Bloody mislabelled roses!!!

Pulled some buds of the plant I bought from 'Reliable Roses' (note the irony here) as Rosa gigantea to collect its pollen for some early pollinations... started pulling the petals off and thought... that's weird... gigantea is only meant to have five petals... I lost count at 30 petals This is NOT gigantea!!! All these came from the one bud.


I don't known what it is as I've not let the flowers open fully yet... it's a young plant so only small. but it sure aint gigantea. The petals are a kind of creamy green... I was thinking maybe 'Chromatella'. Leaves are tea-like. Now I'm going to have to try and find a real gigantea from somewhere that is clean... another bloody setback...

Simon do you want cuttings?

This is the receptacle.: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Does this look familiar to anyone? The receptacle is very distinctive... thinking climbing tea or noisette of some description. Doesn't repeat for me (yet)

It can be a right PITA I agree.
If it's only a $6.95 bare rooted one from Big W , I might grumble a bit but I can live with it ; but when one fork's out $26.50 for potted bushes that turn out to be something completely different to what they are labelled [and written on the pots] GRRRRRRRRRRR.

It had got to the point where I was buying potted bushes either in flower or in bud so I could actually see what I was buying .
I've got some pics of one lot of ring-ins but they are on my computer and I haven't got it back yet .
The two plants that I bought were supposed to be Makybe Diva and
The Alnwick Rose [sp?]
I returned them to the nursery in town where I bought them from and Sue the owner took the matter up with the grower who was adamant that they couldn't have made a mistake !!
If it wasn't for the fact that this particular wholesaler writes the names on the pots as well as labelling them , it might have just been a case of tickets falling off and then getting hung back on the wrong pot .
The buds when they opened were of two flowers that looked nothing even remotely like what they were supposed .
The one labelled Makybe Diva turned out to be a yellow rosette style of flower [very D.A looking] and the other instead of being a clear glowing pink was this grubby pinky grey shade.

So now I won't buy unless it has a flower that I can view.

But this is posing another problem . Roses produced locally here in W.A are all budded onto R. fortuniana rootstock because it's supposed to be the bees knees for West Australian conditions , by which I think they mean the coastal sandplain down the west coast.
Here in the hills on the heavier soil though , it's a different story. I find here [and when I lived in Donnybrook] that the bushes really struggle for the first couple of years and take ages to get established .
Bushes planted out in the winter can have 50%+ mortality rate over the first summer but the bare rooted E.S produced cheapies on good ol' Dr Huey [or Phooey] are off their marks and away as soon as the spring weather arrives. I very seldom lose any of them .

As there are roses that I still want to add to my collection , it looks like going back to buying bare rooted roses by mail order from over east and hoping that there aren't too many stuff ups with the labelling.

Sorry my gripe hijacked your thread Simon , I haven't a clue what your mystery rose is .

cheers. Rosalie

Did you ever find out what this rose is Simon?

What really annoys me is that customers can complain to some nurseries until they are blue in the face that plants are mislabelled, yet they persist in retaining the wrong names. It's almost as if they are saying "We know what we are selling and we don't need you telling us otherwise". They just won't admit to a mistake. But every year a new catalogue comes out and the same old mistakes get repeated ad nauseum. Can't be good for business!

Nope - I'm just heading up the back paddock to see if it has survived the winter actually. Still no closer to knowing what it it.

Just a thought. Wouldn't be 'Courier' by any chance? This is often sold as anything from Rosa gigantea, R. Xgigantea, and even as 'Hume's Blush'.

I would expect 'Courier' to have more pink tonings than creamy-yellow though!

Another possibility is 'Park's Yellow Tea-Scented China NOT', although I'm not sure if the identity of this rose has ever been established. Margaret may know. I purchased it years ago (I no longer have it) and can only describe it as being like a Clg HT with quite loose petals.

Yet another possibility is an ROR that was found near a cottage in the city of Warwick in southern Queensland, Australia. Flowers creamy yellow, a climbing(?) tea rose. The cottage was owned by a lady named Lorna, hence the rose name. The true identity of this rose still has not been established. (It is not to be confused with the Lorna Doone bred by William Paul (United Kingdom, 1893), or the Floribunda raised by Harkness in 1970, which had parentage recorded as: 'Red Dandy' X 'Lilli Marlene'.

Simon, the petals do look right for 'Lorna Doone' ROR (ex Warwick).

Here's a thought that just came to me. It is possible that 'Lorna Doone' ROR is the same rose as 'Park's Yellow Tea-Scented China NOT'.

I dug it up and moved it yesterday.... brought it closer to the house. I guess if I was that keen to I.D. it I can always contact Reliable Roses and ask them what they send out as gigantea

Hi Simon, I had edited my message above just after you posted your message. 'Lorna Doone' ROR is a distinct possibility, depending on whether RR obtained any material from up here. Roses tend to slip into commerce so quickly these days. Often they turn up in nurseries under different names too, e.g. the Agnes Smith ROR being passed off as Irene Watts!!

There are two features that are distinctive on this rose:

The receptacle has a recessed ring around the peduncle:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

The thorns are smallish and wicked hooked, reminding me of Rosa bracteata thorns:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

The buds, flower, and thorns remind me a little of 'Alba Odorata'/'Maria Leonida'. I think it is very likely to be 'Maria Leonida' too but it has never had enough leaves for me to be able to tell and the receptacle doesn't look like anything I've ever seen on ML. It doesn't like the cold down here. The sepals in the photo of all the petals is hairy like ML and the photo of the receptacle above is the same bud after some time. I have not noticed it to be glandular yet but then I haven't taken much notice of it either. The leaves, from memory, are more tea/china/noisette-like than bracteata-like but it has been some time since I've seen them. With any luck it will like it's new position more and will pick up. The sections I pruned off it to move it are in the fridge to callous up now to see if I can strike it too.

I think we can rule out 'Maria Leonida' on the grounds that this rose should have very thorny petioles. The one in your photo shows a very smooth petiole. I also think 'Maria Leonida' has longer glandular hairs (if that's what they are called?) along the fringes of the calyx lobes as well. I would need a photo of the flowers in bud to be sure though.