Anyone usine R. sericia ptericantha?

I’m wondering if anyone has experience hybridizing with R. Sericia ptericantha.

For me pollen from it worked twice out of seven attempts. One was on the third attempt with R. Acicularis Dornrosen (yielded 5 seeds). The other was on the first attempt with Bischofstadt Paderborn (yielded 1 seed). None of the seed germinated.

It blooms very early and I didn’t have much pollen so I only made two attempts to used it as a female, both failed.

I just collected op seed off of it and the only other things in flower at the time were R. hugonis and R. primula and Cantabrigensis. The seedings have 5 petals and seem like hybrids and are cane hardy in zone 4. Most eventually make relatively large red prickles, although not as large as mom. I should use these more in breeding.

Sincerely,

David

In the red prickle sweepstakes I wonder where the rose sold as Pteragonis by Pickering fits? That Pteragonis is more vigorous than the two or three pteracantha that I’ve grown and that Pteragonis not only has the big red prickles but also has dense finer prickles that look a lot like many test tube brushes of my past.

(I say “that Pteragonis” because the bloom color is white and that disagrees with some Pteragonis descriptions.)

Don,

Many attempts to use this rose as a pollen parent over the past decade have failed: sometimes I get seeds, but none has ever germinated. I made one last attempt last year with a seed parent that was guaranteed to take the pollen, and I got loads of seeds, none of which has germinated. I will be surprised if any do. I think you’d have to use ptericatha as the seed parent, and even then few seeds will germinate, if any. There’s probably some magical combination possible, but I’ve yet to find one. I wish I could get ‘Hidcote Gold’ and work with that instead, as perhaps the fertility barrier has been broken in that hybrid.

Paul

This species is grown a lot in collections in Oregon. It makes quite the specimen plant. However, I chose to work with Rosa primula instead because it is a smaller plant. However, I think the former is 500% easier to work with =/

I just collected op seed off of it

David, I will be interested to know if you get these to germinate.

I wonder where the rose sold as Pteragonis by Pickering fits

Ann, HMF gives Pteragonis as being R. hugonis

“It seems to me that what’s needed is to go back to the basics of the 19th century and work directly with China Teas.”

What makes you think this would be better?

Paul

What makes you think this would be better?

Because the known crosses of Omeiensis were done with roses having heavy doses of Chinas relatively undiluted by subsequent breeding. Consider, too, the natural range of Omeiensis.

A good model for this strategy is Harkness’ work with Hulthemia. His success came chiefly with Canary Bird, a cross between two China roses; Buff Beauty, a hybrid musk whose only known parent was a tea noisette; Ballerina, a hybrid musk of unknown parentage but vintage 1937 and so many generations behind current hybrids; and Phyllis Bide and Cornellia, which have similar ancestries.

The strategy would have to cast a broad net because the breeders who brought the Chinas to the world stage left little in the way of confident documentation. To get serious about it you would need to access a germplasm bank consisting of whatever China’s, Bourbons, etc. you could still find then survey them for cross compatability with Omiensis. This might best be accomplished by following your suggestion of using ptericantha as the seed parent because it is relatively easier to solicit pollen than growing up a gene pool.

I note also that Harkness reported Hulthemia as being pollen-infertile and relatively self-infertile, so this may be a common condition among south China species roses.

Another tactic might be to do some traveling (say, a stopover in Guizhou on the way back from the Olympics). The Sericea varietal in commerce here is presumably only one of many cultivars still growing wild. You have to wonder what affect 120 years of vegetative propagation has on fertility, and this starting with the genetic bottleneck of a single plant.

Does this seem to make sense (beyond the fool idea of breeding a rose with bigger better thorns)?

Its as good a guess as any. It could easily be that the closer the other plant is to the sericea group, the greater the chances are that you will get viable seeds.

I once collected hips off a plant of sericea ptericantha I saw in a public garden, and those germinated effortlessly. However, seeds collected from my Pickering clone of sericea ptericantha have never germinated. Perhaps some clones are easier to work with than others. :-/

Paul