Foolishly I bought some of those "body bag" roses late
this winter from WalleyeMart and others: you know,
the ones with the roots cut short and packed in wood
waste then wrapped in brown paper and then plastic,
with the tops sheared short and tied with string and
dipped in wax. I potted them up and most of them are
doing more or less okay; maybe I should be disbudding
the weaker ones, but at any rate many of them are in
bloom already.

Most of the roses I own don't produce flowers that look
like the classic florist's rose, high-centered, relatively
few petals, the whole shtick that one expects to get in a
florist's bouquet of a dozen long-stemmed roses. Most
of the new body-bag bushes do produce flowers in that
mode, as do most modern hybrid teas, many miniatures,
and even some floribundas and shrub roses. The more
I see of this shape, the more I realize how much I have
come to dislike it. It seems both hackneyed and not
quite natural.

Interesting (to me anyway) to note: I saw some old roses
the other day in the Kanapaha Botanical Garden (it's near
me, in Gainesville, Florida, and better known for a good
collection of bamboos, not to mention for a director who
lost a forearm the other year to the resident alligator, than
for roses); a bush of one variety had mostly quartered
blooms, but two or three (of dozens) had the form I deplore.
I can't recall the variety.

Mark., opinions?