NOMENCLATURE—ROSE CLASSES

The grouping of roses into classes has largely been left to the discretion of the rose breeders, though in the past century the American Rose Society has helped to determine how to classify new introductions. Needless to say, the system has its flaws. Our major concern in assembling this catalogue has been to make sense for the average gardener of a vast array of hybrids. It is our belief that the classification system should serve the gardener in being able to recognize similarities. We have tried to follow the essential system of classification as it is utilized in Modern Roses 10, the standard reference book of roses. Most of the classes we assign to the roses in our entries include, in parentheses, the class designated that variety by Modern Roses 10, where we give a different class. For example, the roses commonly familiar to gardeners as Ramblers are divided by Modern Roses 10 into half a dozen classes, most of which refer to a species parent of the variety. All of them we class as Ramblers (R), which we follow with the abbreviation of class given in Modern Roses 10; e.g., Adélaide d’Orléans, R (HSem) = Rambler (Hybrid Sempervirens).