They're florist roses not garden roses. They're grown in enormous greenhouses under completely unnatural conditions strictly as a crop to be sold. Like any other crop some years are better than others. You also have to take in to consideration the handling in transport and at the store. The weather has been horrendous and many shipments were delayed while airports were closed and then the roads were impassable so the roses may have sat in a truck in freezing conditions for a long time, All of this proabaly took a toll on the life of the roses.

It sounds as if they were the potted minis you find everywhere. As Seil wrote, they are sold as "florist potted plants" like the hydrangeas, azaleas, poinsettias and all the rest and none of them are house plants. They all collapse when held indoors too long, whether it's at the store or your home. How long it will take before they collapse depends upon how fresh they were when purchased and how extreme the conditions in your home are, just like cut flowers. They honestly aren't meant to "last" any longer than a vase of flowers, though many, under at least the minimum conditions they require, can be planted outdoors and survive. Most really aren't great garden plants. They haven't been bred and selected for garden performance. Where garden and those for which they've been selected approximate each other well enough, they will perform, but there are so many which have been selected for your garden conditions, why waste the space and other resources on them? Kim

"What's with this type of rose that is being sold at supermarkets today?"

Cheaper

The prices do get raised for Valentines Day, supply and demand and the wrong season for roses to be blooming in.

The grocery stores are going to place larger orders way ahead of time, those roses have to be shipped to their distribution center, put on pallets with the other grocery items and trucked to the market. The market has to unpallet and finally those roses are put back in water to be revived. Just like a fresh strawberry grown in the farmers field is nothing like the strawberry one buys in the chain grocery store. Not knocking the grocery business, it just the reality of how things have to be done to bring them to the market by you at a cost we can afford.

A florist may send their buyer to meet the plane bringing in the roses, or pick them from the flower market just hours before you purchase them.

Best bet is to buy roses when they are blooming locally and purchase other flowers/plants/cakes/chocolates that do not need the holding times.

It depends on the grocery store. Some do a much better job than others.

It depends on the grocery store. Some do a much better job than others.

It depends, roseseek. I've been given some of those potted minis for Valentines for the past three years and they live quite happily on my kitchen table till about April when they make their way out to a bed I have dedicated to them. I now have two plants that have been healthy, doubled in size every year, and bloom happily all season and a brand new one waiting to go out this year. They are completely unlabeled, under $5, and apparently quite tough.

I've also had some other potted plants from grocery stores that didn't perform well, but I've been really lucky with the mini roses.

And they are tempting...especially in Chicago....in February.