That is precisely why identifying a rose is so danged difficult, Gean! Jiminshermanoaks lives about eight miles due east of me. We are at about the same elevation in the same mountains and are in the same zone. However, he receives a great deal of the coastal marine influence as he is pretty much in the Sepulveda Pass. His garden is easily ten to twenty degrees cooler than mine. His is foggy and damp, mine is seldom either. He can root cuttings out on his potting bench much of the year. I definitely can't. They either fry or mold. He has saw fly larvae and Giant White Fly much of the year. Hibiscus in his area require constant spraying against the white fly. I have sawfly ONLY in one or two very protected spots for a very short period. I grow many hibiscus with no spraying required, ever. I am just a few miles west of the Sepulveda Pass. Both of our gardens face west, though his is sheltered by a ridge blocking the latest sun, while mine is full sun as long as there IS sun.

This is Lauren eight miles and a world different from right here.
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This is the same rose (his is a rooted piece of this one as this is the original seedling), eight miles west.
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His garden is like walking through a green house. Mine is absolutely not. This extreme difference in only eight miles and at roughly the same distance from the ocean? Why shouldn't there be that kind of variation between the south east and PNW? Kim

Gean, the summer of 2010 in the PNW was a heartbreaker in the garden. It was so cold and grey and damp all summer, and in the spring the slugs ate everything TWICE. Well, they ate everything that didn't get beaten down and ruined by the rain. I didn't get a decent bloom of Lupines until the end of August, and the Shasta daisies didn't even start to open until the second week of the same month. One of my roses had an entire flush which rotted while it was still in the bud stage, and most of the others which opened ended up balling before they could get very far. It was a mess, and a depressing memory. I had a garden party in August, which I always do, and by 5 o'clock it was so cold that everyone had to go in the house and shiver under blankets...

I know, Zach. That first summer I remember being so frustrated with my roses because of the lack of sun. I shovel pruned several out of sheer frustration that I wish now I hadn't. 2011 wasn't any better, if I remember. 2012 was better in late summer, and this year I'm wondering if I still live in western Washington, it's been so sunny.

Kim, here is your 'Lauren' here. Cool weather causes the blooms to be purple here. When I saw it in your garden last month, I saw the hot pink you show above. Your 'Lynnie' blooms bright red for me instead of the hot pink I've seen in other warmer, locations.

We had a conversation about 'Aptos' a year or so ago; mine has a different number of petals than yours and is a different color, but I'm convinced it's still 'Aptos' in my garden. The cooler temperatures, humidity, causes this rose's blooms to be different here than in southern California.

I have learned I have to look at a lot of things other than just blooms, their shapes or colors. 'Julia Child' bloomed bright orange one year!

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This thread reminds me of The Dark Lady, a beautiful and healthy bush with sumptuous, prolific blooms except they were BRIGHT RED. I hate red! I no longer have it since in my alkaline soil that's the color it wanted to be. The above pictures show similar changes based on climate and the pictures say it all. Lauren as a pink rose is just okay but when it's purple it's outstanding.

Ingrid

Most purple roses in heat and brilliant sun appear more pink. Lauren opens violet and like the others, in full, hot sun, will show the pinker tones. Baby Faurax, Blue for You, International Herald Tribune, all of the Lens violet hybrid mutifloras, Purple Skyliner, Perennial Blue, Ebb Tide all have done the same thing here. They also photograph much more "red" than they appear to my eye. Provide afternoon shade and the "blue" to the purple tones remains longer. Kim

My chameleon is Martha Gonzales. My aunt & I both grew this rose from ARE for many years. In the coastal zone 9 climate it was hot & humid, the water was somewhat alkaline & hard, the soil was rich black "gumbo" clay. Cuttings rooted from both plants matured to resemble the mother plants.

It grew as a typical China, but the flowers were especially small. Bright red, just a bit more than single, quilled petals, white centers with occasional white petal streak, very little scent, lots of blooms, constantly. You could tell MG all over town from the distinctive little starry bright red, white-centered flowers. And even big mature plants tended to have dainty little smooth leaves.

I hauled up 2 young plants I personally rooted from cuttings. This is a deserty area, alkaline limestone & caliche soil, alkaline water. Cool nights most of the year. One MG is throwing cupped near double blooms this year, much bluer color & they have a fair fragrance. Last year she threw the big, near-single, flat open, cherry red MG blooms you see in most photos. So did the 2nd plant. Both have "normal" sized rose leaves, not the little ones typical of the old zone.

This year the other plant has scores of dark--more bluish blooms. Nearly single, but so dark you'd think this is a Dr. Huey. The petals stay a bit cupped, not the flat-open blooms of last year. Mild to no fragrance, still see a bit of white petal streaking but the white eye is very reduced. Nether plant quills its petals, which was so distinctive in the old climate. The two bushes look like different varieties, now--neither resembling the original plants grown for so long in hot sultry zone 9.

I asked Michael Shoup about it & he said they noticed some variation especially in cool night areas.

It surprised me because I am SURE of the provenance of both plants, they are planted in the same area, were planted within a very short time of each other, and I had grown the mother plants of both for many years in a very different climate & soil.

FWIW, I also moved a Mme. Laurette Messime, Louie Phillipe, Archduke Charles, Ragged Robin, Marchioness de Londonderry, plus others up here. None of the other Chinas or ogrs look any different than they did in the old climate/soil.

That's the whimsy of it. Some just are what they are and little changes them. Others look completely different by changing just one, little variable. That's why we often state we need to grow this or that side by side to determine if they really are the same, or even similar roses. Kim

When I moved from Santa Fe to SW Virginia, I started my new garden with some of my most successful old favorites. What a shock. Louise Odier blackspotted overnight and died a slow death and Mrs Oakley Fisher croaked the first winter. I have replaced both, but they are carefully planted in microclimates and still don't do as well.

One of my reasons for choosing Roanoke as a place to live is that it is warm enough for most teas and noisettes, but gets enough winter for gallicas and rugosas (and lilacs). The soil is red clay. Not everything does extremely well, but most do well enough, which is another sort of compromise.

As to IDing roses--I leave that to others. I can make educated guesses about the type of rose, but Mutabalis is probably the only rose I would swear to in a blind test. But I label my roses and maintain a database that includes the vendor and location in my garden and vendor.

Ingrid, your story about The Dark Lady reminds me of the recent thread on WS2000. Several of us grow a clone that blooms red; others say theirs is never red and the bloom shape is slightly different, so the identity of our bush as WS2000 becomes questionable. As I've thought about that thread over the past week or so it occurs to me that we didn't discuss alkalinity of soil as it relates to color, the existence of hips or no in the various guesses as to what our WS2000 might be. There was some welcome talk on the shape of the shrub as an identifying factor.

Bluegirl, Martha Gonzales was one of the first old roses I grew while living in north Texas, so your story is very interesting to me. My soil and water I am sure were very alkaline yet that rose did really well. I wonder if chinas as a class do well in alkaline soil? I tried one red china up here and it did not like the cold very well. Maybe it didn't like my acid soil, either, now that I think about it.

Since then my gardens have all been in acid soil so I've never thought about chinas and alkaline soil. On the roses and soil thread I learned that Ragged Robin does well in alkaline soil and seems not to in acid soil - or at least that's the implication I came away with from what I read there.

Cats, I had some of the same experience, trying to move a beloved rose from n Alabama up here. Spice has been shovelpruned, G. Nabonnand died in the cold.

You're ahead of me in the map department. I still walk around saying names to my roses reviewing a map in my head. I need to make a map on paper before I completely forget who is who. Virginia is a beautiful place.