Will There Ever Be A Blue Rose?

Charles Quest-Ritson, author of Royal Horticultural Society’s Encyclopedia of Roses, ponders the question which has taxed rose breeders for years…

- Charles Quest-Ritson

ASK a group of rose lovers what they feel about a blue rose and most of them say, “It will never happen”. Press them to say whether they’d welcome one, and most reply in the negative. Then they babble about blue being unnatural and retaliate with some sort of circular argument such as, “Who would want one anyway?”

Well, I would, for starters. I would love to have such roses in my garden. Blue is the only colour that roses lack.The Victorians longed for a bright yellow rose (the first, Soleil d’Or, came out in 1900), so why do we say ‘yuck’ when blue roses are mentioned?

The possibilities are enormous. Imagine gentian-blue Floribundas in flower throughout the summer and autumn. They would revolutionise our gardens, as did Soleil d’Or, which is the ancestor of every yellow or orange rose in our garden today. Bring on the blues, I say.

Lots of purple, but no blue

True-blue pigments don’t exist naturally in the genus Rosa. There are lots of good purples among the old roses (Gallicas, especially) and hundreds of excellent mauves and lilacs were introduced in the 1950s and 1960s (think of ‘Sterling Silver’, ‘Lavender Dream’ and ‘Lilac Charm’) as the unexpected result of breeding for vigour. ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, a vigorous shrub with smoky purple flowers, is one of the most popular of modern roses, but it’s not the sort of blue we’re looking for.

Genetic modification