Ok here are some pictures. I couldn't get the html to work right, but here are the direct links to the pictures.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/matashavexen/bestrose4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/matashavexen/bestrose5.jpg

What we buy as miniature roses, in full bloom, and small pots are mostly rooted cuttings that have been growing in green houses for this specific purpose. I have seen anything from real miniatures to polyantas and floribundas; Poulsen's Renaissance and Castle series. Many varieties lends them selves to this kind of cultivation. Some hybridizers have specialized in making roses for this kind of production and they are in really more like floribundas, almost small shrubs. Though I have not yet seen a hybrid tea propagated and sold this way. Some floribundas have hybrid tea shape flowers, though the growth is a bit different. These days you have to look carefully if you want a genuine miniature variety.

When they are propagated from cuttings and grow in a very controlled environment the roses will behave this way; small plants with single stray flowers all over. You can see the tiny stems, and there are often 3-6 small cuttings in one pot, depending a bit on the size of the pot and the variety used.

These roses will grow to fully sized plants as they mature and gets established. The characteristics of the variety will eventually show when they are given out door garden conditions.

Fragrance is a sort of ever changing phenomenon too, dependent on weather, temperature, time of day, all kinds of factors.

Roses can mutate / sport, but you probably have the variety you bought, it just grew up ;-)

This has happened to me also.

I once queried one of the growers of generic Parade roses about it, and it was admitted to me that they used growth inhibitors in the greenhouse on some varieties to keep them small for that first bloom cycle, and to extend the amount of time which they can "ship" a particular lot, once it is at shipping size. The growth inhibitors are not permanant, however, but just affect that first bloom cycle.

That could also have happened to you.

Kathy

Thanks for the input. For a long time I was thinking it was just a normal thing that happens sometimes, but a friend of mine suggested it might be a new variety. Growth inhibitors may have been at play, although the second mini I bought from the same store hasn't changed. I bought it a couple years later, though, so it's possible it is a different plant that is truly miniature. At any rate, the large one is so beautiful. It's my favorite plant in my garden. So I am going to try to cultivate clippings from it this year. It would be wonderful to have a whole row of these gorgeous red plants.

Could the first mini been mislabled???
Or maybe your second mini is another type of rose, unlike the first mini?

Ralph Moore complained bitterly for years how a few concerns had made the mini rose a disposable product. When you bought a Rise'n'Shine from him, you always got the same yellow mini. When you buy a red mini from the Parade, Meillandina, Patio Hit, etc., series, all you can be sure of is getting a rose plant with a red flower on it, much like buying the J&P Habitat for Humanity roses. J&P offered a different rose each year for a few years under that name. Poulsen, Kordes, Meilland, Tantau all offer their mini series under the trade names, but each probably has a dozen or more of each color so they are always able to offer bud and bloom of each in the desired quantities any time they're ordered. It's no wonder you have two different roses under the same name. You could probably find a dozen different ones in similar color under that same name if you looked long enough. The name means nothing other than to give you something to request when you look for their product and for them to police their royalties. Kim

Wow! I had no idea this sort of nonsense was going on with minis. Another good reason to only mail order roses from nurseries like Vintage Gardens that have integrity!

Brighid - sorry you have not discovered a new sort of rose, but the one you have is certainly pretty. Could you post a picture of the entire bush? Does it grow very upright, with its flowers on single stems, or is it a rounder bush with clusters of flowers? The bloom seems to me to be the same color as the old HT Chrysler Imperial, but of course there are lots of roses that color.

Do try and root it, so you can have more bushes - it obviously likes your garden!

Jackie

It really isn't an issue of "integrity", Jackie. It's marketing. When you as a retailer, order a thousand red potted minis, you require them all in color or no one will buy them. It's impossible to offer one named rose to fill that bill because not all flower ALL the time. Some are better in warmer weather, others when it's cooler. The retailer doesn't care what the varietal name is, only that they are available and ready when ordered and that they are retail ready when received. They don't even have to all be the SAME red potted mini, just that they are pretty and will last a respectable length of time until he either sells or dumps them.

So, the producer trade marks the name and offers numerous roses which fit the description and production requirements so he can fill the order, resulting in repeat orders and remaining in business. This method of marketing is superior to the one rose, one name traditional method from a supply and demand respect. It's impossible from the gardener's point of view because there is no way to know just what it is you have in your hands. Let the buyer be ware...if you want the right rose for the right name, buy only from the specialty sources we've grown to love and trust. If all you want is a "red rose", go ahead and buy them at the grocery store or home improvement center, but be ready to have five or six different roses under the same name.

