If I get more than one cutting to strike you can have one… not looking good at this stage though… is a tough cookie to crack. My cuttings came from Patricia Routley in WA… I should have got them earlier and tried grating them instead.
Sounds pretty much as when I had considered Tuscany Superb. I knew it would likely not be very good where I was, but still…Fortunately, I was able to obtain pollen from it and raised two seedlings from Sequoia Ruby X Tuscany Superb. The better of the two, I gave to Paul Barden years ago. It WOULD flower in the mid desert, but it was definitely NOT happy there.
I have one excellent seedling that is ‘Wild Rover’ x ‘Tuscany Superb’. It reminded me a lot of the kinds of the crosses Paul was doing a while back to make such beautiful roses such as ‘Gallicandy’… which actually inspired me to do crosses with Gallica… so I refer to this seedling as ‘Bardenesque’ 
No flowers yet but some pretty good leaves. Bit of mildew though unfortunately. Not a huge amount and I don’t think it would be a problem in colder regions and this year has been bad for mildew here… things I normally would expect to have it did. I think it was because it was unusually dry over summer/early autumn with large day/night temperature swings. I bought ‘James Mason’ last season to put with ‘Alain Blanchard’ if I ever got it to strike and grow. If I get Alain Blanchard to grow I’m hoping to send some budwood to Misty Downs so that it can be reintroduced into commerce over this side of the country.
After considering all reactions on this thread, I’m not gonna acquire AB because:
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I fear Sydney is too warm for it to flower much (?or even at all)…
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It sounds like a hybridizer’s bash your head against the wall type rose.
If I ever do anything with AB again, I think next time I might grow out some OP seed from it, instead.
Also, from what has been written here, I just wonder if the spotting mutation found in AB passes on via its seed but not via its pollen???
Yes, I have used ‘Alain Blanchard’ as both seed and pollen parent. The results were about the same either way.
Here is Cheryl Netter’s “Spotty”, from open pollinated AB seed. At one point this was available in commerce but seems to have vanished now. Too bad, it is actually a better plant than its parent. (No listing on HMF either??)
So, it IS possible to obtain a decent plant from it, but be prepeared to throw away a lot of tragic weaklings to isolate one or two decent ones.
I suspect that its not so much whether you use AB as a seed versus pollen parent whether the spots are transmitted or not, but the fact that there is nothing in modern roses that allows the spotting gene(s) to express their influence; nothing to “turn them on” so to speak.
Paul, I’ve added Cheryl as a breeder on HMF here. Cheryl Netter Please feel free to upload any photos of Spotty and any other information you know about both (and any of her other creations). I think I remember hearing of the rose before, but I don’t know Cheryl and no one had added her to the database until I just did. Thanks!
Thanks Kim!
Cheryl listed this many years ago as a selfing of ‘Alain Blanchard’ and I believe you can safely list its pedigree as such. As one would expect, it is a once-bloomer, with 3.5" blooms in clusters of three (on average) and grows to no more than 4 feet tall, suckering modestly and relatively slowly. It was offered briefly by Rogue Valley Roses, but it seems to have been removed from Janet’s inventory now, probably because she hasn’t been able to propagate it. (Although it is much easier to root than its parent)
About ‘Marbree’ and its offspring: You CAN get spotted seedlings from it, but only when crossing it with other Gallicanae types; cross it to anything modern and POOF, all trace of spotting vanishes. Brent Dickerson did indeed register a self-seedling from it and named it ‘Papa Vibert’. Burling worked at propagating it years ago and found it extremely difficult to root, and it is a weak grower when propagated that way. (IMO it needs to be budded onto R. laxa to grow well, which holds true for ‘Marbree’ as well.) If you wanted to add an entry to HMF for ‘Papa Vibert’, by all means do, but I have no photos to support it: I don’t grow it.
Hi Paul,
thanks for answering the seed vs pollen question.
I was thinking a cross with something like ‘Midnight Blue’/‘Ebb Tide’ spits might work for spotting as Jim mentioned once
I tried Ebb Tide X Alain Blanchard, upwards of 15 pollinations (flowers) were done…no hips!
Yes… I am not giving up on ET either (did some reconsidering on ET after an inital spit of the dummy /rose tantrum about it last year… lol).
Don’t worry … BE HAPPY
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George, one of my favorite seedlings is from Ebb Tide. I think the parentage is Livin Easy x Ebb Tide. It is a slghtly double, wavy lavender floribunda, that is washed with purple.
Even on computer screen, LE x ET sounds a scrumptuous crossing !!!
Since we now know from Paul’s SOTS (and others’ OP seedlings out of AB) that its marbling and spotting mutation can be transmitted to the selfings, we at least can hopefully surmise it is not a mutation that cannot ever be transmitted in deliberate hybridizations onto other CV.
That is a start …a challenge for some maybe …
A question directed @ those that have used the AB OP hips…how many seeds per OP hip is the sort of usual range for AB…or is it too unpredictable to comment on?
I use Alain both as a seed and a pollen parent, and about two dozen seeds per hips seems to be the norm.
It’s interesting reading these threads about using all these arctic hardy, OGRS in breeding. Very few of them will even flower here and even if they don’t, my season is too long and weather totally inappropriate for them so they misbehave like crazy. But, thank you for teaching those of us who can’t grow them what some of the dazzling results available from them can be!
Maybe if you built an air-conditioned greenhouse? 
Probably would need to be more the freezer units placed under buildings on the Perma Frost to keep the soil under them frozen so they don’t sink! Even a greenhouse in partial shade here can soar well over a hundred degrees in just a little while, with both ends open! I have Solar Glass in the sun room out back (west facing with NO shade) and it takes shade cloth outside and honey comb, paper shades inside to reduce the light enough to keep things from being too brilliant inside. Don’t want to put up awnings. You obtain hillsides like this for the view and you want as much of the view from INSIDE the house as possible. Besides, the wind would take the greenhouse OFF the hill a couple of times a year. Nope, better just to satisfy myself with the moderns and more evergreen, Asian types.
@ Fara, thank you, that is great to hear…
@ Kim, I hear what you say. I dunno how our two climates compare, but I am suspicious my location is prolly similar in the heat factor to yours… STILL I am a die hard for this kinda rose…no logic to it…I JUST HAVE TO TRY IT
LOL!!!