I'm sorry to just show up and ask for something but my frustration is getting the best of me. So I apologize for being rude.

I bought a house and it has some beautiful roses.

Two of them I have been informed from a few other gardening sites are double knock out roses.

The third no one seems to know. My neighbor who was good friends with the original owner told me it was around 50 years old. I'm not sure if she's yanking my chain or not.

I'm trying to find out what it is so I can take care of it properly, I don't want to lose it.

I'm a rookie so I have no idea if I can care for this one the same as the knockouts and not harm it.

It's my favorite of the bunch.

Thanks for reading my rant.

I'm in USDA Zone 6a if that helps.

Sorry and thank you.

The mystery rose


These I was told are double knock outs.

I think the Double Knock Outs are correctly identified. Your other rose reminds me of Belinda's Dream, but I am not one of the better identifiers here. If you can get more pictures showing the whole plant, leaves, stems, thorns etc. it will make it easier to name. Also tell us whatever you know about it: fragrance, repeat bloom, health, all will help. There are thousands of pink roses so it may never get a certain i.d., but some folks on here are very good at this game.

And by the way: welcome to the rose forum!

Welcome, Andrew.


I know next to nothing about Roses, but, as porkpal said, we have some folks who are very good at the ID game and I am sure they will be chiming in.

Thank you for the input so far. I can add another picture now and will take some clear close ups tomorrow.

I can tell you a little though. The biggest bloom in that photo is 4 and 1/4 inch(approx).

It stands a bit over 4 feet high. It has three large canes/stalks/stems amd each has 2 to 4 buds per. The throns are brown and quite large in comparrison to the knock outs. The thorns are larger and brown. They also appear more frequently on the canes/stems(I'm not sure which is the right word) than the knockouts. It's fragrance is much stronger in the morning.

It had a lot of leaves that had black spots, kost turned yellow. I cut them all off. It also had a few little green catapillar like bugs on it.

It gets full sun, there is never any shade for it to have.

Here is another photo.



Thank you all for responding. I'm so paranoid about it dying. The bottom, I think it's referred to as a bud union?, one side has growth( the flowers pictured) and the other side looks dead and grey.

Thank you for the welcome.

Belinda's Dream is a lighter pink and isn't even 30 years old yet. Here are a few possibilities that are closer in color to yours and old enough: Bewitched (1967), Pink Princess (1939), Duet (1960), and Ballet (1958). All of these were extremely popular roses at one time.

Wow.

I was way off, maybe I need my eyes checked. My girlfriend and I had been searching that database and both of us picked one and wanted to see if either of us were close and we were not. She picked Queen Elizabeth and had picked Belle Helene.

I know nothing is definitive but something in the ballpark is good enough I suppose.

I'll still post a few more pics tomorrow and see if that might help narrow it down.

Either way I really dig the roses I have and we ate thinking of just doing roses all the way around in the back.

well first off who owned the house before you? and before that and is anyone still living? Probably a grandchild ect could tell you 'yes, I remember when grandma planted that' that will give you an age moreso. But chances are if the neighbor told you that it is probably true. How old is the house? that time era will give you an idea of the roses popular and available for the day. If it is 50 years old, there is a good chance it isn't grafted, and is on it's own roots (like 100% chance most likely) which is good. Lets face it, if it is 50 years old this has seen a lot of neglect, so caring for it minimally is probably best, supposing it is doing ok on it's own. It's healthy right? I mean it's blooming so it must be happy. All you need to worry about is doing anything inadvertently to harm it. Like accidentally weed eating, which would probably grow back, accidentally spraying w over drift of herbicide, or allowing a dog to pee on it regularly, or things like that. toss a little rotted cow manure on it and some mulch and it will love you! also, full sun, so don't plant or erect anything near it that will block the sun too much, roses are sun lovers.

Frillylily said:well first off who owned the house before you? and before that and is anyone still living? Probably a grandchild ect could tell you 'yes, I remember when grandma planted that' that will give you an age moreso. But chances are if the neighbor told you that it is probably true. How old is the house? that time era will give you an idea of the roses popular and available for the day. If it is 50 years old, there is a good chance it isn't grafted, and is on it's own roots (like 100% chance most likely) which is good. Lets face it, if it is 50 years old this has seen a lot of neglect, so caring for it minimally is probably best, supposing it is doing ok on it's own. It's healthy right? I mean it's blooming so it must be happy. All you need to worry about is doing anything inadvertently to harm it. Like accidentally weed eating, which would probably grow back, accidentally spraying w over drift of herbicide, or allowing a dog to pee on it regularly, or things like that. toss a little rotted cow manure on it and some mulch and it will love you! also, full sun, so don't plant or erect anything near it that will block the sun too much, roses are sun lovers.

