Zuzu ...
Mislabeled roses are a fact of life for rose nurseries. They often cannot afford to hire the best people, especially during rose season. I've worked in rose nurseries and know that often the owners of the nurseries are just stretched too thin to be able to cover every shipment. Yes, they set up policies for internal control, but they have to depend on others to carry them out.
I have seen new employees, who were really good workers, screw up the labeling on a whole bench of roses because they simply did not know the roses.
Yes, there are nurseries with poor quality control. There is no doubt of that. We jokingly used to call Heirloom ERRloom Roses. The truth there, was that they really didn't care. The same is true for some other nurseries. However, Heirloom is under new ownership. Will they still have the same kinds of problems ?
The reason Dr. Huey became a root stock used in the rose fields is that someone mislabled the bud wood and instead of planting Ragged Robin, they planted Dr. H. It turns out that Dr. H was the better root stock.
Nurseries that carry a wide selection of roses will always have a higher possibility of error than the nurseries that limit their offerings to a smaller selection of roses available for sale.
Rogue Valley grew too fast and really did not have the proper internal control procedures in place. A perfect recipe for error.
I have seen whole rows of roses in the growing fields mislabled. Those roses were sent to nurseries that didn't know roses as well as they knew other plants in their inventory and sold them under the wrong name.
The real issue is how they handle the customer service when the nursery has been notified that they have sent the wrong plant. To me, that tells the story.
Lyn
