As usual, Ron did not give you the full story, and twisted the facts to suit his purpose. Let me give you the full facts.

An application for registration for Renegade was filed in late 2008 by the hybridizer of this rose. The application clearly said Renegade was a single. Since the application did not include a photo of the rose (not an unusual situation since photos are only required when registering sports), the application was approved and the rose was registered. The information on the registration was added to the Modern Roses 12 database and published in the ARS magazine as a single. No one questioned it at the time nor later.

At a fairly recent show Renegade was entered. The exhibitor has said the bloom was good enough to at least be on the court, and maybe even Queen or King, and I have no reason to doubt that. However, the judges disqualified the entry because Renegade was listed in the references as a single, following the information we were given in the registration. The exhibitor contacted the hybridizer about this and the hybridizer contacted us. Once the hybridizer told us the rose was in fact a double, not a single, we changed the Modern Roses database within minutes and posted a note to that effect in the News and Notes section of the MR database. We also put the listing for Renegade in the Recent Registrations list in bold face to indicate a change had taken place since registration.

Now, let's touch on the points in Ron's message. First, he began this saga by distributing his message that it was an ARS mistake, as shown in his post above. This follows Ron's usual pattern of blaming everything on the ARS. Was a mistake made? Certainly. Did the ARS make the mistake? No. That is the point I was attempting to make in my response. In fact, both Marily Williams and I sent emails to Ron spelling out exactly what happened, just as I explained it above. Thus he can't say he didn't have the facts. Yet he still is trying to justify his statements since clearly someone made a mistake and it must have been the ARS. Ron, we all understand what a mistake is, but the ARS didn't make it.

Let me also make it clear that this error by the hybridizer was undoubtedly just a typo. He is one of the best and most reliable hybridizers out there, a person who does a great deal for the rose world, and I never would have mentioned his mistake if Ron hadn't blamed the ARS for it in his usual manner.

Finally, Ron says we should find a way to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. The only way I can see to do that is for us to go back to each hybridizer on each rose they register, spell out every detail of the information thay have given us, and ask them if they really meant what they said. Frankly, I think they would find this more than a little insulting. However, if enough of the hybridizers contact us and tell us they would like us to do this, I'm sure we can arrange to do it.