I’ve been on the hunt for a good parent with a healthy dose of N. American species ancestry. I came across one of the Canadian roses at High Country Roses, Adelaide Hoodless. It has R. arkansana ancestry, I like the bloom and it has both seed and pollen descendants. Does anyone have any experience working with or just growing this rose?
I grew Adelaide in my Newhall garden, Zone 9b, interface between inland valley heat and lower Mojave in SoCal. It got massive. I gave it to a friend who grows it in her Wrightwood, CA garden in the San Gabriel Mountains. It suckers profusely for her. I never played with it, just collected, grew and studied it. In that arid, alkaline heat, it succumbed to the traditional rust due to water stress as most American species, their hybrids and many European OGRs do. Here is a current photo of Adelaide in Wrightwood which she sent a few weeks ago. It’s a nice rose if you have enough room.
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Thanks Kim, that is a beast. Probably too large for what I can accommodate but a nice looking rose. The search continues or maybe I just have to wait for one of my crosses to work. I know it’ll be a long process but fun.
We get a lot of rain here so I haven’t encountered too much rust. I worry more about oversaturated roots to be honest. I think we get the most precipitation of any major city outside the South-East. Even more than Seattle but some of ours is snow of course.
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I don’t grow Adelaide Hoodless but I’ve been interested in those Canadian roses for the same reasons as you. The Explorer, Artists, and Parkland roses are basically the only commercially available arkansana hybrids out there. I wouldn’t let its potential size be a total dealbreaker. I bet if you kept it in a reasonable sized pot and gave it a good organic fertilizer like fish emulsion every 2-3 months then you could get a few good years of hybridizing from it. Especially since the two vendors selling it online, High Country and Burlington, only sell band-sized roses anyways. You could grow it out for a year, utilize/freeze the pollen, then sell it once it got bigger if you wanted.
I really wish that Assiniboine, or in a perfect world RSM 34, were available in the States. Adelaide Hoodless, Cuthbert Grant, Emily Carr, and the Mordens are all heavy with Crimson Glory and 1950s hybrid tea genetics. Which might explain the common complaint that they’re all blackspot prone when grown outside of the specific Canadian climate they were bred for. Although now that I think about it the same can be said for most of the older roses out of California, France, England, etc. It sure does look pretty in that photo though.
This in a nutshell is my basic strategy overall. Not just because I have such limited space but I also don’t have great direct sun. Small backyard faces north and small front yard has lots of trees on the block.
Having the roses in pots also lets me rotate them if one is struggling and turn them for more even growth. I did that just yesterday. We just went from 100 degrees to monsoon season apparently so sometimes I even bring them up on the porch when they are smaller. Climate change, yay.
I haven’t sold anything yet but I’m already thinking about rotating some out to bring in some new. I started this collection before getting into hybridizing so it’d look different if I was starting today. I’m also practicing propagation and have several doing well from my neighbor’s, that I am 95% sure, Double Delight. I’ll just give those away.