It would be impossible to describe this most beautiful rose without using the word unique over and over again. It's unique in it's light yellow color, something like lemon sorbet. It's unique in that it takes days and days to open into it's unique shape of an inverted bell.
Saint Patrick starts out as a very tight bud and the petals, and there are a lot of them, slowly pull away from the center bud. Not one at a time, but all at once over a very long period of time.
The outer petals were affected by little brown spots, pulling off the two or three petals that had the spots did nothing to diminish the beauty of this flower.
The bush grows to 33 inches tall, 21" wide, and very quickly grows new shoots to replace the cut flowers, but as when first growing the buds are slow to form on the shoots. The flowers, however, are very much worth the wait. It produces well in June and July, slowing considerably in August and the beginning of September.
This was another victim of the 1999-2000 winter, but was replaced with another Saint Patrick bush.