Mislabelling is definitely a possibility - the correct cultivar name is 'Apricot Sprite' :-) I'm not sure I'd call the buds pink exactly, but they do have less than pure orange coloring - probably as the calyx has a bit of a smokey purple hue, so I guess you could consider them pink. For the true cultivar, the open flowers should be a clear peachy-orange (apricot) that takes on more pink tones as the flowers fade or go over.

As the person who contributed the above photograph and have grown Pretty Jessica for several years now, I can attest that the above photo is a true representation of her. Mine always shows the globular, cupped form in my photo. However, when roses are still young and immature, the first blooms are not always true to form and so therefore you cannot judge what their ultimate form will be. When the plant is mature it will no doubt show this form (assuming you didn't get a mislabled rose!)...but of course, their are other variables such as climate, soil, fertilizer, etc. I live where summers are not too hot and the growing season short (zone 4 NH) and the winters very harsh. Pretty Jessica does wonderfully here and always looks just like she looks above in my photo, right up to the killing frosts. Celeste

Here in NE Mississippi we are 12.5 inches less than normal and that of course factors in last year when we(I should say I) went from May 15, 2006 until Sept 1, 2006 without one drop of rain! Last year my son got rain about 10 times when we didn't get a drop and he lives 5 miles from me. All my plants are suffering. The poor birds and animals are desperate for water. When I water my plants they just flock to the sprinklers. I've been able to keep my daylilies watered mostly, but like ya'll said, it's just not the same as rain. I'm sure some of my pots dried out really bad when we had 108 degree days and over 100 for nearly a month last year and that's one of the reasons for just 2 or 3 buds on some of my daylilies plus some really ugly shapes and loads of what looks like thrip damage but I wonder if it's really thrips. I really believe that's the reason the late freeze hurt everything so bad because it was so dry and still hurting from that thus the freeze caused more damage than it normally would have. Something I have noticed since the freeze damage on some of my flowering shrubs and small trees. Where the tips of these were frozen and I had to trim them off, the limbs have multiple branches of new growth instead of the single limb. This is a good thing for me now if we can just get that rain so they can grow. The only good thing with no rain, I'm not having to mow my grass(weeds) every week. Here's to everyone getting a nice slow soaking rain, soon!Mona

And also, don't be too quick to toss a seemingly empty pot. This year, with new beds, I hope to be finally done with growing daylilies in pots, other than as a temporary measure or perhaps for a few attempts at ornamental arrangements in attractive pots. For now, I still have decisions to be made on the pots: e.g., do I bring all or only some to a garden center's recycling bin? If only some, how many to keep? Because I'm not sure how many pots I might want to keep, they're all over the place still -- including some that had contained plants that didn't make it, or so I thought. But then, only a few weeks ago, possibly even as late as June, a daylily began slowing growing in a pot that I'd thought contained only soil + what I'd assumed were the remains of the daylily that had died over the winter. I immediately placed the pot in a shady spot; in fact, because of the heat and this daylily's very slow rate of growth, it's still there.