We have a big and healthy Peace rose--ours gets to about 8 feet tall. The main issues with it are a lack of Blackspot resistance and poor form according to current ARS exhibition standards. I think the color gets better as the plant matures.

Yes, and no. A nurseryman friend told me years ago the problem with Peace and all the mauve roses is they have a rather large dose of R. Foetida in them. Foetida hates being dried out in cold storage. It often doesn't recover. If you walk the fields in Wasco where they are created, you will find many gorgeous bushes of Angel Face, Sterling Silver, Peace and many others which share the common ancestor. They are large, vigorous and fit the original registration descriptions. Once they're harvested and suffer being dried too far in cold storage, they just don't perform as you expect them to.

What my sister and brother in law did was to seek out the more vigorous canned plants of Peace they could find from the local nursery (NOT home improvement center!) where the plants had been handled and cared for properly. Clair Martin, Curator of Roses for The Huntington Library, told me years ago that Peace hates SoCal. The combination of our hot, dry weather, highly alkaline soil and water and the awful drainage our soil frequently has, all add up against the cultivar to make it "unhappy". What Clair discovered over many years of trying to make the Peace bushes at home and work happy, was to very seldom prune it. When dead heading, simply snap off the spent blooms at the point of incision, where they're going to naturally break off anyway. Leave any major pruning for what you do when you usually prune your roses. Then, don't cut much off the plant other than to open it for good air circulation, but never reducing the height much. That makes a whole lot of sense.

Deciduos roses and Old European Garden Roses tend to draw their sap back to the roots so when the top growth is frozen or eaten, there is sufficient stored food to push spring growth. Ever green roses, which most of our modern roses are, store that food in the canes. Cutting too much off causes them to be malnourished first thing in the spring when new growth is being pushed. If you allow them to hold on to more wood, you'll get more foliage and a healthier, huskier plant. Snapping off the spent flowers at the peduncle allows all the stored food to remain and creates more foliage, providing even greater available nutrition.

I read years ago in ARS funded florist research that it takes, on average, thirty-five perfect leaves to make one perfect flower. Peace is very much like the old Hybrid Perpetuals in its flower. They were thought of as "gross feeders", requiring much fertilizer to produce the enormous, heavily petaled flowers they were famous for. By creating a well draining soil with good moisture retention and providing steady nourishment to the plant throughout its season, and permitting it all the foliage and stored food required, you can encourage the plant to develop into what it genetically wants to be.

My sister's two bushes were planted where the soil drained very well. They receive copious water from the lawn (and NO weed killers are ever used on the turf), and hers are fed normally with the other roses. She has always just snapped off the spent flowers and never severely pruned the bushes. No more than a third is ever removed from the plants. They are easily fifteen years old now and carry foliage from nearly ground level to the tops of the six foot plants. Hers are the only flowers I've ever seen on Peace which actually look like the old illustrations and photographs. They are large, very full and have excellent form for the cultivar. They get minor mildew early and late in the year and never have rust nor black spot. I attribute that to several factors, including her favorable climate and positioning of the plants, and that they have all the "food" they require to perform and remain healthy. She never sprays and the only fertilizer used is whatever is on sale of the "tomato type", applied with generous water several times a year. Nothing "scientific" nor obsessive, just pretty much common sense, to keep the plant healthy, active and vigorous. Her plants weren't special, nor even virus indexed. They were simply the ones which impressed my brother in law as being the most vigorous of the ones he found at the nursery. They had more canes, thicker canes and were pushing growth all over the plants. For "non rose growers" they've done extremely well.

Very often, "unhappy" and weak performing plants can be encouraged to develop into what they should be by a combination of good soil, water and food, and then preventing them from flowering for their first season to promote formation of WOOD and LEAVES instead of flowering, then not whacking off all that stored food and food producing leaves. Try it the next time something just won't grow. Potting the plant where the roots will remain warmer can often help, too.

Mine has improved each year and I bought it as a crummy bareroot boxed rose, before I knew any better. I do spray, however, but I live in a very humid climate.

