Rozita, a young orphan girl, lives in Granada with her uncles and her nurse. Her uncle cultivates rare flowers in his greenhouse. His favorite and the rarest is the rose Rosa mutabile, which means changing rose. This rose is red in the morning, white in the afternoon, and sheds its petals in the evening.

Rozita, in love and engaged to her cousin, is forced to part with him when he leaves for America, promising her that he will return and take her with him. The work employs a symbolic language. The heroines of the play have flower names: Rozita and Magnolias. Just as the roses in the greenhouse bloom and wither, so do they age, deprived of love, trapped by the strict laws of their small society.

The Rosa mutabile, which blooms and sheds its petals in just one day, is a lyrical allegory for the ephemeral youth of the heroine. Like the rose, Dona Rozita, after flowering, shares the same fate of withering. The years pass, Rozita prepares her dowry, waits for the fiancé who does not come, and dismisses all the suitors who visit her uncle's house.

Rozita and her single friends communicate with each other symbolically. Their code is the language of flowers, through which they seek a way out of their love deprivation. A letter that arrives on Rozita’s feast day announces the intention of her exiled fiancé to have the wedding by proxy. Since he cannot come for now, another person will represent him at the wedding ceremony.

However, the wedding will not happen even this way. Rozita has now aged, the uncle has died, and the fiancé has married a rich bride in America. The three women of the house, Rozita, her aunt, and the nurse, financially devastated, leave forever, abandoning the mortgaged house and the abandoned greenhouse after the uncle's death.

[Excerpt from text on the publisher's website]