A beautiful species :)

General Discussion
1

I’m pretty sure this is Rosa longicuspis var sinowilsonii. Enormous leaves on an enormous plant with a metallic sheen to the new red foliage. My plant is just 2 years old from a cutting and is already 10ft x 10ft and is just getting going. It’s almost evergreen here in Tas. Only complaint is that because it holds its leaves so long the old ones show signs of ‘senility’ when they exceed a year old on the bush. Flowers coming out now for the first time. Strikes with ease and would probably make an excellent rootstock. It’s just beautiful :slight_smile:



The pollen is lined up now to go on it en masse :slight_smile:

I have about three or four spare rooted cuttings of this if there is anyone in Australia who would like to try it and who has the room. Pollen is flowing freely. If anyone would like to try pollen instead drop me a line at s.a.voorwinde at bigpond.com

2

What a great picture Simon.

3

Yes, beautiful. I wish I could take on another species project. Looks like a great one to work with.

4

Do you think I could send pollen to the U.S?

5

Simon, no doubt you could, but even if we managed an F-1 hybrid would no doubt be a monster. Then no guarantee which seedling inherits the gene for repeat.

These projects take space and time.

I’m already working with derivatives of some of the largest growing roses in the world, banksia, gigantea and filipes.

Of course I have other species here waiting their turn, assuming I ever get to them.

6

Yes, monsters is what I’m expecting (mostly) too. I do have one interesting lot of pollen that might produce something interesting. It’s a tiny semi-double white mini that looks like ‘Popcorn’ only smaller. I thought it might have been ‘Snow Carpet’ but I have that too and SC’s leaves are much smaller and the flower doesn’t have such a nice form as this one. I’ve never been able to find a name for it:



Flower size is about 3cm across. The cuttings were sent to me by Ross Roses who said they were ‘Si’. It clearly isn’t ‘Si’ but it isn’t much bigger. Nice clean foliage too.

It’s a very healthy tiny mini so I was hoping this might be one way to tame the beast… at least pastly anyway… mini climbers might be a good place to start.

The other pollens are going to produce monsters without a doubt. I’ve got ‘Lamarque’, ‘Comtesse de Labarthe’, ‘Crepuscule’, and other such pollens lined up ready to go. There are smaller ones too, but I doubt they will have much of a taming effect.

I guess if anyone in the U.S. would like to try some pollen I’d be happy to send it there too :slight_smile:

7

Looks like a good prospect. It sort of reminds me of one of the Poulsen ground cover types.

Btw, we think alike. One of the crosses I made last season was Old Lady Gates X Popcorn. There are several germinations from that cross out there now.

The majority will be once flowering but there’s a good chance I will get a few repeaters.

These huge ramblers can be surprisingly well behaved once repeat is introduced, especially if a mini is involved.

8

I’ve got ‘Popcorn’ too come to think of it… I should go check to see if it has any flowers yet…

9

I think I read somewhere that ‘Popcorn’ is supposed to be hard to work with, but that hasn’t been my experience with it so far.

10

Simon, that IS a wonderful photo! You did GOOD! I loved how the undersides of the foliage were so lovely, nearly cranberry. It grew a few years in the mid desert but just couldn’t take the winter lows and intensity of our summer sun. It’s gorgeous! I’d love to grow it again.

11

Thanks for the kind words regarding the photo :slight_smile:

This is the reason why I love it:



The new foliage has an almost metalllic look about it… It’s just amazing to see in the flesh.

I did have a very few ‘Popcorn’ flowers ready to gather pollen from so they will get added to the list. The list of pollens going on now read:

‘Popcorn’, ‘Flower Carpet Amber’, ‘Violette’, ‘Waltz’ (this is on of Frank Benardella’s minis… I wanted to see what happens when you put something very modern and mini on it), ‘Comtesse de Labarthe’, ‘Buff Beauty’, A striped Poulsen Mini (for the same reason as ‘Waltz’), the above unknown white mini, ‘lamarque’, ‘Knockout’, ‘Vivid’ (a great healthy old Bourbon), ‘Crepuscule’, and lastly one of my own seedlings code named ‘SV-2010-8’. Going to enjoy this a lot :slight_smile:

I’ve been splashing its pollen around too so will see which way works best.

12

BTW… in the photo above the leaf is only a few days old an is already almost 20cm long.

13

Simon, beautiful pictures; the flower IS beautiful, pristine white and lovely in its single simplicity. Good luck on your journey with this rose.

Jim

14

Such a healthy looking plant too. Very nice Simon.