If you don't have Chicago Peace, it is one of my favorite roses and I only have 7 HTs in my whole collection (only about 30+ roses).

Peace has a severe problem with disease in my garden. It's nice when it's nice, but for much of the year it underperforms and the foliage looks hideous. I spray for fungus, but not often (2-3x per year MAX). However, when it gets lots of nice blooms (mostly in the spring) it is the star of the show. Two years ago I had two dozen beautiful blooms at once! I put up with Peace because of moments like that and because, well, it's the Peace rose and my garden would not be complete without it.

It should be noted also, that most plants of 'Peace' you will find for sale these days are at places like Home Despot and Lowes, which sells plants propagated by the likes of Certified Roses. The odds of getting a virus infected specimen at any of the "outlets" is very high, and virused plants tend to have a far bigger problem with diseases like Blackspot. Caveat emptor, as they say.

I bought 2 Peace roses last spring - one was a Jackson Perkins bareroot from a local nursery, and the other was in a gallon pot (already flowering) at Lowe's. Both did great in my garden. The flowers are so beautiful that they just take your breath away.

The Jackson Perkins Peace blooms were tremendous, 5-6". The Lowe's peace had many more blooms but they were smaller, about 3.5". I didn't have the heart to disbud to see if I could get larger flowers, but might try disbudding next season if they survive the horrible New York winter.

Hi Roseseek,
I would like to thank you so much for the information you provided on growing Peace. Will come in handy to know this rose will need special attention. I'm out in the I.E. and planted a Peace from a bodybag a few weeks ago...

You're welcome musaboru. I know it's late, but if you can give it some shade in the hottest parts of the day, it will perform even better.

Blackspotting was my only serious complaint with Peace. If you spray every 2-3 weeks with a good fungicide, it will probably be OK.

In my opinion, Peace is the loveliest of all the rose blooms. In the past I tried on three different occasions to grow it (for a couple years each time). However, heavy blackspotting ruined the experience each time so I spaded the rose. The third time I swore never to buy Peace again as long as I lived--all because of the blackspotting.

Kate

Ours show no sign of viruses but has no BS resistance--leaves are clean as long as I spray fungicide.

roseseek, thanks for all that great info! Considering all the comments I think I will give it a try. I know the nursery has it, I will check it out & if its big & healthy I'll pick it up. Thanks for all the replies.
Tim

You're welcome, Tim! Personally, I believe anyone serious about learning roses must grow "the classics" such as Peace, Tropicana, Sterling Silver, and the other "break through" roses. It's like history, you can't have any idea where you can go until you know where you've BEEN. Kim

As Kim said, you want a quality plant. The body bag ones are not worth bothering with.

All in all, I think the color sport 'Chicago Peace' is much prettier. The "sunset" colors are lovely, surpassing the original.

Peace is a unique rose, and just vigorous enough to be widely wanted (unlike Sterling Silver). Most Peace shrubs you buy will be very subject to diseases and therefore be frustrating roses to grow unless you're willing to regularly spray them with fungicides to keep diseases like blackspot from infecting them.

If you're willing to do that (or to put up with their susceptibility to notorious rose diseases), you will find that Peace has one of the must stunningly beautiful flowers to be found among all roses. To my nose it has no scent whatsoever (& for me that is a big fault), but others do find it to have a scent (usually a mild one), but even for me I am fully aware of its ethereal visual beauty.

The other frustrating aspect of Peace is its reluctance to throw up new canes from the base. Somehow it seems to prefer to send up just a few canes and then develop new growth from just those few basal canes. While I've never grown any of the "antique" China or Tea roses, I associate this behavior with them. Obviously if you live in a cold winter climate (such as mine) this is a problem. It also is a problem Peace has passed along to many of its many, many progeny. Peace has had a huge influence on the Hybrid Tea roses.

Those "one cane wonders" you see people griping about here? Don't be surprised when you learn that Peace is in the ancestry of those various roses those folks are complaining about.

