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I have grown some roses from cuttings. I thought I had taken a cutting of a yellow climbing rose, but it seems to be a little pink rose, another one is thornless and pink and I was sure it was off a white thornless rose. I have not been able to find much about this on the web, some people saying it is a good way to propagate, but the RHS site says they don't always come true. So if a rose is on a rootstock, you are only using the roots of one rose to grow the top of another, or am I wrong. The same with fruit trees, you take cuttings from them to put on a rootstock, here in Ireland, the old method is to use a hawthorn or something, so you are not getting hawthorny apples. So what is happening here, I can't get my head round this at all

I don't know but it sounds quite exciting - waiting to see what appears next. I think roses are usually grown on rosa rugosa stock, or something equally vigorous. The suckers, which I periodically remember to lop off would certainly suggest it. So I suppose you could just wander of to any hedgerow and find yourself some decent rootstock and try grafting.

I just found some rose rootstocks, Rosa Laxa, but I still don't understand how the rose may not come true from a cutting

I have grown roses from cutting many times in the past - my expert advice came from my sister who grew and bred roses as a hobby.
Roses from cuttings should grow true to type IF the cutting was taken from the cultivar wood and not the stock wood or a root cutting. - sometimes the stock will send up a shoot amongst the other growth. In some cases standard and half standard roses may have been double grafted - the root stock being grafted to a stem and the cultivar then grafted to that

Sis advised me that many of the modern roses, even some that are the "same" variety as the old roses, do not grow well on their own roots and need to be grafted.
Sweet briar (Rosa rubiginosa) makes a good stock and should be plentiful in hedgerows - This species is a troublesome weed on my patch - happy to send you a couple of tonnes of cuttings if you can work out international quarantine issues.

hmmm thanks Weedo, well all the cutting I have taken have been taken from the top of the bushes and are what I know are not from the rootstock, so they should be true to what I took, we have lots of wild roses here a county famous for its wild roses, so might just pop outside and try a cheeky graft. I have no clue what is going on, maybe I have taken other cuttings and forgotten about it, I am going to take some illegal cuttings now from a bush that has breeders rights, I might be in prison soon so please write soon, I will have more time on my hands in chokey

I agree, it should by all accounts be impossible.

I do have an odd, fairly similar thing happening with my daffodils. I planted bog standard yellow ones several years ago and increasingly every year I get lots of coloured ones as well. I assume these are hybrids from cross pollinated seeds, but it got me scratching my head for a year or two.

That’s very odd about the cuttings not coming true. I’ve not heard of that before. Mind you, I did buy a rose, labelled as pink, from a local supermarket and it turned out to be yellow. Hmmm.