ugly roses

[Laura]

I bought a house that had a lot of rose bushes in the front
yard. They were doing poorly because the owner had not given
them any attention, but a little pruning took care of that
problem. Now all my bushes grow fine and bloom alot but I
have this one bush that has beautiful buds but the roses
once they bloom are ugly. The petals never really open &
they curve inwards. This bush buds alot but I have never
had a decent rose on it yet. I was wondering if it was some
deficiency or if it might actually be the bush itself. It
produces large red flowers.
Any help would be appreciated!

[Lemon Dave]

Laura,

Could be suckers from the root stock. Most modern roses are grafted on to
the roots of other roses. If the top of the plant is ignored and
neglected, as you suspect happened, sometimes suckers or shoots will
emerge from the root stock, producing its own flowers, which are usually
not very attractive.

My advice is to tend the rose well for a year or so and see if it
improves. If it doesn't, replace it with one that does.

Good luck.

[Linda Fortney]

If the flowers are dark red and appear only once in the early summer it
is proabable that the rootstock plant took over from the variety.

(In English) this means that many garden roses are the pretty flowering
named variety, (Peace, Queen Elizabeth etc.) is grafted onto the roots
of something hardier. If a gardener doesn'tt prune carefully the uglier
root stock can soon take over the plant. If this happens, there is no
way to bring the named variety back, you will need to replace the plant.

(Love your .sig--Realworld@Wam????)
--
Linda Fortney
lfor...@umd5.umd.edu