(I deal with this in my own situation because I grow Fragrant Cloud & Paul Shirville, both of which are grandchildren of Peace (Paul Shirville a grandchild on both sides). However, I adore both roses and am not the slightest bit sorry I have them, despite their weaknesses!)

I agree with what roseseek said about building wood & leaves. If you live in a climate where wood & leaves are easily maintained I very strongly suspect that doing so is the way to go if you want to have a satisfying experience with Peace.

I will be taking that advice to heart with regards to my Fragrant Cloud & Paul Shirville.

Many years ago, I tired of how Fragrant Cloud wanted to become old, geriatric, so I slashed the blamed thing to the ground. It exploded into new growth exceeding anything it had ever done before. Even though it was budded, I kept doing that for about eight years and it never disappointed me. I lost that plant to a danged gopher.

We are certainly a focused group; all these posts and nobody commented on the irony of the subject "Should I pass on Peace?"

But in the spirit of my fellow rosarians, I have no choice...Peace doesn't last in my climate...for me or anyone else in town.

If Peace does not "last" in a northern area, is it because the plants were virused?

For many years a public garden that was maintained by the Goodyear (Akron, Ohio) Rose Society contained a number of Peace plants. I became familar with the garden in the early 1970s, and the plants then were clearly old.

Not necessarily. Culture and climatic suitability of a particular cultivar play much greater parts in the demise of a plant than the viruses they may likely carry. While there are supposedly some which can outright kill the plant, the main ones mentioned in most posts can primarily weaken them by reducing the photosynthetic abilities of the foliage, resulting in malnourishment. Over time, that could weaken the plant sufficiently to enable either extreme weather or other culprit to kill the plant.

More than likely, the old bushes were killed off by over pruning, compacted soil and something like crown gall or some sort of canker. If your climate can support it, continued outbreaks of Downey Mildew can also lead to their deaths. Over ferilization with inorganic fertilizers in compacted soil can also lead to plants shrinking and eventually dying due to the soil becoming toxic from salt build up and suffocation.

Very often, any time a rose doesn't live up to what's expected of it, "virus" is to blame. Probably as often, it's due to many other factors, often what we do TO the plant, instead of what we don't or should do.

In northern Ohio I feel confident that I can make the statement that most of my obviously virused roses did not survive more than about 5 years while being treated the same as the other roses in my garden of approximately 1000 rose plants.

It appears that roses have an immune system against at least the most common of the many viruses that are known to infect roses, PNRSV. But the immune process is only relatively effective at higher temperatures. Thus, the "mild" experience of southern rose growers with PNRSV virused roses will not necessarily be applicable to PNRSV infected roses in northern states. (Of course there are also different "strengths" of each type of virus, and also different "strengths" of the immune systems of different varieties of roses.)

Here is a link that might be useful: further info on temperature behavior of PNRSV

"In northern Ohio I feel confident that I can make the statement that most of my obviously virused roses did not survive more than about 5 years while being treated the same as the other roses in my garden of approximately 1000 rose plants."

So, you are absolutely certain that these plants met their demise because of virus, and not simply because they were inherently susceptible to climate related cold damage in a zone 5 environment? It isn't enough data to make that kind of statement until you have multiple plants of a given cultivar, half of which are known to be infected, and half of which are certified virus free. Then you will have some meaningful data. Anything less is speculation, IMO.

What is speculation? Synonyms are "supposition, view, theory, hypothesis."

I presented my experience in my garden. I did not present a controlled scientific study. I did not have too do such a study as the observed results were consistent with the expected effect of virus on winter plant survival.

Over the years after observing a number of cases of the type that I summarized in this thread, I looked at the virus literature both for roses and non roses. I found that such behavior is expected. I live in Illinois, the following link gives what the DEPARTMENT OF CROP SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN states in their publication: http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/vista/pdf_pubs/632.pdf

"Aside from the acute symptoms that develop on leaves and stems, the plant suffers a chronic decline in vigor that, in cooler climates, increases the chances of winter-kill."

