If only they would give the same names only to roses of different classes. Unfortunately, no one follows that rule either. I have two grandifloras named Twilight Zone, for instance, and two hybrid teas named Thanksgiving. And I can't even blame those on the French or the Germans. All four hybridizers are American.

As for the CRL, I'm sorry but it just isn't very exciting. I have the 2006 edition. I never bothered to buy another one after that. It was supposed to list every rose in commerce, but most of them weren't really available in commerce. Some of the vendor information was obsolete by the time the book was published because the places had gone out of business, some information was frustrating because the nurseries didn't have mail-order service, and some was iffy. I found it hard to believe, for instance, that every elusive Jackson & Perkins rose I looked up in the CRL was available only at one nursery in Bangladesh. That nursery, in fact, seemed to have every rose on earth available for sale (but not by mail), and I found that highly suspicious.

Bangladesh - LOL. CRL's website did sound exciting - sorry to hear it was a disappointment. Thanks for the warning and your evaluation.
In reference to Twilight Zone and Thanksgiving - as for rules - you a can have all the rules in the world but if no one is enforcing them, what good are those rules.

Thanks for posting the rose breeder's thread.. It's unfortunate that there is no recognized authority or registry worldwide that would prevent duplication. Iris hybridizers seem to be able to play nice and all recognize the American Iris Society's registry for names. I would have thought it would be the same with roses. Wonder what the back story is there?

Margie, I also have a grandson about the same age.. 19 months.. My daughter and her family moved to the Netherlands in September, and I mess them terribly. So far, my 4 year old grand-daughter has shown no interest in gardening or music.. But judging from his personality, I think my Grand-son might. Hopefully they'll only be gone a couple of years.

The Banana Coconut muffin recipe:
http://www.epicurious.com/reci...

I think part of the dilemma is that roses are a very old plant. I don't know how long the ARS has been keeping its registry, but the society itself wasn't even founded until 1892. By that time there were already thousands of roses, I'm sure, and I would bet that lots of them already had duplicate names by then.

I think it's understandable that the Europeans would be reluctant to use an American registry. They probably regard Americans as upstarts in the rose world. Europeans were breeding roses long before the Americans were, after all.

And even if the Europeans did respect the American registry, it doesn't seem to have any rules. If the ARS had rules, how could it let Carruth use the name 'Twilight Zone' when that name had already been used by Williams less than 20 years earlier?

I think @RoseBlush1 knows more about this than any of the rest of us. Lyn, what can you tell us about the Europeans vs. ARS controversy?

It's midnight, Zuzu, some I am going to provide some information, but am not going to take the time to research the exact dates.

It's true that roses have often been sold by multiple names and that goes back to the early 1800s, which is an interesting story of its own.

But I am going to limit this post to the European vs US Registry controversy. The European breeders were quite willing to register any rose that they could have patented in the US probably up to the end of the 1960s or early 1970s. I am selecting that period as the turning point because I remember reading an article by Jack Harkness about the work he, Sam McGredy, Alain Meilland, Jan Spek and others were doing to create a system to protect their work internationally in 1975. That registration system is called "Plant Breeders' Rights".

What stopped the Europeans from registering their roses with the ARS actually had little to do with "Americans as upstarts in the rose world". I cannot remember the exact particulars tonight, but the trigger was that the ARS decided to charge breeders to register their roses. The Europeans said, "No way." and boycotted the ARS. The ARS changed its policy quite quickly, but the European breeders had already worked quite hard to create their own registration system and were unwilling to go back to registering roses with the ARS unless the roses were going to be sold in the US.

The registered rose name is what we would see as a breeder's code name, officially known as the denomination name, generally starting with the first three letters of the breeder's last name. Since that name had to be totally unique for registration, if those three letters were already used, another three letter code would be assigned to the breeder. This allowed the rose to be sold in many countries using what in the industry is called the "fancy name" or in our terms the "marketing name". There is no restriction on using one marketing name for several different roses over time.

It is the denomination name that is the rose name that has legal protection. It is the name that is use in US Patents and European Plant Breeders Rights registrations and therefore included in international treaties.

Unfortunately, from my point of view, the large breeding houses in Europe have found that trademarking a name is less costly than applying for the traditional breeder protection and they often re-use a name they have trade marked which only leads to more confusion. Two unique, properly registered roses with different denomination names are often introduced with a trademarked name because the company has already paid for the trademark. Trademarking a rose name was an attempt to reserve that rose "fancy name" for only one company.

I know this is a broad explanation and I am willing to go into more detail tomorrow, if anyone has any questions.

Smiles,
Lyn

Thanks, Lyn. I knew you'd have lots of information about this.

It's all a bit silly, isn't it? So the denomination name can't be reused, but who cares about that? No one's ever going to brag about the WEKebtidere they're growing. They're going to call it Twilight Zone.

