CHARACTERISTICS OF ROSE

Like most plants, the flowers of a rose plant are sexual beings. The petals surround the sexual parts of the plant, which include both male and female organs. Roses have both male and female parts, all in one lovely flower, making them able to self-pollinate.

Maybe the flowers are so pretty that they fall in love with themselves! The stamens, so lovely in many varieties of roses, are the male parts of the rose. The anthers, at the top of the stamens, produce the pollen that fertilizes the ovules, or eggs, located at the bottom of the pistil, the female part of the flower, inside the hip of the flower.

Rose flowers can self-pollinate, but the resulting plant is rarely as good as the original. The sepals are leaf-like structures that cover the rose buds before they open, protecting them. Sepals slowly separate to reveal the color of the developing flower and finally pull away entirely, allowing the petals of the bud to unfurl.

The sepals are often a very attractive part of the flower, particularly if their feathery ends extend above the top of the bud. When they drop, allowing the petals to open, they are often a very decorative underpinning to a beautiful flower.

You can find much beauty in all the parts of a rose flower, but what most people consider perfection in a rose bloom is the petals; their color, their substance, their arrangement, and their fragrance.A rose may have no petals at all, like the famous green rose, Rosa chinensis viridiflora. What appear to be the petals of the flower are actually lots of sepals.

Many people consider the green rose ugly, but others find a strange beauty in its greenness. The green rose is of the China family of old garden roses and, as with all Chinas, this plant is tender in cold winter climates and must be brought inside during the chilliest months.

Unlike most other old garden roses, however, the Chinas, including the green rose, bloom all season long.A rose can also have so many petals that it will not open in anything but the hottest weather. Sometimes these many-petaled roses are so fabulous that they are worth growing, even if you see only a few blooms a year during a heat wave.

The most notorious rose for having so many petals that many of the flowers end up as squishy rotten balls at the top of a strong cane is the hybrid tea 'Uncle Joe'. The plant is a large one, often reaching 6 or 7 feet tall, with wonderful, deep green foliage. In hot weather, when the flowers do open, they are among the most beautiful of the red hybrid teas.

The most common petal formations fall into three categories:Single: Many beautiful roses have only a single row of petals (usually 5). Like the wonderful 'Dainty Bess', a single hybrid tea with five large, pale pink petals surrounding bright red stamens, single-petaled roses can be very lovely.

'Eyepaint' is another beautiful single rose. Semi-double: Roses considered semi-double may have only two or three rows of 12 to 16 petals. The pink floribunda 'Simplicity', which Jackson & Perkins sells as a hedge rose, has semi-double flowers.Double or fully double; These roses have lots of petals. A rose is considered double if it has more than 17 petals.

Sometimes roses with 26 to 40 petals are called fully double and those with over 40 petals are called very double. Double roses are generally larger and showier than singles or semi-doubles. The red hybrid tea 'Mister Lincoln' has double flowers.