Sadly I'm the third owner, after it was the original owner it was used as a rental to a elderly woman. I called the seller and he didn't have much to tell me except that is "Sophie's" one remaining rose.

My neighbor informed me the original owner had probaby 100 roses of all types. Her back yard was a rose garden the second lady came along and ripped out all but two, one died.

The second lady planted the knockouts and the stuff you see next to them plus some other stuff aside from a Hosta and Azalea(sp?) I'm going to remove it all and build around the roses.

I'm basically going to move the hosta to the front yard and remove everything but the roses and add some Dahlias and whatever else my lady decides. She's the boss so I might not even get Dahlias. Hahaha.

Your advice is appreciated and well received.

Andrew, your rose has the habit of a hybrid tea. Belle Helene is a Gallica. It blooms only once a year and it's relatively thornless (it has only a few small thorns on each cane). Queen Elizabeth is the right color, but it doesn't have as many petals as your rose.

I found my guesses by looking for pink hybrid teas with large blooms with more than 40 petals.

Frillylily, you're wrong to say there's a good chance it isn't grafted. Own-root roses were not being sold 50 years ago. They were present in gardens, of course, but only if the gardener had grown them himself from cuttings. All nursery-grown roses, even landscape shrubs and OGRs were grafted then. The own-root rose nursery is a relatively new phenomenon.

zuzu said:Andrew, your rose has the habit of a hybrid tea. Belle Helene is a Gallica. It blooms only once a year and it's relatively thornless (it has only a few small thorns on each cane). Queen Elizabeth is the right color, but it doesn't have as many petals as your rose.

I found my guesses by looking for pink hybrid teas with large blooms with more than 40 petals.

Frillylily, you're wrong to say there's a good chance it isn't grafted. Own-root roses were not being sold 50 years ago. They were present in gardens, of course, but only if the gardener had grown them himself from cuttings. All nursery-grown roses, even landscape shrubs and OGRs were grafted then. The own-root rose nursery is a relatively new phenomenon.

Could you explain grafted in terms for dummies?

Sorry I should have typed what I meant.

I read what grafting is, but saw nothing of why grafting happens, I meant to ask explain the point of grafting, in dummy terms of course.

Andrew, it's the process by which a rose was spliced onto rootstock from a more vigorous rose. Sometimes the whole rose (known as the scion) is grafted onto the rootstock, and sometimes a bud eye or several bud eyes from the scion are grafted onto a rootstock. The two different methods were once differentiated as "grafting" and "budding," but today the terms are virtually interchangeable.

This was once done to all roses because it was thought that the addition of a vigorous rootstock was necessary for all roses. The high cost of grafting services, the shortage of experienced grafters, and other economic considerations gradually led to the sale of own-root roses, which are rooted cuttings from a rose. Grafted roses typically were grown in the fields for two years before sale. Own-root roses, by contrast, usually are sold as soon as 6 months after the cutting has rooted.

Now grafting is done mainly on large-flowered climbers, grandifloras, and hybrid teas, which tend to grow poorly or not at all on their own roots. Most of the old garden roses, floribundas, and shrub roses will grow well on their own roots and do not require grafting.

The growth pattern looks wrong, but the bloom form and color resembles my Mrs B. R. Cant. Could it actually be a recovering climber?

Here are some pics I took this morning.

Is the dead looking part dead or can it be revived?







I dug up to plant some Dahlias this morning and the soil if you can call it that is pretty much clay. If that helps.

Yes, the dead-looking part is dead and can't be revived. If you cut all of the dead stuff down to the ground, this could stimulate the rose to produce new basal shoots from the bottom. Keep the green canes and get rid of the brittle brown ones.

Now that I've seen the cluster of blooms in your latest photo, I've changed my mind: This could be Aloha, a 1949 climbing hybrid tea that's still popular today. It's a short climber that usually looks more like a shrub, growing to about 5-6 feet tall. It's hardy to zone 5, so it easily could have been growing in your garden for decades.

With grafting, a rose that is that old and had neglected care especially in zone 6 would have died down to the rootstock, and it would most likely be blooming red today.

Now, on the other hand, since the lady had tons of roses planted all over, she clearly was mail ordering some fancy stuff and therefore much of it was probably grafted. So that is a toss up.

There is a house up the road from me here that has huge bushes, they bloom only once a year and then intermediately after that, and were planted in the early seventies. They are most certainly own root roses, and not grafted. The house has sat empty now for several years, and even with our bad winters, no mulch or care whatsoever, they are thriving- in my experience grafted roses don't do that in areas with cold winters especially. I would not plant a grafted rose, own roots or none at all as they just don't survive long term.

