As the individual who contributed this photo, I am sorry to report that the rosebush pictured, which I bought in a five-gallon pot and owned for only five short months, has died. Long before its inexplicable demise, which began after its initial pruning, it quickly established itself as one of the most prolific bloomers in my zone 23 garden, which includes over 50 rosebushes. Gemini never ceased blooming right up through January, when it was modestly pruned along with the rest of my roses. After the pruning, it attempted to rebound but instead died a slow death wherein the leaves and unopened buds merely wilted away despite adequate water.

Since this had become the rose that the most people visiting “oohed” and “awed” over, I was not about to let it go un-replaced. Unfortunately, my recently purchased replacement Gemini does not have much in common with the bush that died. The replacement Gemini has much more intense bloom coloration, for one. The blooms from my former Gemini, which I purchased from the same source and which carried the same plastic label and metal tag, were consistently well blended in color — ivory in the center to a gradually intensifying pink around the edges (as pictured). By contrast, my new Gemini bush looks much more like the remainder of the photos here — a cherry red edge with ivory toward the center. So drastic is the color difference that when I saw Gemini outside my own garden I did not recognize it as such — even the leaves were not so large, thick and glossy as what I had become accustomed to seeing on my departed Gemini (the foliage on my former Gemini was a dark forest green with a purplish sheen).

Gemini was my favorite bush due to its elegant high centered blooms that opened slowly to disperse a classic rose fragrance. By contrast, my replacement Gemini is not quite so high centered, blooms are slightly smaller, blooms open somewhat faster, the foliage is not so large and shiny, petal count is lower, and the bloom coloration becomes much more garish as the bloom ages.

Question: Is the enormous difference in color intensity merely a factor of the weather (which I ask because I enjoyed my former Gemini only during the cooler months before losing it)? My former Gemini, including the leaves, looked like an iconic, classical rose — the type you might expect from a florist, depicted in a painting, or crafted from porcelain. The replacement Gemini I own is beautiful — and demonstrates much more in common with the majority of pictures here — yet it is not nearly as elegant as the bush I lost. Is such variation — running the gamut from an ordinary bicolor and a picture-perfect specimen — normal for this variety? As mentioned, I do not believe I received a mislabeled rosebush because both the new and t he old bush included a metal ID tag and a plastic information tag from the cultivator. In addition, both the old bush and the replacement bush were purchased at the same source, and both were purchased in five-gallon pots. So am I ever going to see anything from my new bush that reminds me of my former bush, or am I to conclude that no two Geminis are alike?