There are no descndents listed for either and I’m curious about this as they both seem to set hips and ‘Micrugosa’ seem to have very interesting pedigree for warmer climates like here. Cool hips too.
Simon,
Micrugosa ‘Walter Butt’ sets hips freely at the Heritage Rose Garden in San Jose, but I never got around to raising seedlings from it. I did send some hips to an email buddy who was interested in breeding roses for fruit. I don’t know what happened with them.
I read (somewhere) that some OP seedlings of Micrugosa bear white flowers, which suggests that one or more genes involved in pigment synthesis is/are located on different chromosomes in Rugosa and Roxburghii.
‘Walter Butt’ hips lack the rich apricot/peach fragrance of Roxburgii hips.
Karl
I have ‘Micrugosa’ on order this winter to see what can come of it. Some photos on HMF show ‘Micrugosa’ to have pink speckling/streaking whilst others show them to be completely pink and almost completely white.
‘Walter Butt’ has pale, silvery pink, or slightly grey flowers. It’s an odd color.
Does ‘Walter Butt’ sucker, Karl?
Simon,
I don’t recall that it suckered much, or at all. However, I think nearly all the roses at the garden had been budded.
Karl
Reason I am interested in ‘Micrugosa’ is for the roxburghii in it. I’ll have to go back and trawl through my emails from Don to recall what he mentioned about it but from memory it was unusual to have anything from it that actually showed evidence of it in the phenotype. The hips and prickles on this one are clearly roxburghii in type but the leaves are clearly rugosa… I find this interesting and am hoping that the roxburghii in it will help it develop good warm climate roses that has some rugosa characteristics because most rugosa fry to a crisp here in summer.
Micrugosa foliage does look very Rugosa-ish, but with more leaflets and not such a dark, shiny green. One time I pressed leaves of Rugosa, Roxburghii and ‘Walter Butt’. As they dried, the Roxburghii developed an olive drab coloring (somewhat tan). Rugosa did not change in the same way, while ‘Walter Butt’ was somewhere in between.