Customer Reviews

Modern Roses XI: The World Encyclopedia of Roses (Pt. 11)

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I bought this book and CD in the hopes of being able to identify several rose plants that my husband had rescued from the city's bulldozers. It is not designed for an amateur like me who needs pictures and drawings. I am less interested in the parentage of roses than I am in what the terms "semi-double, reverse, exhibition form, cupped" mean. Some roses did not even have the color of the bloom listed. The CD is great if you know the name of the rose you wish to search for, but cumbersome if you do not. Yes, you can search based on characteristics of a rose, but it's not easy. For example, there are no drop-down menus for options on search criteria. A search for a red rose with a "strong" fragrance yielded no results; "intense" fragrance did. When the results are shown, there is no number count on how many roses fit the criteria, and when you select one rose from the results to view, you must re-perform the search to look at another one. It's extremely frustrating. There are pictures of roses on the CD, but the search result listing does not show you which ones have pictures and which do not. Help is limited to FAQ's (with only two questions listed) and an email address. There is no online method for updating the program so there is no hope of this version becoming any better. ...

This edition of Modern Roses takes a giant step up from the last one! (MR10) By including *all* roses that could be reasonably well-documented, the usefulness of this reference has increased dramatically. In addition, the inclusion of a CD-ROM with great search capabilities is FANTASTIC.

Of course... as with any book of this nature... there are still a few errors in description, etc. However, this is very minor, compared to the volume of information contained.

Indispensable reference work for serious rose lovers.

If you love roses and if you want to know about the full range of rose varieties that you may encounter at your local nursery or in mail order catalogues, this volume is essential. The expense is justified in part by the CD-ROM, which gives you the ability to search the underlying database at will. I enjoyed the pictures (although they don't match other works like Botannica) as well as the articles on famous European rose gardens. In any work of this magnitude there are bound to be errors (e.g., Meilland's Michelangelo is yellow, not pink), but the overall accuracy is very impressive. If you are only dabbling in rose growing, this encyclopedic work is probably more than you need. But if you are crazy about roses, you will be crazy about this book.