One can also learn from what is observed in other plants There is a lot of scientific evidence that virus infected plants do not survive cold winters as well as the corresponding non virused plants do.

I recommend a Google search with the key words:
plant viruses and winter survival

Look at the introduction of the first article in the Google search: "Mature infected barley plants, when compared to healthy plants show reduction in winter survival.... (3 scientific references given)"

Here is a link that might be useful: google search

I hope no one tells my 25-year old virused 'Red Gold' that her demise is impending. Each year she is spectacular, even if she resides in Zone 5 and doesn't go South for the winter -:)

Roseseek, I have been guilty of doing everything you mentioned to some of my roses when I first started with roses. During the winter, I look at, and reread my rose books and I see all the sad names of my failures, as in, "I used to have that one." garden party, artistry, secret, folklore (I could go on and on)

Are there any more HTs that I should be careful about pruning too much? In north Alabama, some of my roses die back so much in winter that they get pruned to about 4 inches from the graft.

This year I am winter protecting the HTs with cotton trash and plastic fence (temporary installation) to protect them from the wind, since they get wind coming across the neighbor's horse pasture from the north. Roses grafted on fortuniana are not pruned very much, and I have a few of these. Forgive me, this post was not about peace. I don't have one, but I have lots of her children--Chicago Peace, Love and Peace, Pink Peace

terryjean, unfortunately one does not know (without further testing) if your 'Red Gold' has a above average immune system or if the virus is a very weak one.

If 'Red Gold' has a very good immune system, it may be useful in breeding virus resistent roses.

If the virus is a very weak strain, it may be useful as a "virus vaccine" as there is some scientific evidence that weak strains of viruses "may" protect a plant against stronger strains.

Does your plant form open pollinated hips? I am too old to start any new breeding projects now, but perhaps some one or more of our younger hybridizers would be interested in some seeds of your 'Red Gold' and/or a university with a virus research program may be interested in cuttings to study the virus.

Don't worry, Dirtgirl, everyone has been guilty of doing some pretty embarrassing things until we each learn better! Usually, the weaker growers are the ones you shouldn't prune too hard. Unless you grow many of the mauve colored ones, particularly Grey Pearl, and the older "Coffee Roses", the gray, green and brown ones, I'm not aware of too many which won't accept "regular" pruning. But, then to me, "regular" is never removing more than a third of the plant during normal pruning. I don't prune for exhibition blooms. I want the landscape value of the plant, so I don't prune very hard, unless the plant "tells" me it needs it. It is definitely something you develop a feel for after growing a variety for a long time and watching what it does each year and in response to what you do to/for it. Often, catalogs will warn you not to prune something hard. I read what Rogue Valley is offering at this time and Paul Barden offered that admonition about one of his roses. You can sometimes find that sort of information on the Week's Roses web site, too. You can also probably find out that kind of information from any rose societies in your state. Folks here may be able to help out, too.

I'm wondering why your roses die back each winter. Though I'm in Los Angeles, I was born in Birmingham and raised just north of Pensacola. My grandmother in Birmingham grew many roses and I don't remember her ever having to winter protect them. If it's due to being freeze dried from the wind, if there is room, you might consider planting a wind break hedge between your roses and the neighbor's pasture. A dense planting can help keep the wind from drying out the roses. I can't imagine it could be due to the level of cold, but I could be wrong. Do the ones on Fortuniana over winter better than other root stocks? It may be you hit the nail on the head with your winter protection. I'm still curious what the real issues are causing the die back. Kim

I second Kim's questions. I live in Zone 6 (Kansas) and do not winter-protect. Of course, I do plant the graft several inches below the soil line, and oak leaves from my neighbors' trees (on two sides of my lot) tend to blow over and provide some minimal protection, but not much, and not with any consistency.

It is true my hybrid teas can suffer from late winter/early spring sudden thaws/freezes and those sometimes need to be pruned back to a few inches from the soil line, but they grow back quickly as the weather warms up more consistently. My other roses that are not hybrid teas don't have even that much problem.

