Back in October I gathered about 100 Knock Out hips from the garden of a Northern California Casino. I forgot about them and just found them in the laundry room. Half were dry and very hard. The others were in a zip lock back and were fermenting. I extracted about 150 seeds from each group, soaked them in water and threw them in the fridge. Seeds from both groups looked healthy. It should be interesting to see if anything comes from either group.
Maybe I should try some embryo extraction?
I’d try it. I always tried to look for hips @ work in the fields. I never ran across a single one, but I think overhead watering and the lack of bees from pesticides on others plants prohibits them even trying to reproduce. Give it a go 
Jeff… Give it a try…IT’S LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES… YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU GOING TO GET." Hey that the fun Part… and thank u for the seeds we r getting germinations . Larry Popwell
I’m going to give it a shot. I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m pretty much expecting KO looking stuff if anything comes of this. There were hundreds of KO’s and I didn’t see other roses on the grounds. Hope I’m luckier with these seeds than I was with the slot machines.
In fall 2009 Peter Harris sent me a lot of Knock Out hips. And I harvested a lot around here. They seem to show only on older plants, in obscure places underneath and deep inside the bush. Young or heavily pruned bushes set few to no hips.
Sad news is that the germ rate is abysmally low. And the progeny are really boring. I got one that looks for all the world like Home Run. A very nice velvety brilliant red 5-petaled single. Others more like K.O.
This winter I’m trying treatment with calcium nitrate or potassium nitrate by comparison to the usual nothing, in vermiculite. I’ll post results next summer.
From Rainbow K.O., similar sad story of germ % and they all look like daddy/mommy. I do have one with nice red foliage that seems to stay that way for weeks or months. It may have some potential. But it only makes about 2 leaves per flower so it will take forever to get big enough to try propagation.
Still, it’s all a numbers game. What better place than a casino to try that. I’d place my money on Red 5 myself.
Red 5 has better chances than Black 2.
The KO’s have been at the casino for at least four years, but probably longer. They must have cut back on landscaping because this is the first time I’ve seen hips on them. I couldn’t resist grabbing a bag full.
Who knows, maybe I’ll get Red 5 or that mixed box of chocolates.
What I would aim for is a fertile, tetraploid self that has the same disease resistant qualities, as well as ease of rooting. Then, outcross it with ease with very disparate selections. One probably would not get anything vastly different flower-wise until the f2 anyways.
When I snatched the hips I wasn’t even planning on using KO. Ripe hips glaring at you on a morning walk deserve to be picked and processed.
Jadae:
So your suggestion would look like this?
((KO X KO)X “Whatever”) or the reverse, correct?
Yeah, exactly. Capture the optimal traits and then create your own proprietary stud/studette for whatever your whims desire.
My main hope for the future for anyone working with KO breedings is that the color is not directly tied to the positive traits.
The most seed I have ever obtained from my one KO plant in one season was 21. Out of that four germinated. It is possible to get disease resistant yellows from KO btw (the one I got was triploid I guess though).
I think the main difficulty with KO is getting something other than singles (or semi-doubles)- or with fragrance.
But I agree, get something tetraploid from it and start using it instead. I know you have seen my KO “masterpiece” seedling…
which is tetraploid AND fertile. I will be using it a LOT in future breeding.
I have another tetraploid seedling from it that sets seeds easy (and lot of them)- but they don’t germinate for me. I think all the other seedling I have had from it are triploids.
Two of my KO seedlings retained their foliage throughout the winter this year without any apparent freeze damage (even though we had teens)- so cold hardiness appears to be good.
I think KO is not prone to be deciduous. It’s like oak trees that hang onto their leaves until spring comes in that way. Our bushes are all covered in foliage though it is all brown from going below 0 F several times. In that habit it is rather like R wichurana which is semi-evergreen. Many years ago I tested the effect of ethylene on rose cuttings. Some drop leaves in an instant, others like R w hybrids (New Dawn) hold on. As a general defense against blackspot this helps, because ethylene production is what leads to defoliation. Around here New Dawn still has green leaves after several hard freezes. Cuttings taken inside keep them and will grow new foliage while retaining the old even in med-December.
So KO may be very cold hardy, or not especially so, but I wouldn’t judge much by the leaves. Keeping leaves is one indication of hardiness. Watch to see if the old leaves continue for a while after the new ones come out, of if they are dropped first.
Random thoughts:
I have given some thought about the possibility of evergreen climbing roses used for landscape screening purposes in cold(-er) areas (using sempervirens, laevigata, wichuraiana hybrids)- but I haven’t done any work in that area.
I could imagine using something like this and instilling some cold hardiness:
I have New Dawn and my observations match yours. She has so many great descendants to her name. (…I’m getting Armada this year…there’s so many to choose from…Penny Lane, Dublin Bay, Pearl Drift… oh well)
Sunny Knockout is looking horrible right now because all the leaves froze in place and browned and stuck. Yuck.
Sunny Knock Out and White Out are pretty bad. Personally, I believe Rainbow Knock Out is bad too. Of the 3, Sunny is the best, but I think there are better landscape yellows out there.
Penny Lane is a pretty awesome garden plant. It is moderate in size and vigor, it blooms a lot, the blooms are nice (OGR w/ vanilla color), and its the easiest climber to train that I have grown. I have a nice coral seedlings from it w/ Salita as the pollen parent.
On the side, Meh. I’m sort of envious of Cass’ foliage shot of sinowilsonii. Bought a new camera a week or so ago (the last one was ancient)- so I was testing it out thinking I had some good looking foliage.
I know what the hands are for btw. It’s to give something for the autofocus to lock on to (my last camera didn’t have autofocus which I was beginning to prefer… but I just earlier figured out how to lock autofocus on flower).
Has anyone tried Midas Touch x White Out or the reverse? Larry G. Popwell Sr.