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Blackthorn Rose Review: Compassion (Hybrid Tea)

10/9/2019

 
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It can be difficult to find the most useful line to take when reviewing a time-tested classic.  Everyone already knows Compassion is a great rose and this has been objectively established for some time now, so... um.. yeah.  ​Then again, the factors underpinning Compassion's polymathic excellence aren't as widely appreciated as they should be.  She's been around since the early 70s and that period of rose fashion has been tumultuous in the extreme, with many perfectly good plants dropping out of commercial circulation- we've all been distracted by successive waves of overhyped contenders that flashed their floral tits, so to speak.  But while they faceplant into disfavour and oblivion, OGs like Compassion remain staples of the successful garden.  I'm here to tell you exactly why that is.
Compassion was the first rose I ever deliberately purchased, around 25 years ago.  She's moved house three times, remains one of our personal favourites and has spawned a phalanx of long-serving clones.

​Before saying anything else about her, let me assure you that one of her most endearing qualities is her willingness to reliably reproduce from pieces of random cane shoved into the edge of the vege garden over winter.  I just bury them one-third to halfway, then forget them.  In spring, new leaves and roots fart out the ends and save you thirty bux.  

That's what we pay down here in New Zealand for a first grade nursery rose these days.  I mean, I understand it's not cheap to graft and raise a rose to point of sale and we're eternally grateful to those who do, but it's shameful that a once egalitarian pleasure is becoming a fucking socioeconomic indicator.  You used to see everyone at nurseries- hippies, the gays, nanas, white gumboot guys, weirdos, farmers, the lower upper middle classes; now it's just sad old hos like me who managed to buy land in the 90s.  

​It's fucking depressing.
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Anyway, Compassion is one of those versatile in-betweeny roses, forming either a tall bush or a climber/espallier subject, depending on how she is trained.  There's no point trying to constrain her size, though.  She's a big Sasquatchy bitch and needs shrubs and larger perennials to provide sympathetic company.  Pruned conventionally, she will stand on her stout cherry-tinged canes up to around the 2.5 metre mark before requiring any support (we live in a windy coastal area so I'm confident about that).  When pegged out or arranged on a fence, I'm unsure of her maximum potential dimensions, although I have seen an old plant go 3 metres in either direction in a bot garden somewhere.
Compassion is endlessly vigorous and incredibly forgiving of shit pruning jobs, sprouting away from all points and putting out enough slightly olive-green HT foliage to cover our worst mistakes.  Her open, upright structure makes her a great prop for the smaller clematis and honeysuckles and she won't shade out anything growing around her feet.
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It's easy to take Compassion's flowers for granted because they are so consistently present and unbothered by climatic travails.  But they're certainly worthy of gratitude.  They begin as tight, violet-pink scrolls in the classic Hybrid Tea manner, holding on to that graceful twist for a long time before finally blousing out to reveal a golden heart and anthers, along with burnished coral, amber and apricot shading.  

They can hold for a couple of weeks in the vase on stems that are always strong enough to support them; that is only something you miss when you're cursing a saggy fistful of droopy, petal-dripping DAs.  They seldom ball or rot on the plant and keep their lovely colours for many days, even in our ruinous UV. ​  Compassion offers a weird assortment of bloom presentations, ranging from single stems to huge cauliflower trusses that will open in obliging succession. ​ I sometimes do a bit of disbudding on the latter to tighten their schedule in the vase, but there's no need to manage her production as her petals drop cleanly and all flowers will open in due course.
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Though she is thoroughly remontant all the way through from mid-spring to mid-autumn here in Zone 9, with little to no downtime, Compassion always insists on a rest during our fairly trifling winters.  It makes pruning easier.

Fragrance-wise, I rate her highly within her somewhat dodgy category; the tonality of her perfume is closely coupled with her colours, having a sweet and warmly classical true rose character, with none of the unpleasant plasticky notes than so often fuck up the Hybrid Tea nose experience.
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Compassion's disease resistance is highly gratifying in our no-spray situation.  She'll pick up a wee bit of blackspot in a particularly bad year but keeps on trucking while other plants are completely defoliated.   Her leaves are too shiny and leathery to provide much of a foothold to mildew or rust.  We bought our first plant in those distant days before most root stock was screened, so our clones are sometimes mottled with ye olde Mosaic Virus.  It doesn't seem to vex her.  
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​In the last few years I've taken to researching the ancestry of any potential rose purchase as a fairly reliable way of keeping duds out of my dirt.  Although fabulous plants can pop up randomly from indifferent stock, I generally want to see at least two seasoned rock stars in any prospect's recent background.  