I had a client who just wanted color and didn't give a whit about what the names were. Just something flowering, more reliable then annuals and she loved roses. I shopped my local Green Thumb and they were dumping a cart full of potted minis as we're discussing here. I paid them $20 for 48 of them in that cart. All were still viable plants, but had sat too long and required cleaning and cutting back. All were planted in her garden, all lived, grew and flowered well. As they were all from the same order, the colors all appeared to be the same rose per color. They worked fine and she loves them. She doesn't care what they're called, just that she can dead head them with the hose and doesn't have to have them replanted each season. Kim

Kim that might explain why my J&P Cinnamon Girl isn't the color it was supposed to be. Although I also have two Double Delights from J&P which are really gorgeous. And under normal circumstances I wouldn't buy roses from the supermarket or home gardening centers, but this first mini was a gift, and the second one was an attempt at getting the same results.

Jackie, here is a picture of the whole plant. It grows very upright, but the flowers are in clusters.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/matashavexen/bestrose3.jpg

Here's a picture of the bud clusters
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v653/matashavexen/bestrose6.jpg

Don't mind the weeds at the bottom of the plant, I haven't gotten around to weeding this weekend.

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Brighid, you can copy the html tag from under your photobucket picture and we can see the photo right away instead of having to cut and paste it.

Nice looking rose.

The only other possibility is that the red rose was there, perhaps froze to the ground over winter and came back from the roots.

Brighid - thanks for the picture of the bush. Looks like a HT to me, but I am certainly not an expert. How fun - just take care of it, and see how big it gets.

Kim - I was not complaining so much about how the minis had a meaningless name, but rather that apparently many of them are not minis at all! That sounds to me like "false advertising", if the retailer is selling some plant and telling people that it is a mini, when really it is a manipulated floribunda or HT. If your client wanted a bed of minis, or say an edge of minis in front of taller plants, and you planted them for her, and they all grew 6 feet tall, would not that be a problem? I think this sort of thing is one of the things that discourage people from growing roses -

Jackie

Not at all Jackie. Potted, flowering plants aren't sold as something for you to actually plant. They are disposible, like a bunch of cut flowers. Some of the tags indicate they can be planted, but no aftercare instructions nor any growth size, flowering times, etc. are offered because those tiny pots of color are meant to be thrown away, just like the $10 bunch of roses at the grocery store. If YOU decide to put them in the ground, any issues are on you as the grower/creator had no real intentions of selling you a garden plant. Those are marketed as garden plant, not a spot of inexpensive color meant not to be grown on.

Yes, many of the smaller potted roses sold in color are actually floribundas and sometimes HTs. When you see a four to six inch pot with two to three inch flowers, expect a larger plant with larger flowers. If the blooms are an inch and a half or smaller, chances are the plant may be smaller, too, but not guaranteed. You won't find background information on the majority of them because they aren't tested to determine that. They ARE tested to see how quickly and easily they root; how quickly they will produce a bushy flowering plant; under what conditions they can be produced to retain quality; how durable they are to handle and transport; how long they'll usually last under the boxed conditions, etc. Garden performance doesn't enter into the equation.

You never get garden performance information on your florist azalea, hydrangea, etc. Usually, those aren't selected for garden performance, either, just as florist variety roses aren't. If we plant them, it's for the adventure of what we may get. Americans LOVE "pigs in a poke", the potential of getting something for nothing or nearly nothing. My client didn't care what size the roses might eventually get as they are whacked to the nubs regularly and perform as expected because they are mostly treated as they were tested to be treated. Cut to nothing regularly to create the dense, bushy flowering plant. If they start to get larger, someone mows them down, just as they did to propagate and produce them as the four inch pots they were.

They were sold as potted color - rose, and that is all they were. If they perform differently than you expected when you "mis used" them, that's your fault. They gave you what was promised, a little spot of color - rose. Anything more is mis using them past what they were created, marketed and intended for. Kim

Greenheart Farms is the major producer of liner plants as well as store potted color. Most mini growers are now buying their mini liners from Greenheart as they can get well rooted plants faster, easier and more cost effective than they can produce them.

