Rose escapes from Alcatraz

The Bardou Job rose has come home home to Wales

An expatriate with a difference has been welcomed back to the Museum of Welsh Life at St Fagan's near Cardiff after more than a century of 'imprisonment' overseas.

The Bardou Job rose has come back to Welsh soil after an escape from the legendary island of Alcatraz.

The infamous island off San Francisco was famous for keeping its inmates incarcerated.

The rose is now being used to promote the Wales Tourist Board's Homecoming 2000 campaign, which encourages expatriates to revisit the 'land of their fathers.'

The infamous Alcatraz prison

The crimson and black flower originally formed part of a rosary at the museum but it has not grown there for more than a hundred years.

But it was eventually tracked down by the Heritage Rose Group who searched the prison island off San Francisco for old roses left by the wardens or prisoners.

The Bardou Job was found in the back garden of the head warden's home.

Six have now been planted in the Cardiff museum's rosary where they last appeared in the late nineteenth century.

Welsh heritage

At present, the museum's rosary now contains six Bardou Job roses, with another six expected to grow there this autumn.

"When we launched Homecoming 2000 we wanted to encourage people from all over the world with Welsh heritage to come back and visit the homeland at the beginning of the new Millennium, said Judith Newtown of the WTB.

"The Welsh take such pride in their heritage and are renowned for their warm welcomes, and we could hardly not celebrate the return of such clearly Welsh roots!"