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Compassion is a great example of this principle and a testament to her breeder's diligence with multiple generations of quality plants underpinning her outstanding qualities.  Prima Ballerina imparted her best floral characteristics- substance and fragrance.  The other parent, White Cockade, is a busy pillar/climber descended from immortal monsters New Dawn/ Dr W. Van Fleet; it has conferred its muscular structure, unfailing floriferousness and shitkicking R. wichuraiana vigour.

​Behold the massive trunk-like winter canes of our original plant to the left there.  Pruning her is definitely a job for the Japanese handsaw.  I actually don't have any good pics of our Compassions in full summer livery- sorry about that!
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​Our two largest examples are more than happy with half a day's tree shade and lacklustre soil.  She is neither hungry nor thirsty, exhibiting her wild ancestors' feral indifference to pandering by foliating and flowering well on just a handful of budget fert and I suspect this is more attention than she actually needs.

In my scrabble for anything to bitch about in regard to this paragon, I can complain only of the inevitable rose-related injuries.  Compassion is not particularly thorny (see above left pic) and her picking stems are usually quite clean, meaning it's easy to forget the hooks; her stature can result in a hard shanking where you least expect it.  I'm tall and have one of her thorns currently dissolving in my tricep- smaller peeps could easily cop a hit to the face, so don't follow our dipshit example and go planting her beside a narrow path.  Durrr.
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Season's Greetings from New Zealand

21/12/2018

 
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Rose Fragrant Cloud

It really is, too.

Blackthorn Rose Review: Agnes (Rugosa Hybrid)

19/10/2018

 
(I've decided to finally get onto reviewing the hundred-plus varieties of roses that have cycled through our garden in the last 20 years, just because most reviews are generated by suppliers and thus pretty suspect to peeps worried about dropping thirty damn dollars on one bloody plant; just saying.  If this prospect bores you, too fucking bad.  Everyone should garden, where possible.  Your body needs the exercise.  Your brain needs the tranquility.  The dirt needs friends.  Roses and indeed most other plants are indisputably preferable to the company of most people and far better for you than that other shit you're doing.  Prove me wrong.)
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Agnes is a really odd sort of rose, a hybrid-looking thing with the wild-type foliage of one parent and the feral habit of the other.  The flower form resists effective classification too, seemingly stranded between Old Rose fluff and 70's Floribunda realness.  She doesn’t get a lot of love, perhaps due to this misc. look and the often whack nature of the label photos that always seem to misrepresent her.  She's a survivor, though, a flapper minted in 1922 from the wild roses Rugosa x  Foetida persiana.

​Agnes deserves far more attention.  Her hair is full of secrets.
Firstly and importantly, she is massively indestructible.  A bit of confessional background: despite their iron-clad reputation and for no obvious reason, I’ve managed to kill fully half of the Rugosa-derived varieties that I’ve planted and Agnes has been treated worst of all.  I have yanked it out of a range of shitty positions, from the almost complete shade and hungry competition of an encroaching Arrow Bamboo grove to the utterly indifferent, summer-baked clay of the slope it inhabits currently.  The only real change in Agnes’ performance has been more flowers in the brighter situation.  She seems to put on a good face even in those annoyingly seedy half shade/crap soil marginal areas.
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The foliage is pleasant bright emerald green and an attractive, atypical ferny cutwork look that is never bothered by pathogens.  I repeat: never bothered by pathogens.  I don’t spray for anything, ever, and while my other roses are being rusted and defoliated, Agnes never turns a hair and she should be grown in droves for that quality alone.  
The parent plant Foetida persiana is a notorious black spot magnet, so the clean Rugosa genes must prevail in this respect.

