‘Jurassic’ movie has giant animals; Lenkers have giant plants

By Dan Merritt, Advocate reporter

“Jurassic World” movie, recently released, shows gigantic reptiles lumbering around the countryside.

In town, in Winner, there are gigantic rose plants 15-feet tall and probably higher at the David and Pat Lenker home, southwest Winner.

The rose blooms tower high, nestled among the foliage of cedar evergreens. The trees support the rose plants as they stretch upward.

“They want to climb to the sky! We’ll stand back and see,” Pat observed.

When she and her husband put five “little shrub” plants, they said, into the soil at the back of their lot near a neighbor’s cedar trees in 2001, it wasn’t known they were climbing roses.

But the plants kept getting taller. “When they met the trees, they went up,” Pat commented.

Through 14 winters. Normally, other flowering rose plants on their place have to be covered in winter to protect against freezing.

But the Lenkers’ towering bavily (or possibly baffin) rose plants can’t be covered.

For some reason, exposed to winter cold, they have continued to survive. And thrive in the summers.

“We’ve never done anything, they just stay alive. That’s an unusual trait,” Pat noted.

The freakishly tall plants sport numerous blooms — in the hundreds, maybe thousands, said Dave.