It all depends on the rose. If a grafted rose is hardy to zone 6, it will have no trouble staying alive in zone 6. If Dr. Huey takes over, it's either because the suckers from the rootstock were not removed from the rose or that the scion was never meant to live in zone 6. Dr. Huey, on the other hand, is the most common rootstock and it is hardy to zone 6, so it will continue to thrive even if cold weather kills the scion.

The huge bushes up the road from you may be growing on their own roots now, but if they were purchased from a nursery in the early seventies, they almost certainly were grafted when they were planted. If the bud union of a grafted rose is below the ground, there's a good chance that the rose will start growing on its own roots, especially if the scion is more hardy than the rootstock. In the warmer zones, we keep the bud union an inch or two above the ground. That way, if we ever do get suckers from the rootstock, they're easy to identify and remove.

I prefer hybrid teas and other modern roses, so I've stopped buying own-root plants. The roses I like won't grow well on their own roots. Granted, my garden is in a warm zone, but I have an 84-year-old grafted hybrid tea in my garden. When I bought a house in 1974, one of the roses in the garden was President Herbert Hoover, a hybrid tea. The previous owner had planted it in 1932. It's the only rose I dug up and took with me when I moved a couple of times over the years, and it's still in my garden today -- a healthy rose that blooms profusely and stands about 6-7 feet tall.

Several years ago, I started worrying that it would die someday and I acquired a replacement, an own-root President Herbert Hoover from Vintage Gardens. That rose required lots of TLC, never grew beyond 2-3 feet, bloomed only sporadically, and gave up the ghost after 4 years. It was a waste of time and money.

I agree for the most part with Zuzu ... I am not 100% that what you are looking at is totally dead because you never truly know until you cut the cane and see the inside of the cane as some roses do develop bark as they age. Roses are tough and can be rejuvenated with a little help from the gardener.

You have identified the class of rose you have inherited, so even tho' you may never know the cultivar's true name, you can learn how to care for it.

Your first goal, of course, is to improve the soil, make sure it has sufficient moisture and nutrients. You will want to cut out obvious dead wood and then take a step back.

When you can provide photos of the whole plant and give us a better idea of where your are gardening, members of the Rose Forum can give you more helpful suggestions to help you move forward. Zone 6 only tells us your cold hardiness information, but doesn't give us much more information about the kind of climate you have for your garden.

It sounds like you are not struggling with bringing abandoned roses back, so you should end up having a whole lot of fun, but are in serious danger of becoming a rose addict. Zuzu is an incredible enabler ...

RoseBlush1 said:I agree for the most part with Zuzu ... I am not 100% that what you are looking at is totally dead because you never truly know until you cut the cane and see the inside of the cane as some roses do develop bark as they age. Roses are tough and can be rejuvenated with a little help from the gardener.

You have identified the class of rose you have inherited, so even tho' you may never know the cultivar's true name, you can learn how to care for it.

Your first goal, of course, is to improve the soil, make sure it has sufficient moisture and nutrients. You will want to cut out obvious dead wood and then take a step back.

When you can provide photos of the whole plant and give us a better idea of where your are gardening, members of the Rose Forum can give you more helpful suggestions to help you move forward. Zone 6 only tells us your cold hardiness information, but doesn't give us much more information about the kind of climate you have for your garden.

It sounds like you are not struggling with bringing abandoned roses back, so you should end up having a whole lot of fun, but are in serious danger of becoming a rose addict. Zuzu is an incredible enabler ...

I've done nothing really.

My wife has been pruning, picking off th leaves with black spots.

She has never dealth with roses but is familiar with house plants and managed to keep a grocery store orchid alive for almost three years. It'd still be here but sometimes 3 year olds tear stuff up.

As far as addiction goes, it's too late.

I went by my grandmother's today and we are going to attempt to get her roses to take root in some pots. We started 6 of them so hopefully one makes it.

Her roses are from my great grandmother's garden from down in Kentucky. It made the trip in the mid 80's in a planters can.

She doesn't take care if it, which my wife is taking care of it as of today.

Here's a photo of my great grandmother's roses. They are smaller but they smell great. You don't have to be up on them to smell them like the ones already in my yard.






I started to trim a crabapple down to nothing today and stopped when I saw it's shading a few lilies.

I'm loving all the suprises this yard is bringing us. I also updated my location. I'm in SE Michigan.


Thank you all for the information and education so far. Hopefully I can contribute one of these days.

@zuzu

The post above with the small purple rose above as stated is from my grandmother's yard.

We used a cut stem with a flower and it didn't take but two small cuttings from the base in a pot did almost nothing for a couple of weeks I was going to dump it yesterday and start over and both cuttings have new growth!

I wish I had taken a picture. I was for sure they were not going to make it, I wish I could see what goes on under the dirt.

Some people start cuttings in clear plastic so they can do just that.