She puts forth modest, slender, tufted buds that open to a flower featuring gradations of buttermilk yellow with a slight mellony scent, the form puffy, informal and sort of scrunchy, like a looser Centifolia with tissue-thin petals.  There's a first late spring flush that goes on for about a month or so, then the odd single flower and a late summer rebloom, depending on the year although this second episode has become more reliable as the plant has matured. 
​
As a result of her wild heritage, the effect of Agnes’ foliage+blooms is uncommonly complimentary and wholly naturalistic, as though the two truely belong both together and within the wider fabric of an informal garden.  The colour and form just don't scream rose bush, yo, which is a bit of a shocker really after so long staring at the depressing clownishness of so many modern hybrids.
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Negatives?  Well, she does bristle with Gooseberry-like thorns, making her a great hedge prospect and a menace to the unwary.  The only other 'difficulty' I've encountered with Agnes is in regard to pruning, which usually means it's best to just put down the secateurs and back away from any impending hack job.  My cack-handed meddling has made her a wee bit flat-headed at the moment as you can probably see in the pic below, but I intend to leave her alone from now on in the hope she regains her original, more graceful Rugosa form.  Agnes may not knock you on your arse with her drag show, but there could not be a more low-maintenance, aesthetically sympathetic and uncomplaining rose.
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Photos du Jour: Rugosa Rose Hips

11/4/2016

 
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​These are from our own roses; Rugosa scabrosa (which is a hideous name for a truly beautiful rose), a noted hipster, but also Roseraie de L'Haÿ and Blanc Double de Coubert, which aren't really supposed to set any at all.  Pics of them below, in stated order.

The hips smell like a fistful of crushed rose petals a day or so past their best; slightly warm and dank rather than high and 
volatile like the blooms themselves.

When softly ripe, their outer pulp has a startlingly true rose-y taste with a hint of citrus, but I think they have irritant hairs close to the seeds, so it's best not to go too crazy.
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The Blackthorn Garden Late Summer '16

25/2/2016

 
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Yes this is a lazy blogging week but sesst lar vee since no other bitch is going to come and stack 6m of firewood for us.  Real world shit needs to get done.  We've had a stretch of very hot nor-westy weather which makes me cranky so it's a fucking miracle I'm posting at all.  Above: all our hydrangeas are nameless ferals grown from cuttings yoinked at felonious random from elsewhere.  They all turn out to be blandly candy pink like this guy; the punishment fits the crime.
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Clockwise from above left: Gladiolus.  I'm getting back into glads which is something that seems to happen to old people.  Hats off to their breeders, though, because there are some fucking stunning cultivars kicking around.  Jury Hybrid Dahlias.  I like to buy their unnamed selections because they're cheap and usually just as nice as their official releases.  Rose Graham Thomas.  Everyone is like oh it's a blackspot monster and I was all like whatever and then it broke out in purple blotches and shit itself.  It re-leafs promptly, though, and who could stay mad at this sort of thing?  Unknown highly fabulous mauve dahlia with gold centre that I call Sir Gaylord in my mind.  Mmmmm dahlias.
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R is responsible for most if not all of these images.  Above is a fantastic close-up of one of the pinkish slightly fancy calendulas I grew from seed.  Hope these guys persist and naturalise.  Below: Lavateras.  Spanky new Clock Cicada on a budding glad.  It's slightly out of focus on the cicada and R is a pedant who loses his mind over shit like that.  I think this image fulfils some more important obligations so I posted it anyway, in the passive aggressive manner.
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Rose Golden Wing, which is sometimes golden, sometimes richly ivory and sometimes almost white, depending on its mood.  There is a luxurious clove/spice scent that becomes more pronounced each year but is similarly capricious, floating about promiscuously on a still day and then retreating right into the stamens next time.  Banksia ericafolia (I think).  Rose Jacqueline du Pré ​which is getting fried by the nasty sun at the moment.  Plant it in afternoon shade if you have the option.
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Above: Balloon flower, Platycodon grandifloras, which lives up to its name by puffing itself into a ball as a bud before opening up like this.  Cool little plant for an awkward spot.  Agastache is bumblebee crack and we go up into the top garden to find these self-seeded plants heaving with frantic bees and mimics of all descriptions crawling over one another trying to score the good shit. Gladioli Black Star.
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And last but not least, the very first flowers on one of my Paramount Hybrid Echinopsis.  I'm not sure of the exact cultivar but they are all stupidly spectacular and this image does nothing to exaggerate those incredible qualities.  The blooms are as large as my outstretched hand, mesmerisingly beautiful and well worth the I think 4 year wait.  It was previously underpotted and slightly too shaded to flower, but a change of address to the sunny teahouse was the shot in the arse that it obviously needed.
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Photos du Jour: Rose 'Lady Hillingdon'