Kate

I live in the Z5 part of very windy Kansas. Planting the graft several inches below the soil line is highly recommend. Because my neck of the woods is so windy, I prune my roses down to about 3 ft. I also started using cotton burr instead of wood mulch for winter cover. The roses seem to like it better. I don't have Peace but I do have Chicago Peace and Pink Peace. The cool part is the color changes from spring to summer but the scent stays wonderfully the same.

The first year, I had Pink peace, it almost got shovel prune because it balled something terrible but not anymore. Pink peace, Tiffany, Sonia and Granada are the Queens of my garden.

If you like stripes and want a real treat, Candy Stripe is the striped sport of Pink Peace. It has the all faults the original does and all the marvelous fragrance. Except, no two flowers are identical because of the silvery and light pink stripes. If you can find it and if Pink Peace performs well for you, grow them both. Together, they make a gorgeous bouquet! Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Candy Stripe on HMF

If I lived in California I would find it hard to pass on any rose.

Not really. In much of the warmer, thirteen month growing season areas, MANY Old European Garden Roses are terrible. Too much warmth, too long a growing season, too intense sun light and just enough humidity to cause them to rust, black spot and mildew terribly. Either they won't flower at all, or they are such disease cases no one can grow them without chemical intervention. Yes, there are pockets where some grow acceptably, but once you see them grown WELL, you realize that "acceptable" just ain't good enough!

It is interesting, as I remember Peace (here called Gloria Dei) in my parents garden sometime back in 80ties and it definitely wasn't a weak grower. The parents garden is somewhere on the border of z4/z5, not that windy, but back then the drainage was still a problem. They had Peace for a score of year, without much of a winter protection, apart that we usually threw some branches over the roses for the winter, so the snow accumulates better on that spot, usually fir (xmas tree) twigs from nearby woods. I can't recall what was her eventual demise, if she froze out or got killed by moving, as it was a while ago, but otherwise she was not a problem rose at all. Of course, when the parents bought her, there were no cold stored bareroots where they live, usually roses were grown in the garden, then potted just before the trip to the market or local flower shop.

As for the winter kill, from what I can recall, the worst were the winters with little snow and too much sunshine, or when the snow melted too fast, before the ground unfroze. What often happens with the sun and cold temps is that cells unfreeze too fast in the morning, rupturing in the process. I was very surprised when moving to NL, that over here they normally do not whiten the trunks of the fruit trees in the early spring - in the North it was a norm, as otherwise the skin would fracture horribly, especially on the young trees. Wetness is another issue though, as when you have ground frozen a meter deep and another meter of snow melts in one day, making roses have a cold bath for about two-three weeks, it usually also causes a lot of die back and loss of the plants. Drainage does not really help much in that case, as the water has to unfreeze the soil first to travel anywhere. With freeze/unfreeze cycles, some part of the roots and graft could easily get damaged by the forming ice, especially if water got in the small fractures in he graft, etc.

Overall I think temperature itself was not that much of an issue, apart if it really got very very cold (-20F), but more how things thawed in the spring.

There is a plant of Peace in my garden which has been there for at least 45 years, and possibly as long as 65 years (in other words, from when it was first released).

I think it was originally the bush form (because of its location in a row of old HTs), but it has morphed into a climber, and is now climbing 12 feet up a large pomegranite bush(es) to get to the sun. It still does not get enough sunlight. It blooms every Spring, and repeats in the Fall with huge, lovely blooms. It gets some blackspot, which I usually ignore.

One thing I did notice - it does NOT like to be hard pruned. We had a "gardener" once who pruned it as if it was a normal hybrid tea bush. It put out maybe 2 dozen new canes, all of which immediately succumed to horrible mildew. I pruned most of them out, and left it alone. It took several years for it to recuperate.

