I think we are seeing this because we had to prune back so severely this spring that most of our roses are growing new canes from the ground up. Those canes sometimes set blooms before they're really mature enough or had time to hard off some. That soft green wood can't hold up the weight like more mature canes would. As the season progresses they should grow out of this phase.

does it matter.. that it was planted days ago??? .. this plant is highly stressed.. and blooming ...

i wouldn't not be happy.. that a recent transplant is blooming... and would probably cut off the flower .. if not half the flopping branch???

ken

This is 'Paul Neyron' which flopped over when the rain made the flowers too heavy. If you look VERY CLOSELY, you'll see two tree branches holding it up -- one on the left edge just below the lower-left flower, and another on the right edge behind the two sets of bright-green new leaflets.

This rose is 'Souvenir de Victor Landeau' whose canes naturally arch to horizontal under their own weight, and I took advantage of this rather than try to keep them upright. I used tree branches to hold them in place (to space them out and keep them from blowing around in the wind), and in a few cases to keep them off the ground. This is the left-third of the rose:

And this is the right-third:

This looks extreme, but I'm actually NOT holding the rose down with the tree branch -- I'm propping it UP. 'Yolande d'Aragon' grew a long, thick cane going straight-up last year, but it leafed out only at the top this year. After a few rains, it flopped down onto the ground, and was whipping around in the wind. Rather than try to keep it straight, I did this:

As a result, it started sprouting new growth further down along the cane, and soon won't look so extreme. And there are a couple of new shoots at the base which will fill out more empty space as they grow. That pic was from a few weeks ago.

'Quatre Saisons Blanc Mousseaux' is an old mossy Damask, which naturally grows long, arching canes, eventually forming a V-shaped shrub. Mine being a baby, there's just one of these long canes now, and it, too, was a bit top-heavy. So I stuck a branch to keep it from arching too far and falling onto the ground. Now it's stiff-enough on its own, and actually straightened out just enough that it doesn't even touch that tree branch anymore.

But sometimes I just let the roses lie on the ground when the canes are just too thin to hold up even with branches. I know that these baby-canes are feeding the plant, and soon thicker shoots will emerge and stand up on their own. This is 'Honorine de Brabant' blooming on its long, flopped-down cane.

:-)

~Christopher