17/2/2016

 
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Although the camera is rendering this bloom's clean, almost self-coloured hue as something approaching a white-to-amber gradient, this first ever flower from my small Lady Hillingdon is in fact a smooth, pastel, dreamlike apricot with only minimal fading toward the edges of the petals.  Oh well.  You get the idea.  

The small graft has struggled in a dog position and the delicious quality of this flower reminds me to move the damn thing before it ends it all in a fit of pique.  The scent is strange, that sort of hardcore skunky tea with suggestions of cracked flint, iodine and green pond shadow lurking under dusty blonde wood and faint, cursory powder.  I've seen larger plants; the foliage often seems a bit sparse but the overall effect in flower is gloriously regal.
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Monday slash Tuesday slash Flowers, Sunshine, Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain

2/2/2016

 
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Heading into our third week of total cloud/drizzle.  Dimly remember sky-thing.  Maybe... blue.
Since I'm particularly inarticulate at the moment and really fucking depressed/enraged about the TPP signing, here are some recent images from the garden, from back when sun happened and in our current bullshit situation.  It's either that or radicalisation.  Just kidding.  

​No I'm not.
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Clockwise from top left: Bellbird in flax flowers.  Night Flyer tetra asiastic lilies.  Rose Marchesa Boccella / Jacques Cartier.  Rose Astrid Grafin von Hardenberg
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Gallica Rose La Belle Sultane.  Giant Red Clover.  Rosa Mundi  
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Tetra Asiastic Lily Sweet Surrender, another tetra that I cannot remember the name of, Rose Ferdinand Pichard
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Hybrid Perpetual Rose Alfred Colomb + Sweet Surrender lily,  HP Rose Sophie's Perpetual,
​Martagon Lily (I think this is Early Bird)
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Kalmia (in someone else's garden), Lilium henryii Sunstrike, Ligularia flower, Lilium Sunstrike. 
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Roses I didn't think I'd be impressed by, but am: Westerland, Tamora & Strawberry Hill

13/1/2016

 
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Westerland I thought would be one of those burnt-orange Seventies climbers that fucked your eyes in the bum, had no real scent but would at least busily consume a dud area in the garden. 

With this in mind, I threw an own-root cutting of it in behind some blackcurrant bushes, remembered to water it once and pretty much forgot it existed.  A couple months later I wondered what that blob of peach stuff was back there in that shady bit and discovered Westerland was not only exploding but flowering.  

​And a glorious creature it is, sort of like a shabbylicious Compassion with its tumbled mess of frilled marshmallow and apricot jam with a burst of deep golden stamens and fantastic dimensionality.  There is a decent, typical Hybrid Tea scent too, on a par in my garden with something like Old Port, supposedly a perfume superstar. 
I'd rate it a 7/10 for smell.  

These pictures look oversaturated but they're taken in gentle morning light and are fairly true to life, as you can tell from the mild tones on the surrounding timber.  Westerland really 
is this pretty, and apparently perfectly able to survive a crappy soil and insufficient light situation.

Next up in the heavily-dissed but actually rather spectacular category is the David Austin Rose, Tamora (below).  If you're staring into that endless creamy cognac and amber gradient wondering if it smells as good as it looks, in a word- yes.
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The literature says myrrh and/or maunders on in improbable and inaccurate directions.  Myrrh is certainly the anchoring note, but Tamora's fragrance is complex when fresh, with strong competing notes of warm green citrus peel, almost Kaffir-lime-like, and a glob of Manuka honey headspace.  The DA site says 'lilac and mimosa' but if that's lilac, I'm a fucking Komodo Dragon.  However you frame it, the scent gets a solid 8/10 for strength and character.

