[antir-heralds] Question of Style, Roses

[Britt]

First off, a garden rose is still allowed, but since garden roses were
never used in period, it's going to be blazoned as simply a 'rose' and
gets no heraldic difference from any other rose or 5- or 6-petalled
flower for type.

Second, your question about the CDis easily answered:
RfS X.4.d. Tincture Changes  - Changing the tinctures or division of
any group of charges placed directly on the field, including strewn
charges or charges overall, is one clear difference.
The RfS are online at http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/

Third, Alicia is exactly right.  Any combination of gules and argent
on a rose is suspect.  The Tudor rose has been seen in per pale,
alternating petals, and a sort of gyronny (which might have been a bad
attempt at alternating petals), but the SCA appears to protect any
type of division in gules and argent.

> Okay, for argument's sake, let's change it to "Petaled Bendy Wavy, Azur and Or".  Can you use field divisions to describe the charge?

The only things capitalized in a blazon are the first word, the
tincture Or, and proper nouns.  So you're looking for 'a rose bendy
wavy azure and Or ', yes?  Not petaled, as a rose is pretty much all
petals with barbs and seeds as artistic embellishments.

Of course you can multipart a charge, so long as the identifiability
of the charge is retained.  I give you checky German eagles in period
as an example.  The things to watch out for are retaining
identifiability and contrast.  If on a field, the field should have
good contrast with the azure (avoid sable and purpure, for instance).
Using a natural rose is going to require careful drawing to keep from
having some kind of knobby blob in bendy wavy.  Stylize, as true
heraldry does, with fewer petals than a modern, natural rose so as to
preserve identifiability.

Pull it off and it'll be very, very cool-looking.  :)

- Teceangl