I love the coffee roses! Jocelyn is small rose that has shown a lot of different colors depending on the weather but I love them all.

Nimbus is another small plant that has brown in her lavender.

Paul Barden‘s Pam’s Choice is a great rose that unfortunately hated our soil but might have worked out in a pot.

Koko Loko is really good at tan and lavender!

And another Jocelyn

That Pam’s Choice is very pretty! I am hoping to get Stephen Rulo and Koko Loko this year or next

I had Jocelyn for a while, but it has since died on me. Sometimes the color was fascinating and beautiful, and sometimes jarring and ugly.

Pam's Choice does great for me, and I find it endlessly fascinating.

I always try to get every Le Grice rose I can find, and, in addition to the departed Jocelyn, I have Dairy Maid and Dusky Maiden. I meant to buy Tom Brown from Heirloom, but I waited too long and they don't offer it anymore.

'Pam's Choice' is for sure being considered. I particularly enjoy growing rose varieties that are closely related to each other, as 'Pam's Choice' is to 'Lavender Pinocchio'. It looks like 'Koko Loko' might do okay here, too -- seems to like heat -- though blowing fast.

@Formerly RBEHS Z10A/S17, too bad about 'Tom Brown' -- what a beauty, but nowhere to buy it now, for us at least. 'Stephen Rulo' looks like it might be hard to find, too, @oursteelers 8B PNW -- custom propagation from Freedom Gardens, maybe? Edit to add: Wait! I see they are discussing 'Stephen Rulo', available as a maiden plant from Wisconsin Roses, over on the "Grace Farm vs Menagerie" thread. I looked at the list on that website, and Grace Farms, (and Otto & Sons, too) and didn't see it listed, but maybe the variety comes available only intermittently..

The photos of 'Nimbus' on HMF seem to show a broad range of different colors -- definitely an attraction to me, though maybe maddening to someone trying for a particular color scheme! Edit to add additional thought: I have wondered if any of the purple/brown roses are changeable in color to the degree that Gladiolus liliaceous (which I adore!) is: its flowers are brown in daylight, but turn purple at night, when there's also an intoxicating scent? Interesting to note that I found a stain for our outdoor stairs that run up a hill, from Benjamin Moore, that shows the same effect, further driving home how close purple and brown seem to be.

@catspa_zone9sunset14 Northland aso carries Stephen Rulo. It is sold out now but I’m on the waiting list!

@oursteelers 8B PNW On the waiting list is good!

I guess different strokes for different folks as every different look of Jocelyn looks great to me! I’ve tried Smokey twice but it doesn't like our desert heat and haven’t been brave enough to try lavender pinnochio as its supposed to be difficult. Funny about the purple brown paint as thats the color we picked for our garage door and really like it. Vintage used to be a great source of the unusual - miss them:)

Yes, Brown Velvet was a remarkable rose! I imported it from Harkness in Britain. Its first year in quarantine, Edmund's offered it in the US. Figures. But that blamed thing rooted like a weed, grew splendidly own root and was a fertile monster. Selfs often came out quartered with bazillians of petals and in similar colors to the original and they even had some scent.

@roseseek It was very fertile and did indeed give a lot of interesting seedlings. my 'Dakota Redwing' came from it.

All good to know!. Okay, 'Brown Velvet' is on the list, for sure! Some day maybe RVR will send me a correct plant of 'Dakota Redwing', too (though the 'Siren's Keep' I got instead is very nice indeed). Will be interesting to see how 'Smoky' fares, but I was already planning on an afternoon shade spot for him, anyway.

Lack of vigor in odd-colored roses does seem to be a common theme. I have heard 'Lavender Pinocchio' wasn't vigorous, but will be happy to experience it for a few years, anyway. Against all odds I have kept a plant of its miserably weak, but incredibly charming, offspring, 'Lilac Charm' (Le Grice, again), going for some 10 years on its own roots, in the ground no less. While it looks like it's gonna die any minute, it miraculously manages to put out two, maybe three, flushes of maybe a dozen or so hauntingly beautiful flowers a year -- "okay," I say," good enough."

@catspa_zone9sunset14 you honestly can't compare Lilac Charm with the others listed as "weaklings". Lilac Charm is easily grown, even own root, compared to many of these other "museum pieces". ALL of the weaklings are significantly better budded than own root. Some are so terrible that even budded they are curses to live with. I'd tried importing Tom Brown twice from Britain and twice they shorted the order. They promised to fill it "later" but that would have required another import and another two year quarantine with segregated growing space, which I didn't have at the time. Finally, about eight years ago, a friend in Oregon notified me he'd been able to get it from Heirloom and it HATED his area. He sent me the spindly, near dead stick with a few roots and I nursed it along until I could bud it. Even budded, it was a DAWG! NASTY plant with begrudging inches of growth a year. I disbudded and forced it to push nearly a foot of wood before I allowed it to flower. They were really interestingly colored and smelled divinely, but it HATED my cooler, damper area so I passed it along to another rose lover friend in Santa Barbara where it promptly flipped her a rude gesture and died.

