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Blue Roses, Almost

While the introduction of a true blue rose is least a few years away, these roses are the closest you can come for now.  Growers of roses are baiting our interest by name roses with "blue" names. How you grow your plant will affect color tone. The more sunlight the more bleached out the color. Look for a combination of either morning sun and afternoon shade or the other way around.

Reds - Pinks - Whites - Lavenders - Yellows - Apricots - Multi Colors - Striped Colors - Blue - Green 

Blueberry Hill

Floribunda But it's not just the flower that'll steal your heart, the sweet perfume smells like apple tart. more

Blue Girl	Hybrid Tea, An attractive silver, lilac-lavender blossoms were a breakthrough in rose breeding. Vigorous and quick to re-bloom. Blooms are fragrant and have up to 40 petals.
Blue Nile	Hybrid Tea, Deep lavender flowers are brushed with deep purple. Vigorous fragrant, pretty, double (28 petals) flowers of palest lavender, borne singly or in small clusters. Very large, distinctive olive green foliage. Tall & upright.
Midnight Blue	2005, New from Weeks Roses Medium sized shrub rose with masses of deep velvety purple blossoms that pack a powerful spicy clove fragrance. The blossoms have up to 20 petals and the plant has excellence disease resistance
Neptune	Who can resist this luscious lavender hybrid tea tinged with purple? Its powerful sweet rose fragrance enhances its appeal. With large, glossy green leaves, good vigor and strong vitality, Neptune will be a stellar addition to your rose collection. A lighter color than Sterling Silver, very attractive, large blooms and excellent disease resistance
Out of The Blue	Outta the Blue  is a shrub rose grown by Weeks Roses and sold as one of their “modern antiques” (a rose oxymoron). This variety is indeed something else. Blooms range in color from magenta to blue-lavender and are deeply fragrant. Upright to slightly rounded. It is sold as a bush, 24" patio tree and a 36" Standard tree.
Route 66	Route 66 Shrub rose is an attractive rose from Armstrong Garden Centers. It is grown by Weeks Roses and held in private reserve for Armstrong.

Shocking Blue

Floribunda, Lovely sprays of deep lavender blooms. Flowers are intensely fragrant and make excellent cut flowers. The flowers have a strong citrus like fragrance. Good disease resistance. Grow by Weeks Roses.

Blue rose and other "new blue flower" research in Australia 

In the USA,  Vanderbilt University researchers are splicing human liver enzyme genes into roses, hoping that the enzyme will turn the flowers blue. Apparently, black spot isn't enough: these guys want roses to get liver spots as well.

 

A model shows off the world's first blue roses -- long thought impossible to create -- during a media preview in Tokyo.

Distiller and beverage manufacturer Suntory Ltd. said Wednesday it has developed the world's first blue roses with Australian firm Florigene Ltd.

Suntory officials said researchers extracted the gene that produces blue pigment in pansies and activated it inside the roses.

There are already "bluish" roses on the market, but these flowers were created through crossbreeding and cannot be called true blue, according to Suntory. The gene of the enzyme that produces the blue pigment, delphinidin, is not found in rose petals to begin with.

Thanks to biotechnology, the petals of Suntory's blue roses contain nearly 100 percent of the blue pigment, it said.

Suntory and Florigene, which is 98.5 percent Suntory-owned, bred a blue carnation using the same basic technology in 1995.

The carnations were marketed in Japan, North America and Australia under the brand Moondust, according to the firm.