Black Beauty, one of my favorite roses, started out in my garden as Abracadabra, a striped florists rose that commonly reverts to Hocus Pocus. Hocus Pocus, in turn, commonly reverts to Black Beauty. I enjoyed all three phases of this metamorphosis, but the final product is the best of the three.

Black Beauty is a small rose bush (only about 2 feet tall and 1 foot wide in my zone 9 garden) and it has no fragrance whatsoever, but the beauty of the blooms makes up for these undesirable features. The bush is a floribunda, but the blooms are higher-centered than the exhibition-quality blooms of any hybrid tea. They are carried in clusters at the top of the cane and they are so perfect that they resemble velvet artificial flowers. The petals are dark red, almost purple, with a true-red reverse. The contrast is stunning.

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