Is there a striped class in rose exhibition?

I think it's also an evolution of ideas... semi doubles and singles are, to me, far more valuable in the landscape and allow the plant to invest more heavily in the production of flowers resulting in a greatrer overall impact. As more and more people swing away from roses (unfortunately this has to happen before any forward progress can be made IMO), more suitable roses can be produced. As far as the mass producers dictating the terms of rose fashion... that's why we need to support the smaller specialist rose nurseries and we need to support the recording and exchange of material among enthusiasts as we do here (this is the philosophy behind the rose traders database we have here). Even in Tassie some of the European style roses don't get enough chill hours to flower at their best. This is why I imported Rosa clinophylla seeds. It's a tropical rose known as the swamp rose. Paul Barden has already managed to get nice hybrids using clinopylla and combined with species such as wichurana, gigantea, bracteata, banksiae, roxburghii, and chinensis I think we can reinvent roses here in Australia, as Alister Clark began doing not so long ago. Species such as multiflora will also play a part but in a different way to the way it was traditionally used and species such as persica and rubiginosa will also have a bigger part to play. Rugosa are beautiful but I question how smart it is to use them for roses on mainland Australia... I'll keep using them for roses grown in Tassie as they are hard to beat down here. For me, the criteria is simple... a rose needs to grow well on its own roots (this almost always translates into easy propagation by cuttings... grafting should not be required and is an antiquated form of commercial propagation for all but specialist rose forms such as standards), grow without fuss and extensive soil preparation (despite conventional thinking being that this is good for the soil... it actually isn't. Mulching and other natural processes and products should be the only things added to soil IMO. The less the soil is disturbed the better it is), be able to grow without chemical intervention, have a long hassle-free life, and be useful in the landscape (ie shrubs of various dimensions... no more bare legs). Things like flower form, perfume, evergreen ability, full remontancy, etc are secondary to these other features. The trick is to breed what works in your area and to break the mould of conventional thinking that essentially results in breeders stirring the same old pot of genes that they've been stirring for the last few hundred years. It matters not to me that it might take more than my lifetime... I can always pass the baton on to someone else... so these are my underlying rose principles... a back-to-nature approach from this pantheist