I don't have any gallicas but most of mine turn out to be significantly lighter, most often much smaller, and all over the place with fragrance compared to pictures and descriptions. You wouldn't recognize most of them to be what they are supposed to be! The only ones that have the expected color are the white ones! I chalk it up to immaturity. Maybe the non-whites will darken with age or when the temperature is cool.

It's so different from my parents' experiences with roses. They grew only hybrid teas and their hybrid tea blooms were always exactly as expected.

Also I wonder if there is an epigenetics component active somehow!

Just to be clear, this is over the whole bush, is it, pvc9x, not just one cane?

Please provide a photo of the bloom(s) in question. That will give us the evidence we need to assess the matter. Thanks.

@comtessedelacouche yes, it seems to be the whole plant.

@Paul Barden, please see photos below. I hope they help give an idea of what the blooms and leaves look like.

Thank you all for the help!

Thank you for the photos! Was your rose possibly grafted on Rosa canina? It looks like your Rosa gallica 'Officinalis' (Apothecary's Rose) isn't what's pictured, but the rose you photographed could well be Rosa canina rootstock from a grafted Apothecary. Sometimes the grafted cultivar dies and the tough and hardy rootstock thrives. What nursery supplied your Apothecary? I believe that Canadian nurseries and European ones may use R canina as understock. Carol

That's not R. gallica officinalis. Its an understock variety, possibly R. canina or similar. Your plant must have been grafted onto this understock variety and officinalis died and left this behind. Either that, or (less likely) this canina type was growing in the same vicinity and took over after officinalis expired, which is a far less likely scenario.

Whatever the case may be, the rose in your photo isn't gallica officinalis, its some understock.

Thank you for helping solve this mystery @Portlandmysteryrose(8) and @Paul Barden! I bought this as an own-root rose, therefore my surprise when it changed into something else...

It has been a while since I bought it, so I will need to look for old receipts in order to tell which nursery I bought it from, but as with all my other roses, it was from an American nursery.

I guess I might move it to a new spot, now that I know it’s a different rose from what I expected... certainly somewhere where it won’t take over the entire flower bed. :)

Any idea where I can buy Gallica Officinalis this time of the year? I checked Rogue Valley Roses, but it is out of stock. My Rosa Mundi is going to be lonely...

Where are you located, Patricia?

For the record, Rosa canina is a pretty rose in its own right, I think! I'm glad you're going to try to find a spot for it. Not many people (intentionally) grow it.

I'm sending sympathy for the own root/grafted discombobulation, though. When you plant an Apothecary, you want an Apothecary! Carol

Forestfarm has R. gallica officinalis in stock, R. gallica officinalis

Thank you, Carol! I’m in Maryland (Zone 7A). Yes, it seems to be a beautiful rose, so I’m considering myself half-lucky, Since I no longer have an Apotecary, but now I have a new rose, that I never had before in my garden.

Hi Tessies, thank you for the info and sorry about your dog. I’m looking forward to all the hips it will produce! Yum!

That's a lovely and fitting memorial for your beloved dog, Tessiess! I'm glad this rose is in your collection. I'm truly partial to it. Since I grow R alba Semi Plena and have such a small garden, I decided not to plant a R canina, but it was tempting....

Patricia, I like Forestfarm's plants! I hope you can snag an Apothecary. If not, I may have one by this fall. Carol

P.S. R canina looks great with purple Clematis! :-)

Take note that it gets very large, like an Alba, is scentless, thorny, and once-blooming. The countryside here is full of R. canina, currently in flower. Some of them are pretty, but I wouldn't grow one unless I had a large garden and actively liked it. The hips are attractive.

I'm very fond of the Dog Rose, which is introduced/feral and grows wild by the roadsides around here; I used to go out with my secateurs and cut sprays of the orange-red hips for our early summer Christmas arrangements each year. Also, many years ago in England, when I was to be married I made my long-suffering parents clamber about the fields and hedgerows of Norfolk to get me wild R canina hips, along with 'haws' - the darker red fruit of the hawthorn, another ubiquitous hedgerow favourite, to go with the rose blooms in my autumn bridal bouquet.

Apparently, IIRC, there are hundreds of variations of it; it seems to morph into something slightly different wherever it grows, which I think is interesting. I'm not sure quite how it does this; perhaps the experts here can explain?