In general, a central registry wouldn't do that much good at this point. First of all, there are the thousands and thousands of roses that were never registered. Then there is the fact that the same rose can have so many different names.

At this point, I'm going to change the subject slightly and talk about the rules of our Rose Database in case people have questions about it. We list the roses in our database alphabetically under their exhibition names, but we also list the other names as cultivar names in the same entry. 'English Sonnet' is a good example. It has a denomination code (HARverag), but I bought mine as 'Samaritan," Heirloom has sold it under two different names ('Lawrence of Arabia' and 'Fragrant Surprise'), and it's also known as 'King Arthur.'

Rose (Rosa 'English Sonnet')

In contrast to other parts of the ATP Database, the Rose Database doesn't list these extra names as also-sold-as names. We give them equal standing as cultivar names because it's hard to say which of them is the main name. It wouldn't make any sense to list roses alphabetically by their denomination codes. Who knows offhand that Meibacus is the code for 'Comtesse de Provence'? And what would we do about all the roses without denomination codes? The exhibition name of that rose is 'Comtesse de Provence,' so that's where it is listed alphabetically, even though most of us refer to the rose as 'Liv Tyler.'

Rose (Rosa 'Comtesse de Provence')

As for the trade names, we also depart from ATP Database protocol in the Rose Database in that case, because a rose usually doesn't have only one trade name. It can have numerous trademarked names -- one for France, one for Germany, one for Italy, one for the United States, etc., etc. It's only the name that's trademarked, after all, not the rose.

zuzu said:'
It's only the name that's trademarked or copyrighted, after all, not the rose.

So, does that mean I can start cuttings of 'Dick Clark' and sell them as 'Kansas Sunset' or some other name?

I've never really understood why the daylily and iris people are such sticklers for name registrations and rose breeders are not. I really appreciate the explanations here! And Margie, for years, our club has bought copies of the rose list, but I never looked at it. It does sound like it would be handy to have. I have several roses in my garden that I can't identify, and if this handbook had specific info, maybe I could tell if my mysery rose was 'Beverly' or 'Pink Don Juan', for example. The hosta people have some very specific books that are a huge help in identification. They count veins, and measure everything. With roses, there's so much variation in climate, I'm not sure if a rose is coral, or pink, or salmon, red, orange, etc. Height registrations likewise mean nothing. My 'Music Box' is now 7 feet tall, and 'Graham Thomas' is only 4 feet tall. I have 'Aloha', but I don't know which 'Aloha'.
Names really really matter to me, and parentage does too. When I get a catalog that lists parentage of the roses, I am way more likely to buy their roses. Right now I have 3 roses with incredible blooms, and no names on them. It is driving me crazy!

No, you can't sell cuttings of Dick Clark as Kansas Sunset and pretend it's a completely different rose,, but you can sell Dick Clark and copyright the name Kansas Sunset for it, as long as you pay royalties to the breeder of Dick Clark. Roses are patented. That's a different thing from copyrights and trademarks.

The handbook does not have the specific information you're seeking. It has even less information about important characteristics (such as petal count or alternative names) than our ATP database. It mostly provides information on nurseries carrying the roses, but that information is often useless, as I explained in my post. I wish I could find mine, so I could give you an example of a typical listing (name, class, color category, hybridizer, year of introduction, and codes corresponding to nursery names and addresses). I actually suspect I gave it away (or threw it away) because it was so useless to me. There are no photos of roses and not much in the way of description.

Aloha's actually easy to identify. We have three listed in our database. You can safely ignore the listing for the yellow Kordes hybrid tea because it's very hard to find, especially on this continent. That leaves the two climbers. The Boerner climber is medium pink, and the only color variations are slightly lighter or darker shades of pink. The Kordes climber is an apricot blend. It does produce some pink blooms, but it also produces blooms with blends of apricot, yellow, white, and pink. There's much more variation in the blooms, and most of the Kordes Aloha blooms have fewer petals than the Boerner Aloha blooms.

The lack of parentage info in the Rose Database really bothers me. When I was filling in the details for more than 6,000 roses, we had no data field for parentage. Now a parentage data field has been added to the database and I have to go back and add the parentage for each rose. It would have been so much simpler to do it from the start. I'd appreciate anyone's help in adding this information to our rose entries.

Lyn, thanks for the info on the European vs US Registry controversy. A fascinating read.
Zuzu, did you do the rose database? Well, whoever it was did one incredible job. If you want I could try and find the parentage of the roses in my garden and send you the info???

That would be great, Cindi.

Thanks, Zuzu. I appreciate your thorough explanation.

Thank-you to everyone for all this great information.

Frankly, I wouldn't care if it was the AIS, a European, or a worldwide organization that straightened out the naming mess. If I had Liv Tyler, I wouldn't want to walk into a nursery and see Comptess de Provence and think I was getting something I didn't already have. It takes away the spontaneity of buying a rose for me.. That can't be good for the industry if more people felt that way.