15

I grew Mix and Match at one point. t wasnt fertile for me but I didnt try much. The foliage is really pretty even on Mix and Match. I think the species is good for warm climates. I’d be inclined to cross it with something hardier to widen its acceptable range. at any rate, mix and Match should show you what happens when mixed with modern mini types. I imagine many will be mini climbers too. Mix and Match itself was like a refined version of Bonica. I do not recall any disease on it. lol, the only reason I gave it away is because pink bores me. It was otherwise nice.

I’d probably be a good species for the US SW cause of the highly aesthetic foliage. If temperate was not an issue, I’d cross it with Sanguinea. If temperature was an issue, I’d cross it directly into tetraploids lol. I’d probably want something repeat blooming, hardy and capable of branching really well. I recall the downside to Mix and Match was the length between each node. It can create a skeletal effect, which is probably something to avoid replicating.

I’d like to work with the similar Rosa mulligani some time in the distant future.

16

Beautiful photo Simon.

I love the number of buds and the clarity of the blooms.

Jim Sproul

17

Simon, what dominant patterns showed up with Flower Carpet Scarlet? I am curious because it seems like a wonderful hardy, healthy, dwarf and easy to root source of orange.

18

The foliage, health, and growth habit. I don’t really understand the flower going back to single from two double parents though. In a post some years ago I asked about known dominance of traits and one of the things David mentioned was that single is dominant to double. So how I went from two doubles to a single has me miffed, unless somehow a single rose’s pollen got into the mix as well… ‘Nozomi’ is growing at its feet, though its parts are not small enough to have come from ‘Nozomi’.

It was a terrible seed parent. I tried more than 50 pollens on it and I only got one take and that was with ‘Hot Chocolate’… and that didn’t germinate. So I’m using it as a pollen parent this season instead. I’m guessing it is triploid so I guess it’s making a mix of haploid and diploid pollen so it should work on something and I’m expecting either more triploids or tets from crosses with other tets and triploids or diploids from crosses with other diploids.

My little seedling, SV-2009-8 (above SV-2010-8 was a typo), has the same foliage except it is darker with a bluish overtone. This seedling has wonderful form though it seems to be building up quite slowly… then again, so did all my flower carpet roses. It hasn’t yet sent out those characteristic long snake stems that the original ‘Flower Carpet Pink’ does. I think its health is pretty much identical to ‘Flower Carpet Scarlet’. Actually, its foliage is more like the original ‘Flower Carpet Pink’ than like FCS so it almost looks like crosses with it revert back to original features pretty easily.

‘Flower Carpet Amber’ set a mass of OP hips and I collected about 300 seeds and not one of them germinated… this rose also has fantastic form and health for me here, though not as attractive as FCS IMO.

FCS grows much larger here than it is reported to. HMF quotes a height of 32" to 35" (80 to 90 cm) and a width of up to 32" (up to 80 cm). Mine would be double that width already this early in the season and I butcher it back to about 30cm stumps each winter. My plant has been in the ground 4 years.

I’ve put SV-2009-08 onto HMF (here: Plant Search) so I can keep adding information and photos as they come to hand. SV-2009-8 sets OP hips as well… with similar low germination rates so far. It starts to flower much earlier than FCS but at the same time as FCP. I was hoping that bringing a dwarfed wichurana together with sinowilsonii might spark some magic… That’s why I put SV-2009-8 onto it, along with FCA.

On the above pollinations… all were done… but… it then rained late night. I cover the pollinated flowers with small muslin draw-string bags to stop other insects getting in. I’m hoping the bags have intercepted the rain drops, tempered their impact, and prevented the pollen from washing off. How much rain can new pollinations take before it becomes a wasted exercise?

On the bench are a new lot of pollens ready to go on as well… ready to go are; ‘Abraham Darby’, ‘Many Happy Returns’, ‘Flower Carpet Pink’, A red flowering understock I have here of unknown ID, ‘Golden Chersonese’, ‘Ann Endt’, ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (just because I can LOL), ‘Laura Ashley’ (looking forward to seeing if thios cross works), ‘Mutabilis’, ‘Indica Major’, 'R

19

I asked about known dominance of traits and one of the things David mentioned was that single is dominant to double

Simon, by this did you actually mean to write that double is dominant to single??

Maybe the ma and pa gamete of your single seedling each didn’t receive the dominant double gene in the meiotic “re-shuffling of chromosomes” card game, and that caused a single to come about…yes/no??

Maybe there are other alternative explanations I am not aware of, that geneticists here can explain.

20

Wouldn’t it be single is dominant to double? The whole reason for the plant to ovulate (flower) is to reproduce, get pregnant (hips/seeds). Each petal reduces the number of stamen, hence pollen. WE unnaturally select more double flowers, while Ma Nature favors singles, to increase fertility and carry on the march.