Setting aside the roses that are sold under names that are blatently wrong (often in Box stores, as bagged roses that are the unwanted orphans of rose production schemes), there are some for which there are multiple clones that are not the same rose.
For a long time, R. bruonii was sold as the Musk rose; R. moschata is a different rose.
The first R. laevigata, aka Cherokee Rose, that I bought was R. bracteata. This mistake shouldn't have left the seller because the leaves are so very different.
There are two roses out there sold as Aloha; similar but very differnt if blooms are held side by side.
There is a HT Tiffany imposter out there. There is a bagger out there that tends to sell small pink roses as Sexy Rexy when they are neither sexy nor rexy.
There are really disasterous clones of The Fairy being sold.

And then there are the versions that come so burdened with assorted Rose Mosaic Viruses that they can hardly be identified as the bushes that were first seen by a lucky few.

"Smokey crimson semi-double blooms" sounds like 'Cardinal Hume' to me. You don't identify the sources of these roses, but I would not be surprised at all to find that your new roses were mislabeled.

It's been well established here that two different roses are sold as Reine des Violettes, and the imposter is pinker and thorny.

Roses seem to vary from vendor to vendor, even reputable ones. If somebody has posted a photo of a rose you'd like, I'd try to see if that vendor is still in business and using the same stock plants, etc. Of course, if it was purchased locally and you don't know the wholesaler, I wouldn't trust two roses of the same name to be the same unless it is blooming when you purchase it. Even then . . .it might not perform the same once planted in your soil and lighting conditions.

Thorns vs. non-thorns are obviously a different rose or one whose clone has seiously mutated or an imposter like the above-poster(s) pointed out.

Also, I'm sure zone, soil and growing conditions affect named roses, too, bloom color and form can vary slightly.

Remarkably, some roses grow true even halfway around the world, depends on the particular rose, I suppose. And I suppose even honest vendors *could* get fooled, there are just too many out there that are similar.

In the end, I suppose unless you are very experienced, you will have to cull out roses and replace them with ones that work better for you.

Sorry about your RdV, ordered a couple from a Texas grower, doesn't mean they'll look the same in Iowa. One photo I saw was waaaaaay off color in my 1986 Taylor's guide. It looks like medium-light lavendar (p169), and the ink has not faded. Pamela Harper contributed most of the photos from her library, don't know if she lives in America or Great Britain or where, assume USA.

The most irksome discrepancy for me is size.

Roses that are described as well-mannered 4 ft. in temperate climates may become 8 ft. out-of-control monsters in the near tropics. "May" is the operating word, because whenever I count on a rose being large than it sometimes remains average or even small.

My yard is a study is mis-matched sizes. My biggest problems are my oldest roses that I should have moved, but didn't. I now know better. I have one incredibly thorny shrimp growing in a line of large roses. In another place, I have a tea rose that was described as growing to about three to four feet (by people in the mid or upper south). and well...I have kept it from growing into the electric line.

I have found that on "thornless" roses, a young plant will carry the prickles as a defense- They tend to drop off after the plant ages. The only rose that I have not seen this on is Zeffy. Just one of my observations this year. I don't have a young Reine to look at right now, wish I did.

Trish

Thanks for your posts. I will try and get some pictures tonight. I am not too surprised about the RdV as it was a peat pot from a box store. My Cardinal Hume though is from Pickering's whom I have bought a lot from with no mix-ups. I don't dislike the rose I got it's just not the bloom form or color I was expecting from the Cardinal. It is too early to determine the eventual size. Right now it just a 1' high rounded clump.

an alba pompom parfait that was a pompon bourgogne,autumn damask that was golden wings, 2 alba maximas that bloom cerise,gloire de guillan that was gloire de something else,
camaieux that had a pink blossom (sport), on the phone i ordered a chloris and got a corylus. an unlabeled mystery rose, a henry martin (red) that bloomed white (madame pierre oger? won't know how many more until they bloom or may never know. im gonna remove labels hard to mow anyway