Jackie

This has been a fascinating thread. Thanks for the picture, Harry! Kim, your information was especially fascinating. I had never heard of the interplay between rose genetics in certain varieties and effects of cold storage. But it makes a lot of sense in light of my experiences with roses from various sources. I have to say I've grown Peace in Western Washington State in the 1980s and in Mobile, AL in the late 1990s, and it did well in both these very different climates. The blooms are spectacularly big in the mild "English" climate of Washington, something that could not be matched on the Gulf Coast, but in return, the southern climate did give Peace a much longer growing season. My Peace rose in Mobile was the cheapest Walmart rose, definitely virused, as evidenced by the occasional varigated marked leaves, but even so, after the first year when it struggled with blackspot, my cheapie Peace still became a star performer, as long as I took preventive action against the threat of blackspot, kept it well-watered and in well-drained soil. So I wasn't about to scrap that bush. Still,given the option ahead of time, I'd rather have a non-virused rose.

I currently have a cheap Chicago Peace (also from Walmart) that is just a year in my garden. The bush is scrawny, yet the poor plant still managed this past year to put out spectacular blooms on decently robust stems. I have wondered if the rootstock was to blame, but given what Kim said about cold storage, maybe that was a factor? Anyway, rather than simply bite the bullet and purchase a good specimen from Roses Unlimited or some other reputable source, I'm trying to root a stem of it and start growing that. I guess I'll know in 3 years if I can get a healthy plant from the cutting. I don't know that it is virused, just that the rootstock looks blackish and scrawny. Any comments from you wise people on whether my experiment will work? I remember reading that RMV effects weak varieties far more severely than robust ones. And Peace (or its sport Chicago Peace) is certainly a robust variety.
Mike

Mike, it's very likely the majority of the roses you've ever grown had some sort of virus. Whether the symptoms appear or not, without testing you'll never know. Your experiment may or may not work. Personally, given the option of buying a vigorous plant, known to be clean and well cared for until I receive it, I'll spend the money. The "cheapie" at Walmart was cheap because it was produced inexpensively and probably much less than a grade 1 plant. Most of the time, they're culls, the ones the first line producers dump because they won't sell them. Discount stores buy them canned, pushed to their max with over feeding and spraying and sell them at cheap prices. Sometimes, you luck out. Much of the time, you lose.

Chicago Peace should perform just like Peace should. You've grown a good Peace and know what kind of plant it SHOULD be. Now you understand how distressing it is seeing all the runt, 2' tall, one cane wonders being passed along as Peace! It has flowers like one, but it just ain't one!

To see an even more extreme example, read the original introduction information in the ARS Annuals about Sterling Silver where it talks about 5' plants with 4" to 5" double flowers! Now, I ask you, how many of THOSE have you ever seen? I have actually seen ONE. A friend in Los Banos took me to one of his friend's gardens to see an original issue Sterling Silver plant, purchased from J&P in 1957. Mid summer it was over 5' tall, nearly as wide and the flowers were HUGE. I've practiced bud selection as well as rooted many of them and I've never been able to come close to anything resembling that one! If my friend in Los Banos was still living, I would contact him to beg to be put back in touch with the owner of that Sterling Silver for cuttings!

The climbing Peace in my garden has been there since 1997. Unfortunately, it is right next to my neighbour's sequoia, and it's showing signs of losing out in the competition for water and nutrients. It's not a perfect rose. It's blackspot prone, it's canes goes necrotic if the temperature goes below -15C for longer than a few days and it is a monster. But in good years, it hs given me about a hundred of the same blooms as Harry's photos. But the most important reason I grow it is for it's historical significance, and the story that goes with it's introduction.

Some roses are in my garden in spite of their weaknesses, just because there are interesting stories to them, or because there are historical signicance to them. In lieu of being a perfect rose, I will settle for a good rose tale any time. That gives me ample reasons to loiter in the garden with friends, each with a can of beer in hand.

