If you follow the Mississippi River to where it meets the ocean, you will be in Plaquemines, Louisiana’s southernmost parish. Known for its seafood and offshore oil and gas, Plaquemines is also where an unknown rose withstood the brutal force of Hurricane Katrina .

The genesis of this climbing rose bush, which becomes covered with delicate bursts of pink flowers every spring, is still murky. But the plant came to join Peggy Martin’s garden in the community of Phoenix, Louisiana, some 16 years before Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving an estimated total of $125 billion in damage in its wake.

“In 1989, it was given to me by a friend,” Martin said of the rose. That friend told Martin she received the flower from her mother-in-law, and though Martin has spent years research

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