Several years back I fell for this rose in a public garden. It was one of the healthiest and most vigorous bushes in the entire garden, with strong form and attractive foliage (but alas, no detectable fragrance).
I’ve heard others speak of rouge royale – a red rose of similar form in flower and a wonderful fragrance, I’m told – but was wondering about some of the other “english form” reds with great health and floriferousness, and in particular, Traviata. No descendants are listed that I could find.
(I would imagine that Meilland has crossed RR with T already, or done many very closely related crosses in their program… I don’t believe RR and T are closely related.)
I bought Rougge Royale this year. It smells wonderful (strong raspberry…very odd but I like it). It fails miserably as a female parent. It insists on blooming inside of itself thus destroying it’s reproductive parts. I will see if I can get pollen from it next year to put onto Rose Rhapsody.
Knowing Meilland, theyre most likely distantly related via the reds of unknown parentage but it is probably nothing to note.
I’ve had two plants of Traviata for eight years and a third for seven years.
(The comment on Helpmefind about the plants requiring winter protection when temps fall below freezing are balderdash in my 6b garden as mine show no damage down to single digits Fahrenheit.)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an open pollinated hip on any of my Traviatas. (Great plants, long lived blooms, fungal problemn on leaves non-existant, except when a leaf with black spot landed on a leaf and stayed, then some black spot on the landed on leaf.)(Much stronger than my Rouge Royales (which have set several o.p. hips.)
If you try Traviata as non-pollen parents, and IF you are in a rainy climate, watch for the blooms holding rain water. The petals and receptacle are so strong that they can hold water for a long period of time, until botrytis moves in. The botrytis moves down to the abscission layer and stops there.
OP hips on Rouge Royale? Mine seemed like they were setting hips but, like I stated before, it was just blooming inside of itself. They bursted open in the fall which is when I took them apart to witness this odd behavior.
Ann, have you had any luck using it as a pollen parent? I’m not surprised about your rain comment. The strength of the stems and the form of the flowers do sort of make a very long stemmed wine glass, no? But for a… ah… deflowered and emasculated hip, I shouldn’t think that would be problematic.
In our front rose borders we had spring proliferation with a number of different red roses (Fisherman’s Friend, Rouge Royal) to the extent that I wondered if things would ever get better, but second bloom cycle was “normal” on all of the problem roses.
First bloom came after and during a long period of colder than usual spring temps and second bloom was hot and dry.
Let me see what’s on Traviata still. Although we’ve had four or five nights in the mid twenties, roses are still blooming.
Jadae, Rose Rhapsody was a very nice rose in my garden, albeit she was oddly short-lived. I think she was a fairly heavy feeder as I recall and resented my neglect in that regard. I bought her solely because her pedigree was a cross I once contemplated (though I did not own her parent Ingrid Bergman.) R.R. doesn’t have the red I would have hoped for, but the fragrance is as good as one might hope for from the cross.
I imagine that her weaknesses would be Traviata’s strengths and vice versa, and I would personally be more intrigued by the prospect of a cross between those two, if feasible (said the guy on the forum with minimal practical hands-on experience with such…)
I don’t know where Rose Rhapsody gets her slightly-rugose foliage, but would imagine that a cross with T might yield above average resistance for a potentially fragrant, long-stemmed red rose, no?
(And what’s up with the inability to get really good resistant fragrant reds anyway?)