Depends on who's defining what's "good for the industry," I guess. In monetary terms, it's great for the industry. I've bought so many "new" roses without knowing that only the name is new, and I already have the roses at home. In terms of goodwill, though, it's bad for the industry because we don't like being conned.

Henhouse said:Thank-you to everyone for all this great information.

Frankly, I wouldn't care if it was the AIS, a European, or a worldwide organization that straightened out the naming mess. If I had Liv Tyler, I wouldn't want to walk into a nursery and see Comptess de Provence and think I was getting something I didn't already have. It takes away the spontaneity of buying a rose for me.. That can't be good for the industry if more people felt that way.

Sherri .. that issue has been at the heart of the whole registration mess since forever. In the 1800s, it was very common for a breeder from, let's say England, to visit a nursery/rose grower/breeder in France and obtain a plant and take it home and rename it and reintroduce it as a new rose. That's why many ogrs have multiple names. The guys from France often did the same kind of thing.

The formal rose registration process doesn't even cover all of the countries that are not a part of either of the primary rose registration entities. Think India, Argentina, Greece, etc. Oh, and don't forget the roses bred behind the iron curtain.

Then each country has its own plant patent laws. Oh, joy ! I've heard that the US patent law is changing again in March of next year.

Added to the above, as Zuzu mentioned, there are thousands of unregistered roses.

There isn't a worldwide organization that is willing to take on the task simply because there isn't enough money in it for them to take it on.

Since rose buyers have been dealing with this problem for centuries, I don't think this kind of re-naming a rose is going to go away easily.

I know I certainly wouldn't want to take on a task of that nature.

This whole thread prompted me to start researching some of my roses in our database. I have 'Beverly' on order from Palatine, and now I see that it is the same as 'Pink Perfection', which i already grow. Sigh. Last date for orders for fall delivery was October 31. I sent an email to Palatine anyway, begging them to remove Beverly and add Marilyn Monroe to my order. I'm hoping Marilyn is a tougher rose grafted on multiflora. I've killed 2 Marilyns already. Pope John Paul II is another one I considered, but I think I can find it locally and it may be resilient enough on Huey. Temps here are staying in the mid 70's for at least another week, so I'm pre-digging holes for the Palatine roses. My Regan order will come next April, so most likely some of those will replace weaklings who don't survive the winter. Really wish I had fed the roses in August. Several of the ones I really love are down to single canes. I think all I can do at this point is mulch them well in December and cross my fingers, right? Or not?

Not really, Cindi. I am not 100% certain this method will work for your one-cane wonders, but instead of hoping they survive the winter, why not try an experiment ? If you have a place to put canned roses where they have winter protection, I suggest you dig them up and put them into a container and allow them to grow roots. This may stimulate them to put up new basals, too.

Since I have never gardened in your climate, this is only a guess on my part. However, one of the lessons I have learned from the roses during my rose life is that I learn more about why a rose is failing when I look at the roots than just observing it's top growth. If you really think you are going to lose the rose, why not experiment ?

Lyn, do you think I can save this 'Bella Roma'? It was new this year, and had great roots when I got it.

Or this 'Secret'?




Would they be better off in a heated garage with a window, or in a pot up next to the stone wall of the house?

Cindi ... depending upon what's going on with the roots, I do think it's possible to give them a new start in that both have new wood coming from the bud union ... if I am seeing the photo correctly.

You can cut off dead wood any time, but I wouldn't cut off any top growth of a cane that has life at this time of year because the roses are storing nutrients in those canes. They can be cut back in spring. I have cut back roses I've rescued this way to one or two bud eyes above the bud union and the rose responded with new growth. I call that the do-or-die prune.

Roses don't need light at this time of year. Light is needed for photosynthesis. Growers harvest their roses from the field from late October through November by machine, process them and then put them in dark cold storage until it is time to prepare them for shipping. If you can duplicate the "dark cold storage", you could also bare root them. I am thinking a heated garage with a window is unnecessary at this time of year, but you could go that direction in early spring.

As for next to a stone wall, I've read about people doing that but have not done it myself. So, I really don't know what to tell you about that. Maybe others can give you better information.

Thanks again .
My options are heated garage or outdoors where they may not get enough water in a pot. I've only had a few roses survive the winter in a pot outdoors, and they were either minis or Drift roses. I can't bare root them because I have no consistently cold place. Our temps fluctuate wildly all winter.
I have some 15 gallon cans that I used for tomatoes, and they have a really good mix in them already. I have another question about that, but I think I'll start another thread for that.

Cindi ...

I think Andi, @GardenQuilts, over winters plants near a wall. Maybe she can give you some input.

Otherwise, the heated garage is fine, but I would place the roses away from the window.

Smiles,
Lyn

Edited to add: In San Diego, night temps at 40F are considered cold. Generally, they are warmer. The roses come though just fine, so do think the heated garage would not cause a problem.