I have a rose growing out in our "sand garden", the area of our property that is completely neglected and the soil is unbelievably poor and sandy. This rose was obtained at a roundup gettogether in Jacksonville sometime around 2008. Trish thinks @sweezel gave it to us.

Anyway, the plant never got huge. It's maybe 3 feet tall and has small pink blooms. It is labeled as "C. Brunner" and I'm thinking it is Polyantha Rose (Rosa 'Cecile Brunner')

The situation, though, is that our rose has serious thorns but the database says that Cecile Brunner is almost thornless. So, what do you all think?

I have no experience with Cecile Brunner, the short polyantha, which most sources describe as thornless, but I do have the climbing Cecile Brunner, which is a sport of the short one, and it definitely has thorns.

I wonder how common it is for a thornless rose to produce a thorned sport. This raises doubts about the accuracy of the information that the short polyantha is thornless.

There's another possibility. There's a rose known as Improved Cecile Brunner, described in various sources as a floribunda or a hybrid gigantea. It has thorns and it grows to only about 3 feet tall.

Rose (Rosa 'Improved Cecile Brunner')

I have both Cecile Brunner and the climbing sport. Only the climber has thorns and they are not serious thorns. The blooms of both are so pale as to be almost white.

I used to have a climbing Cecile Brunner and it had some thorn esp on the older wood.

@Dave ....

There is no known sport of Cecile Brunner that is "armed with thorns". However, I can propose how you may have received a plant of CB with thorns.

When I volunteered to prune roses at the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, I came across a few roses that had smooth canes and very thorny canes on the same plant. When I asked the curator of the garden how this could happen, I was told that the thorny canes were actually a "sport" cane of the plant, in that it had a different plant characteristic than was normal for the rose. (Every other plant characteristic ... foliage, bloom form, etc. was identical.) If bud-wood for propagation was taken from one of the thorny canes, the new rose would also be thorny. If bud-wood for propagation was taken from the smooth canes, the new plant would not have thorns in that those canes did not carry the mutation of the sporting canes.

I hope this makes sense.

Smiles,
Lyn

Thanks, all of you! It's a good chance that what I have is a Rose (Rosa 'Improved Cecile Brunner') but I guess when I can see it bloom again this year that might help. I'll take pictures in a few months.

I've wondered the same thing about CB whether it's a climber or not.
I have a big old climber which is "partially thorny"...some of it is thorny, some isn't.
I planted the non-climber for my sister a while back...part of it has brutal thorns, other parts don't. It's very curious how it does that.

Mine that I got rid of.. last year? 2 years ago? I think last year was completely thornless. I liked it, but I don't like 1 trick ponies. And she got HUGE.. I'd have to cut quite a bit off of her for winterkill and by fall she was 6-8' long. Huge rambler. Maybe mine was a freak compared to everyone else's here?

Perhaps so. Mine repeats.

I went to Chamblee's today and looked at their Cecile Brunner (they had both the climber and the polyantha) and they were both strikingly lacking in thorns.

I looked at their Fairy rose and it more closely matched what I have in terms of thorns and I'm wondering if what we have is Fairy but it was mislabeled by the one who gave it to us. So I'm just going to wait til it blooms and then we'll maybe get a better idea of what we have.

In my garden, the blooms of The Fairy are much smaller than the Cecile Brunner blooms, so bloom size should be a good indication of the one you have.

Zuzu - goodness, how much smaller? My Cecile Brunner's blooms were about the size of a half-dollar. I think only Rose Marie Viaud and Vineyard Song have smaller blooms.. both produce little itty bitty nickle-sized blooms. I don't mind Vineyard Song's because you can smell her a mile away and Rose Marie.. well, let's just say that I've abused her horribly.

So, @Dave, did you buy any roses ??? Also, since they are a distributor of Kordes roses, did you ask about the Kordes roses they are carrying this year ?

Smiles,
Lyn

My Fairy is much denser, and thornier, also blooms smaller and pinker than my Cecile Brunner.

Toni, the blooms on The Fairy are about the same size as the blooms on Vineyard Song.

I did get a good load of Kordes roses today at Chamblee's, actually. They have a bargain area where for some reason they sell their 1 gallon roses for $2.50 each and we bought a total of 7 of their Rose (Rosa 'Larissa') We'll plant some of them and sell the rest in our local master gardener plant sale.

We also picked up Rose (Rosa 'Caramella') , Rose (Rosa 'Garden of Roses') , and Rose (Rosa 'South Africa')

In total we came home with about 12 plants and spent $83. Gotta love that! Chamblee's is a fun nursery to visit, they have a really nice selection and great prices. The only downside is that almost all (or maybe all) of their roses are "own root" roses.

Some roses are just as vigorous own root as they are budded. They just take a little more time to catch up to the budded roses.

Sounds like you made a good haul. Enjoy your roses.

Smiles,
Lyn

I'll post the full list of what I got tomorrow.

Wow! You got some of my favorite roses. I've had South Africa and Caramella for years, and Larissa has often tempted me when I've seen it on the Palatine site.

Garden of Roses is a Kordes Veranda rose (Cream Veranda), and the Veranda roses grow beautifully on their own roots, so you won't even need catch-up time on that one.

*insanely jealous!!!* OMG totally insanely jealous here. So glad we have this emoticon: See? Green with envy! Not one nursery here is even starting to get stuff in.. *maybe* next week if the weather holds (which it looks like it will) some of the nurseries will start to get some baby stock in so they can grow it out in their greenhouses, but I don't get to shop for plants for at least another month & half, if not 2 months!!! Grrrr!!!