The yearling bush is slightly leggy in competition with a monster astilbe that was crowding it, but the emergent shoots are clean, glossy, mid-green and possess those cool flat cinnabar spines that I've seen cropping up on a couple of my newer DA roses.  One of its parents, Gloire de Dijon, is a lank, reluctant waste of space in my garden and the shovel's coming for it if it hasn't got its shit together by the end of the summer, incidentally.  You can't choose your family.
This guy is the unexpectedly lovely Strawberry Hill, which is blessed with the kind of warm meringue or confection pink that you don't often find in real-life roses.  This light is making it look a little blue, but it really is a mid yellow-pink, as per the colours you can see toward the centre of the rose.  

It holds these flattish blooms in a range of sizes high over an ample complement of glossy lime-green foliage and bright reddish thorns, recovering well from the fucking blackbird who insisted on landing on it and snapping off half its baby branches in spring.  
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The joyous idiosyncrasy of that foliage might make it a poor match for other vintage-style roses in a formal scheme, but I love it.  DA recommends it for an imperfect site and after watching it flower and power away in half-day tree shade, I concur.
Strawberry Hill's scent is an onomatopoeic version of its candy colour ; a fat-fisted face-punch of sweet myrrh and melty almond nougat.  8/10.

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Photos du Jour: the first Roses, summer 2015

22/12/2015

 
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That's the best I can do.  They made us wait this year, but we appreciate them all the more for it.
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​Clockwise from top: Evelyn: unknown Bourbon, Purplicious x3: Louise Odier x 3: Evelyn, Mary Rose, Scepter'd Isle: Purplicious.
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Stare hard, then close your eyes and smell.

The best soap broken almond kernels curling ghostly sundried lemon peel afternoon nougat and pistachios perfect toast and butter with heavy pale honey soaking through onto the plate pocket- warmed toffee sunlight on someone's lovely neck golden blooming vines tapping pollen on your forehead morning jasmine crushed raspberries and plums smoky dusted silver-spiny myrrh. 
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Red Rose Death Match:  'Lady of Megginch' v 'Darcey Bussell'

18/12/2015

 
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David Austin rose Lady of Megginch.  That's her on the left.  Though it's frequently described/sold as a red, it is not. It is in fact a deep fuchsia with slightly silvered outer petals, the colour almost in the Bourbon style as far as this rich, saturated pink is concerned.  For me after a year and a half as a grafted plant, she is low and slightly tentacular in that tall canes are emerging from a squat shrubby foundation and her bloom has good upright Hybrid Tea sort of form and really decent rain resistance.  These pictures are quite accurate on my monitor.
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Not as fragrant as I had hoped from something with this sort of colouration, although I have found some roses take a couple of seasons for their perfume to really emerge so I'm withholding judgement.  Currently I'd describe it as a low-medium tearose scent with a hint of dusty fruit, about 4/10.
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Darcey Bussell, also a DA job.  No complaints about the vigour of this nice little doer; in half a year it's gone from a slightly wimpy graft to a prolific competitor to a too-close and fucking monstrous Golden Celebration.  The small galaxy of close-set buds have started popping to reveal flattened and button-eyed blooms in this deep, dark dimensional magenta purple which is very Old Garden Rose to my eye; images above use natural indoor daylight while below is obviously on the bush in some morning shade.  There is some scent- warm, slightly plasticky fruit, which I'd rate around 5/10.  But it's a nicer plant than the sum of its parts.
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David Austin Rose Death Match: Ellen v Grace v Crown Princess Margareta v Ambridge Rose

7/12/2015

 
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Natural light, no photoshopping and very representative on my monitor.
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Clockwise from top left: Grace, Ellen, Crown Princess Margareta, Ambridge Rose.
​This Ambridge bloom is a little tired but still comes out swinging as the hands-down winner of the scent challenge with the most beautiful and complex myrrh I've ever encountered- even if you generally dislike that note, the intense bonus mix of fruit and powder make it worth your attention. Ellen runs second with great big soapy fruit and petitgrain- these first two are must-haves for scent queens.  Crown P is all low dusty fruit with a hint of peat and an odd sort of pea-green element, and Grace exhibits modest smoky tea-type notes.  All but Ellen are new in my garden this year and doing well.  The first three listed are all similarly large, thick-petalled and rain-resistant once fully open (the Crown P is still only half-out here) with Ellen possibly taking the heavyweight title, whilst the Ambridge is smaller, more tissue-y and delicate.

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