Color Quirks

Spotted

Color Quirks
Many roses combine more than one color in their flowers, so that it becomes difficult to assign them a single color. We do assign a base color to these varieties, such as vermillion for Duquesa de Peñaranda, but we also indicate their color quirk, bicolor for the Duquesa whose petals are vermillion on the inside, yellow on the outside. Painted roses combine colors in concentric circles on the flower,  with an eye of contrasting color, and often an edge or picotee that differs as well from the base color. Often the base color breaks and veins or even stripes. Striped roses are striped with different colors, and spotted colors are marbled or spotted. Picotee is a term for a rose with a deeper colored edge to the petals, and mutable colors go through a change from the beginning of the life of the flower to its end, as with Radway Sunrise which starts yellow, turns to peach, then salmon and finally ends light red.