Mystery Blooms in the Garden

As I recently learned from Redneck Rosarian, June is National Rose Month … a perfect excuse to once again write about roses.

I have several ground cover roses in my garden. When I purchased them at least 8 years ago, they were labelled “Red”. In truth, they are more of a magenta. Anyhow, I am quite fond of them. They bloom from mid-Spring through Autumn and add a lot of color to the landscape … and they have proven hardy in Kansas. Now here is my mystery. A few weeks ago, one of the bushes, at the end of one branch, started producing clusters of pale pink roses. At first I thought that I was seeing an errant limb from Flower Carpet Pink, but both the form of the flower and the color were wrong to belong to that other rose. Upon closer examination, I could see that the pale pink blooms were definitely coming from the magenta ground cover rose bush. The flowers on the rest of the branch matched the rest of the bush. What has happened to cause this mutation? Will there be more mismatched roses? Nature is full of mysteries. Fortunately, this is a fun one.