Calling all horticulturists:
I was given this yellow climbing rose in 2006. Just a month or so ago, it started producing both yellow and deep purple roses–or perhaps it is some other kind of flower. I know next to nothing about horticulture.
I just looked very closely at the plant in question and the purple plant is definitely growing out of the yellow rose; it is not a separate plant.
Got any ideas?
Forgot pic:
Looking at the picture I see nothing. Sorry.
I will go get a better shot…
IANAH, but roses are grafted onto rootstock. Sometimes, the original root sends up a stem and it will be the colour of the root stock, not the graft. Now, if the purple stem is growing above the graft, then I have no idea. But if it’s coming out of the root below the graft, that’s what’s going on.
You didn’t have any picture when I commented.
It’s a red and yellow rose bush and definitely not a mutation of a flower. You probably have one color as the grafted variety and the other is the root stock allowed to grow above ground as a bush that flowers too. Less likely is they grafted two varieties on the root stock and you’re not seeing the root stock flowering at all.
Hard to tell for sure from the photo, but it does look like there are two slightly different leaf forms there- further supporting the highly reasonable suggestions that this is plant has shoots arising from both stock and scion
My first thought was that the grafted rootstock is pushing up suckers, too. As long as it’s flowering, and you like the effect, I wouldn’t worry about it. If you DON’T like the effect, or it starts sending up just leafy branches without flowering, you might want to keep an eye on it for the purposes of pruning any sucker branches…they’ll divert nutrients and water to parts that don’t provide you any benefit.
Thank you all for your responses.
I like it; it just came as a surprise after 5 years.
The purple stems have no thorns. Hmmmm…
The backstory: My dad passed away five years ago. A neighbor gave me this purportedly yellow rose. Now it’s sprouting another plant in my mom’s favorite color (she is still living). Isn’t that kinda cool?
Most of the “exceptionally pretty” roses – pure creamy yellow, or lavender approaching silver blue, or deep dark red – are the result of crossbreeding for that particular color trait, and suffer from lack of sturdiness in the “support structure” – roots, stems, etc. The result is that a grown-from-seed bush of that variety, even if it keeps true color, tends to die unless it has absolutely perfect care for your particular environmental conditions. This of course does not endear their vendors to gardeners who paid premium prices for a plant that flourished one summer and then kicked the bucket.
The solution is that all these varieties are part of a single species or crosses of a few closely related pecies. So if we get a plant with the characteristics of a good healthy rootstock, overwinter hardiness, etc., which produces a kind of blowsy off-pink rose nobody much wants, you can graft on stems of the delicate ‘pretty’ rose varieties, thenm after they’ve ‘caught’, cut back the upper-level growth of the blowsy pink rose. The result is a plant that produces the pretty varieties but has the resilient healthy roots and basal stem of the ugly-but-hardy plant. So long as you don’t prune too much of the top back, and keep new shoots from the base stock pruned. you’ll never know the difference. And sometimes the base stock is a pretty-in-itself hardy plant, like the red ones here.
Thank you! Ah, my ignorance is cured.
I have a rose bush that must be ‘base stock’, it pushes out new growth (and an armload of unattractive cocoa/pink flowers) every year like a worker in an Asian sneaker factory. Why can’t they make a pretty, or at least fragrant, rose that will grow like that…