Greenheart is unveiling a new marketing campaign which helps address some of the complaints expressed in this thread as well as elsewhere on the forums. Three new series are to be offered, WITH garden performance information. Garden Treasures, My Bouquet and Table to Garden are their initial series.

If you notice, under Garden Treasures, Blushing Mate is Ralph Moore's Sweet Fairy. Citrine is Saville's Bambino;
Golden Medallion is Cinderella Gold, etc. At least this source is cross marketing between the kitchen table/gift market and the garden. I doubt the European sources will follow suit. There is too much money keeping things the way they are. At least with this marketing campaign, some of the roses we used to be able to buy will once again be more easily available and you can discover what to expect from them before buying. Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Relaunching roses

Maybe the descriptions are getting a bit unfair here. The roses sold in pots like this are largely a result of a need for nice potted plants that can be enjoyed for a few days indoors, all summer out doors, and with a bit of luck for many years.

I have seen many of the Poulson and Meilland varieties sold with variety name and as grafted plants too. Some are true miniatures, some are more like floribundas. I don't mind too much that the potted roses we get in grocery stores don't have variety name, and when I am lucky to find them as grafted or own root meant for out door uses, it is mostly in a garden centre, and then they are tagged with variety like any other rose. What we get in pots are not so much fault of the big hybridizing firms, as green house producers making plants for sale. Actually they use any variety they want, and they are really not doing anything wrong. Someone with a particular interest in gardening and roses will of course start searching for more info on the variety. This year I even found a few as miniature standards, on two foot stems, with variety name on a white tag.

It all depends upon the source and intended use. Many of the disposable ones will grow suitably outdoors and a few have actually been tested for results as garden plants. But those offered as two to four inch pots with simply series tags with no garden info on them are hit and miss. Unless you're really knowledgable about the particular offering, there isn't any way to know for sure without trying them.

We don't expect a four inch potted, six inch high flowering azalea to remain that size. Same with a four inch flowering hydrangea. The six inch potted, twelve inch tall flowering mum with four inch flowers is a four foot plant in the garden (at least the mauve one in the front yard here is). Are these any more misleading or dishonest advertising? They're all manipulated, whether by being treated with growth hormones/inhibitors; forced out of season (most notably pointsettias at the holidays); or dwarfed and pushed in small pots, over fed and given all they require to produce those small, bushy pots of color when they are genetically programmed to be significantly larger plants. You can't reproduce those results in those kinds of pots in your yard! Plants forced in a greenhouse never perform the same way in the open ground or potted on the patio.

I guess my whole point is, you buy a florist plant and put it in your garden, be surprised and content if you get anything. If you want uniformity and to get what you expected to get, buy from a garden source. They're completely different and supply products for totally different purposes. There is a little overlap, but using one for the other without experience in doing it IS misusing the products against their intended use, and unexpected results are NOT the fault of the producer/retailer, nor are they false, dishonet or misleading advertising. Kim

There's another thing, too.

"Miniature" refers to the BLOOM. It doesn't refer to the plant, and I have seen many true-to-variety Miniature roses that grew six feet tall, IF ALLOWED TO DO SO.

Jeri

Look at Minnie Pearl! My sister used it to mask her chimney. That thing was huge! It should have been called a climbing mini. Ralph Moore's Lynne Gold was a "micro" though it was a three foot bush at her house. Ralph had never seen it that large, so when he visited my garden, I took him over to show it to him. He was amazed!

Even Rouletti has the suggestion to grow it in small pots of poor soil to maintain its diminutive size. In the open ground with decent soil and regular food and water, it can grow several feet high, as can Pompon de Paris.

Growing that series of "mini" roses in those small pots is the equivalent of bonsai. Take a bonsaied tree out of the too small pot and put it in the open ground and watch what happens. Kim

Well, I have to say, I did not get what I expected after the "mini" was planted, but I was pleasantly surprised nonetheless. And the blooms are anything but miniature, at 5" in diameter. I actually am not all that interested in miniature roses, I like big voluptuous blooms, so I guess I'm not all that appalled by the mini marketing schemes, but I do have two true minis in the garden. They seem to make nice fillers with the larger roses behind them. And it's true these little potted things they sell for Valentine's Day are meant as disposable. That's what I find appalling, that people just let them die. They could at least put them in larger pots and put them by a window.

Thanks Hoovb for posting the pictures here. I attempted to post the html, but it didn't work before. Maybe photobucket was having issues at the time.