Mislabeled Roses in the Garden.

This is something that all gardeners have had happen to them at least once. We order a named variety of a plant from a vendor (in my case, roses) and the plant we receive isn’t the one we ordered. Most of the time with roses, we don’t find out that it’s the wrong one until the thing blooms the next year.

Here are a few of mine:

This is definitely not 'Mrs. Aaron Ward'. What I expected to be an apricot Hybrid Tea is more of a dark pink sprawler. I’ll move it to the rose field and see if I can get it to climb, and put a real Hybrid Tea in its place.





What I ordered was "Hoag House Cream", a creamy white found Hybrid Tea. What I received was Reveille Dijonnais, a red and yellow blend climber. ???? Needless to say, it can’t stay in the bed of antique Hybrid Teas.



This is not 'September Morn'. 'September Morn' is a light pink Hybrid Tea. This isn’t light pink. I have no idea what it really is.



This one was supposed to be Schultheis’ American Beauty, an obscure Hybrid Tea. It’s actually Schoener’s Nutkana … a really nice, large, arching shrub, with huge, dark pink flowers. I’m pretty pleased with this mistake.



The tag in the pot this rose came in said 'Mme. Berard', which is an apricot tea climber. Does this look like an apricot tea climber to you? It’s definitely not the Madame, though it seems like it's a nice rose. What’s interesting about it is that this rose is completely thornless … smooth as a baby’s you-know-what.



All but one of these came from Sequoia Nursery in California, which closed last year. Some day, I will re-order the roses I originally wanted, from another source. In the meantime, I will try to identify the ones I have. If you have any ideas, let me know.

I am going to try as hard as I can to make sure that this doesn’t happen to any of you when you buy roses here. If there’s a tag on the rose, you can feel confident that the rose in the pot is the same as the name on the tag. If I’m not sure of the name, I’ll tell you … it’s as simple as that.