This series contains six very small Johnnie Walker Diaries 1931, 1933-1937, a 1930 Dewar's Diary, a 1929 Sydney University Union Diary, The Shooter's Year Book 1932, a folder containing copies of the magazines 'Mutterlpradje' (Jan-Aug 1939), 3 copies of the publication 'Proceedings of the Deutsche Akademie' 1936 vols 2–4, two postcards in German, newspapers cuttings, the libretto of an "evangelical cantata," "Die Krone des Lebens," one address book, invoices (mainly from German publishers) and correspondence from German acquaintances abroad. It also includes FLR's successful one-page application in German to matriculate from the University of Heidelberg. The address book and the diaries rarely record appointments: they are mostly memoranda of plants bought, phone numbers of friends and clients, shoe sizes and lasts, written-out Australian and European railway timetables, and scores of addresses of European pensions. The address book itself seems to have been conscientiously started in 1922 and later adapted to the same purposes as the diaries.	Open to physical inspection and being photographed
MP1103/1, PWN1389	1940	8613738	Melbourne	Prisoner of War/Internee: Riethmuller, Francis Lewis; Date of birth - 10 February 1884; Nationality - British	One-page card recording FLR's internment camps and dates	Online
MP1103/2, PWN1389	1940	9902704	Melbourne	Prisoner of War/Internee: Riethmuller, Francis Lewis; Date of birth - 10 February 1884; Nationality - British	One-page camp reception card, NAA item MP1103/2, PWN1389	Online
A367, C18000/42	1940	776278	Canberra	Objection No.71 of 1940. Reithmuller Francis Lewis. Advisory Committee	The 58-page transcript of his appeal against internment 20 November 1940	Online
A12102, 37	23 Aug 1940 – 20 Nov 1940	5169109	Canberra	Riethmuller, Francis Lewis - Objection No. 71 of 1940 … Alien Advisory Committee	FLR's 9-page stat. dec. to the internment committee. Rest is same as barcode 776278, plus most of barcode 3905523.	Online
MP508/1, 255/742/61	1940	3382652	Melbourne	Francis Lewis Riethmuller - Release from internment	Four-page report of the ministerial advisory committee summarising Riethmuller's circumstances and concluding that "it is neither necessary nor desirable" that he remain interned. Five pages of related official correspondence. FLR's stat. dec. to the committee, identical to that included in barcode 5169109. Two-page application for ministerial warrant. The original detention order and 6 pages of related official documents, not the same as barcode 3905523.	Online
C123, 2683	24 Oct 1938 - 23 Jun 1948	3905526	Sydney	Hamburger, Miss Leontine aliases Hambleton and Hambledon (American - naturalised British subject)	Her complete Security Service dossier	Online
C415, 65	1932-1939	7283882	Sydney	Leontine Hambledon [? formerly Hamburger]	This item consists of a summary by Military Police Intelligence of biographical details of Leontine Hambledon; police certificates of good conduct for Lilly Lust, a relative of Leontine Hambledon; 3 postcards to Elsa Rose from Julius Schmitt, in German with English translations; the following correspondence to subject in German with English translations: a postcard, 2 letters and a Christmas card; correspondence mostly from European relations in German and English. There is some overlap with barcode 3905526.	Online