Jim wrote:

now onto resolving the next mystery.

http://personalpages.bellsouth.net/t.../wildrose.html

I call these wild roses. they were growing along side the
highway and every year just as they were about to bloom the
hwy maintenance people who were watching via their secret
satellite would send a crew out to mow them down. I got
tired of that so I dug some of them up and moved them to
several different locations here on the Farm. there are
white ones, pink ones and red ones. the URL exhibits a
pink one utilizing the chain link of the dog pen as a
means to climb.

I call them wild roses but have no idea what they'd be
called by one who is schooled properly in the science
of horticulture.

I'm no rose expert by any means, but those are roses, and beautiful ones
at that. You may have saved an heirloom rose that escaped from an old
garden. It could be "wild", but it looks cultivated at one time, and
the truly wild ones I'm familiar with that at least used to grow (they
spray now so much) in the ditches in northern Illinois are not double
like that and don't climb.

There is a rose ID forum at gardenweb.com. It is a free site, you have
to pay at Dave's Garden, but a lot of the latter's info is available to
a non-subscriber, as we saw with your hibiscus.

Maybe you could try at gardenweb with your photos, their
popup/down/whatever ads will drive you nuts, but the site is worth it.
I guess you need a browser like Firefox with some add-ons to stop them cold.

Anyway, their hit ratio with positive id's isn't so great, but there are
many more rosarians there than here, and some are truly expert. So
many, many roses look so similar, and they even vary from grower to
grower of supposedly the same exact rose.

Anyway, ya done a good thing to save that beautiful rose. Actually, you
saved several different kinds there. And it didn't die from transplant
shock, looks like it is happy there. I'm trying to save old roses, too,
but I haven't dug any out of ditches yet, and you have to be careful if
it is somebody's property to get permission, guess I don't have to tell
you that. I'm going the cutting route to try to propagate more of what
I see I think is worth saving or get more of them spread around
eventually in case they die out or some property owner doesn't want them
and digs them out and throws them on the trash heap.

Right now I'm very anxious about some cuttings I'm trying to root under
lights I set up of a rose the exact same color as your photo looks, but
the bloom is different, double though. Is yours a once-bloomer or a
repeater or do you know yet?


Jim
in central NC