Well, there's a discouraging note @roseseek, but it's definitely good to hear what you know. Such pretty photos of 'Tom Brown' on HMF -- in those fleeting moments, perhaps before it gave up the ghost...well, sometimes the reason a rose -- or any commercial plant -- falls out of commerce is that it is just too hard to keep it going. After I've tried growing some more of these odd-colored roses, 'Lilac Charm' may well look the picture of vigor to me, too (and "Oneto Home Saffron", my second-slowest-growing-rose-in-the-universe a relative kudzu of a rose!). :-)

I've grown Lavender Pinocchio own root and it passed away after about a year. Never did well. I have a good strong plant of Brown Velvet. It is a russet or orange velvet. I like Koco Loco but it is not a strong grower for me even grafted. Have Cl. Butterscotch which definitely has some tan in it at times. It seems vigorous enough. Have Ashmitterwoch which can be white but can also be an intrigueing grey. It seems to have pretty good vigor own root.

I'd include some greenish roses in this odd color thread. Sheila McQueen was very interesting here and a strong grower own-root. Lost it to RRD. I have Spiced Coffee which is a wonderful, strong, healthy plant with great rebloom own root but it is not very odd or tan in color. It is a beautiful creamy blend, maybe a little tan in the cream.

Used to have a gorgeous seedling of Kim Rupert's, a cross between Tom Brown and Pretty Lady, which died. Shadings in it were really pretty. This pic doesn't do it justice.

Sheila MacQueen from Burling

Sheila with green outer petals

Koko Loco

Spiced Coffee

Ashmitterwoch

To me Hot Cocoa is an odd colored rose, orange and liver, but it can be beautiful and makes a wonderful plant.

Ralph Moore's Iced Tea can have tan tones:

Ooh, I have Ash Wednesday but it has yet to bloom-just planted last year and it’s on the other side of the fence where it gets very little water or organic fert but does get good sun

Maybe this year it will look like yours, erasmus

Sadly, ’Ash Wednesday’ has been a complete martyr to blackspot here.

@erasmus_gw 'Sheila McQueen' has some beautiful, subtle coloring, too, as it fades from the peach to the green, judiging by photos on HMF, along with the fairly vivid tones (start and finish of blooms) in the photos you posted here. Fascinating. I am also fond of that flower shape.

Have only grown 'Hot Chocolate' and 'Julia's Rose' (both now gone). I found them to be a bit underwhelming, tbh, but I am sure the failure lies in my neglectful regime and uncertain placing.

In the UK, Frank Cowlishaw has bred some beautiful lavenders and purples - most famously, 'Rhapsody in Blue' and 'Purple Skyliner', but my favourite is the ethereal 'Odyssey'. I passed along my Peter James' roses - 'Blue for You' and 'Eyes for You' - BFY was the better rose, (in terms of health, vigour, rebloom) although the addition of hulthemia breeding lines in EFY did lead to some extraordinary blooms.

@rosaprimula Oh that 'Odyssey' looks like such a beauty! Much like 'Lilac Charm' ("ethereal" is good word), but with an extra circle of petals -- too bad 'Odyssey' hasn't made it over here yet. 'Blue for You' in the HMF photos looks like a rose I might love. I have grown 'Eyes for You', too and, while it was "nice", I didn't love it -- the big clusters of flowers often ended in a badly-mixed mess of dingy spent blooms marring the beauty of the new blooms in the cluster, to an extent I found annoying -- constantly having to "clean it up" to enjoy it.

Some of M.S. Viraraghavan's roses are in that color range. I particularly like Coffee Country, which comes in shades of pink and orange, but in cool weather, can approach coffee with cream in it.

Another Viraraghavan rose, which I was greatly honored that they named for me, is Dr. Malcolm Manners. It's pink for us for most of the year, but in cooler weather, can have shades of brown and/or green.

Sheila MacQueen has caught my imagination! Neat.

A second memory of Julia's rose. A few lovely blooms and an unwillingness to live in a rose bed where others flouirished.

and a floribunda whose name I've forgotten that was supposed to be a shade of tan on it's way to being lavender. In my gardens two plants may have shown a flash of tan, but I never saw it.

@stillanntn6b Reading around, I get the impression that a lot of these kinds of roses may do better in milder, hotter, or drier climates. If so, their better chance may be here in my little bit of summer hell... 'Julia's Rose' seems to have a beautiful range of colors, judging by the HMF photos.

@malcolm_manners The rose named in your honor is a beauty! I've put my name on some of its waiting lists; would be my first Virarhagavan rose (I've been wanting to grow one).