When you look at a rose bloom, you can think in terms of the number of its petals, its shape and its size.
Single blooms have five petals, semi-double blooms have 10-20 petals, double blooms have 20-40 petals, and very-double blooms have 40+ petals. So, looking at the photograph, this bloom appears to be very double - so double in fact that the quantity of petals quite crowds out the reproductive parts at the centre. This rose is likely to be sterile. It is the single blooms - commonly wild (or species) roses which are -the most fertile of roses and form hips. |
Again, looking at the photograph, we can see that this rose has an old-fashioned, complicated, shape - a quartered rosette. The innermost petals are very short and folded towards their centres; this is termed 'quilled.' But the plant itself may not have been bred centuries ago; it may have been bred recently and be termed a modern shrub. One can say, looking at its shape, that it is definitely not a Hybrid Tea or a Floribunda or a Polyantha for instance.
In terms of the size of blooms, the blooms on a rambling rose are usually small and come in clusters. The bloom size of a Hybrid Tea (crosses between Tea roses and Hybrid Perpetuals) is likely to be much larger - sometimes up to 12.5cms in diameter. The Hybrid Tea blooms take their very beautiful forms from the tender Tea roses from China. |