Lavender’s blue (maybe) – but roses are not…

Blue is the colour (with a little help from my PhotoShop) - to see the original mauve Moon Shadow rose, click on this image by Drew Avery

In his prime, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my father grew hybrid tea roses – 150 of them, row upon row, in our long, narrow back garden.

And like most rose enthusiasts, he dreamed of a truly blue rose – and was always disappointed.

Now I understand that a new blue rose is to go on sale in the USA in November. Here’s the link. It’s called Applause, from the company Suntory Flowers.

Applause - the new ' blue' rose from Suntory Flowers...

But again my father would have been disappointed. It’s in no way what I would call blue. And isn’t it cheating by using genetic modification, inserting a gene from a pansy to produce delphinidin, a blue pigment not naturally occurring in roses?

At the time my father was dreaming of a blue rose, the rose breeders were doing their best using natural cross-breeding to make that dream come true.

First there was Sterling Silver, hybridised in the USA by G Fisher in 1957. It was a silvery lavender/mauve (depending on the light) – not really very blue, but less pink than some later attempts to create a blue rose.

Sterling Silver - a picture by Hamachidori...

Interestingly one of its parents was Peace, a famous pink and yellow rose created by Meilland in France in 1945.

Then there was Blue Moon, hybridised by Tantau in Germany in 1965, crossed from Sterling Silver and another unnamed rose. It may have been called “blue”, but it was another disappointment.

Blue Moon - also known as Mainzer Fastnacht - a picture by Schubbay

In all honesty, there is not even an official rose colour of “blue”. The closest is “mauve and mauve blend”. If you search on the EveryRose database, you find there are nearly 100 hybrid tea roses classed as “mauve and mauve blend”. There are also more than a dozen with the word blue in their name.

I have seen Blue Moon in the flesh, but I don’t believe any of the later attempts are any more blue than this was. It just depends on the photography.

I admit “blue” is ill-defined in many people’s eyes. I once wrote a blog post about the borderland between blue and purple:
A certain shade of blue

But I know what I mean by blue and these roses are not it. Lavender is always said to be blue…

OK, I accept this lavender at Aberglasney is ALMOST blue...

Although this is also lavender and I DEFINITELY wouldn’t call it blue…

I wouldn't call this Norfolk lavender blue - compare it with the azure sky...

One thing I am sure is blue is the Delphinium flower – although this has purple variants, too.

Blue Delphiniums at Kingston Lacy in Dorset

If the people at Suntory were genetically adding delphinidin to their rose, why isn’t it Delphinium blue? I suppose the rose red is still there but just slightly masked, hence the purple.

Where to draw the line? Surely if you are aiming for a blue rose and you don’t mind “cheating” nature, you might as well use dye:

Dyed blue roses at Oxford market - a picture by Redrose64

I once read in the Readers’ Digest the line: “God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.” I didn’t know at the time that these words were written by Peter Pan author JM Barrie.

Well God gave us PhotoShop so that we might have blue roses. And I mean really blue, like these:

Now that's what I call a blue rose #1

Now that's what I call a blue rose #2

If he were still alive, my father would not be holding his breath for a true blue rose, at least a natural one.

I’m still puzzled by the old rhymes.

Lavender’s blue, dilly, dilly, lavender’s green, when I am king, dilly, dilly, you shall be queen…

Roses are red, violets are blue…

If these rhymes are true, then the Suntory rose is blue. But no, I don’t really think either violets or lavender are blue. The sky is blue. Lapis lazuli is blue.

Violets and lavender are purple. But that wouldn’t scan so well – what rhymes with purple?

Maybe those rhymes were written before the people of Britain separated out the colour purple? After all, what colour was orange before we had oranges?

But no, surely they knew of purple. Imperial purple goes way back, to the Phoenicians, who extracted the dye from marine gastropods a couple of millennia ago.

Maybe they just didn’t care!

That’s quite enough, but if you can stand any more of this rambling, here’s my post about the boundary between blue and green:
Lost between Wedgwood Blue and eau-de-nil

… and one on the border between mauve and lavender:
We’ll gather lilacs – or maybe not…