A Rosa xanthina by Any Other Name Might be a Kerria japonica

Like the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman, the Yellow Rose of Texas was not a rose nor was it from Texas.

Reasonable people can differ on both “empire” and “yellow,” but the bright colored bloom most agree to be in the folk song is a kerria, named after the Kew Garden “plant collector” who identified it in China, William Kerr.

While the plant was claimed to be native to Japan, Kerr collected it in China. The taxonomists had opined that the “yellow rose” was Japanese by the time it was recorded with “japonica” in the scientific name. Of course, Texans know that the geographical origin of the plant was a minor controversy about genus that leaves the yellow rose of Texas in the wrong kingdom.

The legend to which the plant connects related to how an outnumbered force of Texian volunteers prevailed over the same Mexican regular army (plus reinforcements) that had destroyed the small band of rebels holding Misión San Antonio de Valero, known in our times as the Alamo.

The Mexican commander, Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón (“Santa Anna” to us), made a number of errors that allowed his defeat by an inferior force. Some “explanations” of his behavior were offered by his many political enemies to do him harm. Finding the truth to a certainty was difficult then and impossible now.

Santa Anna lost Texas when he lost the Battle of San Jacinto. One story claims he was slow to muster his troops at San Jacinto because he was engaged in a sexual dalliance with a biracial slave who was either sent to his quarters by Texians for the purpose of distracting him or was not. Her skin color was “high yellow” and she was working for the enemy — hence, “the yellow rose of Texas.”

Her name was Emily West or Emily Morgan. She was a slave or a free woman or under indenture and she may have been kidnapped by Santa Anna in an earlier military engagement. The “yellow rose” legend appears many years after San Jacinto, and none of Santa Anna’s Mexican critics at that battle wrote a word about the general being slowed down by a woman.

Names can be slippery and rendered more so by passage of time or geographical distance. My own name was on my birth certificate as Stephen Teehee. If birth certificates had been rendered in Cherokee, my name might…