Question
Why do my some of my roses change into climbing roses.
Say I planted a yellow rose then a couple years later
they change into a red climber?  I have red climbers,do
they spread and just take over the other rose or do
they actually change.  

Answer
That old black magic is called 'reverting'.  The tender, beautiful Rose you planted has not survived; its tough, hardy Dr Huey Roots -- the name of the Rose it was grafted to -- is still around, and blooming.  Take a look at this phenomenon:

http://members.aol.com/jzychowicz/JLZroses2.html

By chopping off the top of tough but not so pretty Rosebush, and gluing a very pretty Rosebush on top of it, Science has invented Grafted Roses - Gorgeous and sometimes Hardy as well.

'Hardy' as in 'Temperature-Tough'.  Able to handle freezing weather and things like snow, ice and the occasional deep freeze.  A skilled gardener glued ("grafted") the Yellow Rose top to strong, hardy roots so that you could grow it where you live.  You did not mention where that is, but it is most certainly North of the Mason Dixon Line, where Roses become less predictable and need tough genes.

Without those special roots, those pretty Roses would be annual flowers in our necks of the woods.

Wild roots - also called "root stock" - are simply a fact of life among those of us who grow Roses.

Science has done some wonderful things for us gardeners, Melanie. One of those things has been to make it possible to grow Roses where no Rose has grown before.  Roses like your Yellow Rose, which at some point transformed itself into the Red Climber.  (Note: Dr Huey is Red!)

Sometimes the roots start to sprout canes.  Sometimes these canes bloom.

Roses grown as 'own-root stock' are not glued to the roots of other Roses.  As a result, these pretty Roses do not make it past 1, 2 or if you're lucky 3 seasons.  A cold winter, a bad freeze at the wrong time, late fertilizing -- a lot of things can fatally damage the upper Roses.

When people know how, they sometimes go to great lengths to keep their Rose bushes safe from the cold, mulching heavily and wrapping with burlap, anything to keep the Rose alive for another flush of blooms.

You may even like your Red rootstock Roses - some of them are grown for their own blooms, although they are almost always vastly different from the Rose that was lost.  Just might be Dr Huey.

Complicating matters is the subject of Sports.  These are genetic bloopers that take place completely on their own.  Weeks Roses posts a short piece on Sports at its website:

http://www.weeksroses.com/goodsportsinthegarden.htm

and they point out: 'Sports in Roses are usually of a different color, or a different habit of growth--many climbing roses are sports of Shrub Roses.'

Sound familiar?

Weeks's Tom Carruth points out that 'CLIMBING sports often bloom poorly.'

Weeks notes that Carruth at one time grew a 'climbing sport a few years ago that grew so fast "it looked like it would consume small children and dogs," but it never bloomed. On the other hand, sports can be prettier than their parents.'  Polyanthas frequently revert to their parent.  'Climbing Iceberg', a sport of the Floribunda 'Iceberg', sometimes reverts to its original shrub form.  DNA in the species Rose Pimpinellifoliae was handed down to give us many popular modern Yellow Roses.  In 'Landscaping with Species Roses' (http://www.olyrose.org/Species.html), ARS spokesman points to 'R. foetida bicolor -- 'Austrian Copper' -- because of its dazzling copper-orange blooms.  It 'sometimes reverts to its yellow parent, and both yellow and copper blooms can be found on the same shrub.'

The life of a Rose lover is filled with surprises and sadness.