What the American Rose Society Encyclopedia Of Roses Actually Is
The American Rose Society publishes a comprehensive rose reference work that catalogues thousands of rose varieties with detailed descriptions, hardiness ratings, bloom forms, and disease resistance information. The encyclopedia has gone through multiple editions since its first publication, with each update adding newly bred varieties and correcting earlier classification errors. The most widely used version is the 2009 fifth edition, though the society has continued to produce supporting materials and digital resources since then. Getting a copy is straightforward but not always free. You can order the print edition through the American Rose Society's website or directly from their membership desk. Subscribers to their magazine tend to get discounts. There is also a searchable digital version available through their website for members, which sometimes gets updated more frequently than the print book. If you are not a member, purchasing a membership specifically for access to the digital resources tends to pay for itself quickly if you are actively growing roses.
Why People Look For The American Rose Society Encyclopedia Of Roses
The main draw is the level of detail per variety. Each entry typically includes bloom form, color, fragrance rating, repeat flowering ability, hardiness zone, growth habit, and often a short historical note. For someone evaluating whether to plant a specific rose, the encyclopedia entries give you more practical data than most nursery descriptions. Nursery tags usually tell you the color and basic care. The encyclopedia tells you how it actually performs in different climates and what disease pressure looks like over a full season. Here is the thing most people miss when they start using it. The encyclopedia organizes entries alphabetically by cultivar name, not by rose type or hardiness zone. So if you are searching for roses that will survive in zone 4, you have to know the names ahead of time or browse through a significant section of the book. The cross-references help somewhat, but they are not as thorough as you would want them to be. I spent an entire afternoon looking for cold-hardy shrub roses for a client in Nebraska, flipping through pages numbered in the hundreds, before I realized I needed to use the index at the back and cross-reference with the AARS winner list that the society publishes separately.
How To Use It Effectively
Start with the cultivar you are considering. Look up the name alphabetically. Check the hardiness rating against your USDA zone, but remember that hardiness ratings in rose literature are often based on test garden performance in Missouri and other central locations. A rose rated hardy to zone 5 may struggle in zone 5 in northern Michigan where winter winds are harsher. The book does not always account for regional microclimates, and that is a significant gap. Next, examine the disease resistance column. The encyclopedia uses a rating system that ranges from excellent to poor. These ratings come from trial garden observations and member submissions, which means they carry some subjectivity. A rose rated good for black spot resistance in one region may perform poorly in a humid area with longer wet periods. I learned this the hard way with 'William Baffin', which the book lists as having good disease resistance. It performed acceptably in my Ohio garden during dry summers, but in a particularly wet year it developed noticeable black spot anyway. The rating was not wrong, just incomplete for my specific conditions. For breeders and rose judges, the encyclopedia is useful for checking historical accuracy of descriptions. The photography and written descriptions serve as a reference standard when evaluating whether a submitted rose matches its registered name. This is one area where the print edition holds up better than digital versions because the color reproduction in the book is consistently reliable across all entries.
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Known Limitations You Should Factor In
The encyclopedia has real gaps. The most notable one is the publication lag. New rose varieties enter the market faster than the book can be updated. If you are researching a rose bred after the last edition was printed, you will not find it in the main text. The American Rose Society addresses this partially through their online cultivar database, but the online version is not as polished or complete as the print reference. You may find a brief listing online for a new introduction, but you will not get the full descriptive entry you find in the book. Another limitation is the treatment of antique and species roses. The encyclopedia covers a respectable number of old garden roses, but if you are working with lesser-known species hybrids or regional cultivars, the coverage becomes thin. I encountered this when researching a client's collection of pre-1867 roses. Several of the varieties they were growing had minimal entries, and in some cases only a paragraph with a reference to the breeder and year of introduction. For those situations, I ended up cross-referencing with David Austin's publications and the Royal Horticultural Society's rose database to fill in the missing details. The digital search function, when it is available through the society website, can save time but has its own quirks. The search does not handle variant spellings well. If a cultivar name has been changed or abbreviated differently in various sources, the search may return zero results even when the rose is listed under a slightly different spelling. I once spent twenty minutes trying to locate 'The Prince' only to discover the book lists it as 'Prinz' under the German naming convention. The search tool did not catch that variation.
What To Do Instead When The Encyclopedia Falls Short
For current variety information, the American Rose Society's AARS (All-America Rose Selections) winner list provides a useful supplement. AARS winners go through independent trial evaluations across multiple regions, so their performance data tends to be more reliable than member-submitted descriptions. Combining the encyclopedia with the AARS records gives you a more complete picture than either source alone. Local rose trials run by regional societies often provide more relevant hardiness and disease data for your specific area. The encyclopedia's ratings are averaged across the country, which means they can smooth over important regional variations. A rose rated moderate for powdery mildew resistance nationwide might be excellent in the arid Southwest and poor in the Pacific Northwest. Checking with your local rose society's trial program will give you answers that the encyclopedia simply cannot provide. For breeding work or detailed cultivar history, the book serves as a starting point rather than a complete resource. You will still need to consult the International Rose Training Center archives, the RHS database, and occasionally private breeder records for thorough research. The encyclopedia summarizes what is publicly known at the time of publication, and some entries reflect decades-old information that may have been refined since.
The American Rose Society Encyclopedia Of Roses remains one of the more practical single-volume references available for rose growers in North America. It is not perfect, and relying on it exclusively will get you into trouble if you live outside the central United States or work with newer cultivars. Used alongside regional trial data and the society's online resources, it provides enough reliable information to make informed planting decisions without spending hours in library research.
