09/07/2026
Mike is a fountain of rose knowledge and experience.
Varietal drift
I think that’s what he said.
Roses that have been around for years and years and distributed heavily may have the same name as those older ones that came out years ago, but they are not the same as the originals.
Some roses have been produced for a long time. 50 years plus. 75 years in some cases. I am going to go hypothetical here.
Let’s say you have the Peace Rose. Came out just after WW2. I have seen old peace roses that still are amazing. Huge flowers, giant flowers, looking like rhodies with rose flowers on them.
Let’s say I had the original. Well, everything off the original would be pretty close to the peace rose of 1945.
But what happens when take cuttings off that batch. It stays the same unless the rose starts to change. Call it evolving or devolving. If the plants stay happy then they are pretty good copies of the original, but sometimes the plants aren’t happy.
If you want to stay as close to the original as possible you would need to be cutting off that original. Unfortunately that doesn’t always happen. It is much easier to take cuttings and bud wood from the copies of peace then the real peace roses.
As they start to change little by little they become further away from what the original was. As folks continue to take cuttings off the roses they call “Peace” it drifts even more.
This has happened with Julia Child. It is still arguably the best yellow floribunda but it isn’t quite the same as it was earlier in its production.
For the young ones out there we use to have these machines called copiers. You would lay down a photo and the machine would basically take a picture of a picture. It would be pretty close to duplication, but not quite. Then if you made more copies off the copies pretty soon you get further and further away from the original.
It’s like that phone game. Where by the time it goes through so many relays the message can be completely altered. Sort of.
Anyway, people have told me fragrant some of these old time rose were, but on some through massive duplication, they aren’t as fragrant. Some are.
Also the fungus have adapted over the years too. I guess there is like 20 something versions of black spot now. In 1945 there were different ways roses were attacked. The fungus of today are different then 5 or 10 years ago even.
I get the question all the time, what is happening with my roses? Man I don’t know. I can offer suggestions and wonder why I don’t have your problems but that is a guess.
Even the best roses growers with the best roses have off years. They just don’t like to talk about it. I have this all the time. A quality roses acts all weird and has a terrible bloom cycle. Yep. The thing that is cool about roses is the next bloom cycle could be its best ever.
This is what separates the grower from the trophy gardener. The trophy gardener rips out anything that doesn’t look good and buys new stuff (Love those trophy gardener’s from a business standpoint), but the grower sees a problem or something they don’t like and tries to fix it. Gardeners are problem solvers in nature.
Anyway, just don’t want people getting frustrated when a rose doesn’t grow exactly the same compared to when you were little or whatever. Even if you buy a rose with the same name, it may not be the same rose.
