It depends on the rose. Some roses are not good, as cut flower and lose their petals right away...

The common wisdom seems to be that they last approximately the same amount of time in either situation. I doubt it's quite as simple as that in each case but as a general guideline I've found that to be pretty accurate in my garden.

I find that roses with more substantial petals (like perhaps the HT Dream Come True) will last as well in the vase or even longer than on the plant, if kept cool. Roses can drop petals more quickly in dry or hot weather, and cutting them can help, or even refrigerating them like exhibitors do. On the other hand, there are roses like some of the David Austin multipetal fluffy roses that are desperately fast to drop their petals when cut, so they're better enjoyed in the yard.
And no, it's not remotely a silly question. We're all rose fanatics here and want to enjoy the blooms as long as possible. We can totally relate...

Cynthia

I have never seen one of those long stemmed florist's roses irl. Whilst I am dimly aware that they are grown under plastic, in huge polytunnels, I have never actually seen these shrubs...and am at something of a loss to imagine what they might look like. Are they grown like perennials such as chrysanthemum, using pinching out, stopping, disbudding and so forth, to maintain apical dominance and get huge single blooms? The ones in my local supermarket are perfect scrolled buds with dead straight, 12- 14 inch stems without a shred of the bendy, unruly nature I am used to dealing with.

In my experience, in a hot climate, much longer cut. But you need to cut before they bloe fully.

Temperature is a big determining factor. Exhibitors often cut days ahead of time and refrigerate their roses to keep them from opening too soon. The cooler you can keep them the longer they'll last. That's also why florists refrigerate their flowers. It keeps their stock fresher longer for sale.

So if you know it's going to be 90 degrees outside you might want to cut them and bring them inside an air conditioned room to have them last longer. If it's 50 outside and you set your thermostat to 72 you might be better off leaving them outdoors.

Campy, a lot of it is the cut-flower growers planting varieties that are bred for vase life, refrigerability, tight centers, and straight single stems (and no fragrance and a plastic appearance). I believe they do disbud until the plant reaches the desired size or to time production for Valentine's Day.

Strangely enough, roses in the heat of summer don't last any longer indoors, where it's much cooler, than they do outside. It doesn't make sense to me and other people don't seem to have the same experience. I wonder if it's because my roses are underwatered and just don't have enough moisture in their system.

Thanks for all the informative answers! Since I have only DAs and OGRs sounds like I might be better to leave the flower on the bush, given it's quite mild outside at the moment. Also the bushes are quite young, not sure if that makes a difference. They are well watered and generally pampered (still battling blackspot though - sigh) and the blooms on Tamora, SdlM, Grace, Abraham Darby etc are all lasting around 5 days on the bush. Comte de Chambord slightly less at 3-4 days. I'm pretty happy with that, given that we've had a daily light shower or two as well.

when i was almost 15 i worked on summer illegally underaged in a flower shop with its own little greenhouse, and part of my job in that greenhouse was to tie each of the big-headed chrysanthemum stems, with string, up to a grid of wires above to make them grow straight. it was miserably hot work in a damp roasting environment complete with angry yellow jackets but at that age, i thought the miserly salary was well worth it. it might have put me off gardening for life but in 10 years i had completely recovered from the experience, min

Yes that's very true, I didn't really think about it like that. Of course it started pouring and blowing a gale last night - should have picked them all!