Kim, I won't disagree with you about the merit of selecting plants from reputable nurseries. I buy virtually all mine any more from such places. But something in me keeps me curious to see "what might happen..." So right now my Chicago Peace is my only cheapie rose. And I'm just curious to see how a rooted cutting off such a "cull" might do. I guess one reason I still ever even bother is that back when I bought more from cheap Wallmart,Lowes,HomeDepot type sources, I would inevitably have some that would turn out to be vigorous wonderful plants. That Peace I mentioned earlier was one. And sometimes, the runts, grow out of their runtiness with enough patience and good care. I guess I only bother on an old "common-as-belly-buttons" variety, because I know if it does not work out, I can always replace it with a properly produced specimen, because that variety is easy to find. I know that doesn't entirely make logical sense, but like I said, I wouldn't bother with most of my roses, and there's a certain cheap streak part of me that gets a satisfaction, perverse or not, from seeing something do well that came from an inexpensive source. : )

As for Sterling Silver, very interesting your mention of that original issue specimen. I planted one back as a teen when I was just 2-3 years into having discovered rose gardening. That plant of mine never grew more than 2 feet tall. It did, though, bloom profusely and looked bushy, though small, that first summer. Then it inexplicably croaked that fall, the only one of my roses to do so that year. I've never had one since. All these years later I keep looking for a mauve rose that can produce that magical color and wonderful fragrance and yet be a better plant. I'm currently growing a Blue Moon from Heirloom, just a year and a half old, that I'm about 75% happy with so far --fragrance to Die! for and "nice" color. The color is close but still not quite as stunning as that frustrating Sterling Silver I remember. Maybe my memory has embellished over the years! lol

I forgot to mention at first that Peace, though not my absolute favorate variety, definitely ranks as a sentimental favorate, because it was a gorgeous specimen growing along my school bus route in 5th grade that caught my attention and helped spark my initial interest in giving this rose-growing thing a try. And I've never regretted taking that blunge. : )
Mike

oops... "Taking the BLUNGE?" I meant "plunge" of course. maybe I shouldn't be typing at 6am after having stayed up late. lol

Mike, I have an email exchange with a lady back east who grows Neptune budded on Fortuniana. It is something like seven feet tall and as wide as a garage. Choice of root stock can make a tremendous difference in eventual size, as well as suitability to soil type. I rooted a Sterling Silver I bought from a florist years ago, which Vintage then sold as Florist Sterling Silver. They stated in the description that perhaps its superiority over the "garden form" was due to not being virused? I don't know. I've been in the collector mode before and loved every minute of it. Now, I'm in "breeder mode", only collecting things which I wish to use for breeding. I'd never use either of these for seedlings, but I do enjoy seeing them and have fond memories of them, too. 45 years ago, our across the street neighbor had a climbing Peace growing out of a huge hedge used to keep the highschool kids from cutting through their yard. The enormous flowers were few and far between, but when they arrived, they were glorious! I maintain plants of Grey Pearl, THE second most frustrating rose ever foisted on the consuming public, because those dishwater gray blooms intrigue the devil out of me.

Kim, fortuniana is far and away the BEST rootstock here. Makes for bigger blooms and bigger bushes. But...the plant size factor is actually one reason I avoid it now. Oddly enough, I want happy, healthy roses, but not overly large plants. Because I have limited space. Huge bushes would mean I can't grow as many varieties, and that just wouldn't do. As it is, I'm limited to about 40, about half and half between hybrid teas and minis or minifloras. I have exactly one china rose (Archduke Charles) and 2 noisette looking shrubs that came with the house. I have a few bushes on Dr. Huey because that's the only they were available that I could find. But my preference is for own-root or for multiflora rootstock. Both those adapt very nicely to life in a pot, and most of myroses are in large pots for two reasons: I rent, and it is easier to deal with a "not-permanent-garden" if it is potted (plus rearranging the pots can be fun and useful if the bushes haven't all grown the anticipated size or shape. The second reason is to protect the rose roots from invasive tree roots, which we have a lot of. My Chicago Peace came on Dr. Huey, which, with tap roots that tend to want to sprawl, is another reason to switch over to an own-root plant.