Here's a piece of trivia I bet you didn't know: roses are the third largest plant family. It's true! It would be difficult for it to become the third largest family if it were as difficult to cultivate as its reputation implies.

The more interesting tidbit is that there are several members of the rose family you can find around us all the time. Like what?

The "rose family" actually includes plants such as apples, cherries, raspberries, and many ornamental landscape plants!

Wild roses generally have two names. (No, not quite a first and a last name like people -- or even like bologna!) Each wild rose has a scientific or botanical name with two or more parts. These names are always in Latin. In addition, each wild rose has a common name as well. For example, the Rosa eglanteria (its biological name) is also called the eglantine (its common name).

There are times when changes occur naturally in a plant. For example, a normally red-flowered rose may suddenly sprout a white-flowering seedling. This is called a "variety."

When the variety is produced artificially as a result of something a person has done, it's called a "cultivar." While that looks like an impressive word, it's really rose-language shorthand for the term "cultivated variety."

This cultivar could have several origins. It may be the result of a hybrid. Technically, a hybrid is created when the pollen of one plant is placed on the female reproductive parts of another plant. The results are seedlings with genes from both parents.

The cultivar could also be created with rooting cuttings. In this case, sections of the stem of the plant a person wants to grow are grafted to another plant.

You can recognize a cultivar just by its name. They usually have only a common name, and not a Latin-based scientific name. When a rose is named 'Rainbow's End' or 'Knock Out,' you know instantly that the final product is a man-made cultivar. As you learn more about your new-found hobby, you'll also notice that single-named cultivars are always set off by a set of single quotation marks -- never double!

If this particular man-made cultivar is sold in more than one country, then don't be surprised to discover that it's also known by more than one name.

But rose naming guidelines don't end here! (Sometimes I think they have more names than the FBI's Most Wanted suspects!) The situation grows even more complicated if the flower is registered with the International Cultivar Registration Authority for Roses - which, by the way, is affiliated with the American Rose Society.

If a rose is registered with this group, then it may also receive a "code name." This code name starts with three capital letters denoting the hybridizer or the person who introduced the variety. These capital letters are followed by additional lower-case letters. There's a rose called the TANorstar. This code name is always the same, no matter in which country the rose is sold.

Surprise!

After taking the time to describe all this, you might think everything about the names of roses is cut and dry. But that's just not the case, not by a long shot! As you begin to read more about this hobby, you'll see that names are listed in many different ways in different publications.

Now that I've completely confused you, and while you're still scratching your head, let's plow ahead to one more point about names.

Some of the older varieties of roses will have a common name as well. You can view these as nicknames. These names have been adopted over the years and used so much that they're just accepted, affectionate ways of talking about these particular roses.

Why you need to know all of this? Because sooner or later (and probably sooner), you'll encounter all these different types of names. It could be as soon as you open a rose catalog.

Many catalogs print all the possible names of their roses. This helps everyone to know what rose they're talking about. The names are usually listed in the following order: fancy names, scientific names, common names, and code names.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

For the rose called "Alba Maxima', you'll find a listing like this. It has a fancy, species, and common name:

Syns. 'Great Double White', 'Maxima', Rosa alba maxima; Jacobite Rose

If the rose has two alternate fancy names and a code name, the entry looks like this:

'Alba meidiland'
Syns. 'Alba Meilandecor', 'Meidiland Alba'; MElflopan

With all the thousands of roses in the world, and all the names just one rose can be given, it's no wonder that the rose experts use various methods to group the roses as well.