[i][quote=“AndrewBarocco”]shoy,
I called Greenmantle, but alas, those roses wont be available until spring 2015, and the waiting list for Golden Chersonese is very long. Also it’s one thing to mail money between fellow members for trades and shipping but there’s something about an actual business that doesn’t accept PayPal/Debit/Credit that really turns me off. I find it weird that they don’t have an email either…it only takes 5 mins to create one. They sounded like very nice people but I mean come on, it’s 2014 now. As an update I did manage to find Moyesii from Forest Farm, which I just ordered.
Paul Barden,
Thank you for responding to my post. I have been reading articles from your website and following your work for a few years now with great interest, so it is nice to hear from a rose “celebrity” as yourself! David Zlesak is going to help me out when it warms up and send seeds/suckers of R. sericea pteracantha, so we’ll see if I can find a fertile seed parent for it when it blooms. I ordered ‘Unconditional Love’ last week from RVR and can’t wait to work with it. I also ordered Crested Jewel and Crested Sweetheart. Any advice on using them in breeding, like better as a seed parent or pollen parent? Shouldn’t they both have recessive yellow genes from Little Darling? I’m thinking about using them in a line-breeding method like I do with my guppies to preserve the cresting.[/quote][/i]
[b]Greenmantle is 100% reliable and trustworthy. Just because she doesn’t do “modern” payment methods doesn’t mean anything other than a preference for doing business “old school”.
Thank you for taking a chance on ‘Unconditional Love’. Although I have not used it as a breeder, personally, I know people who have and they have gotten some intriguing results. I would think it has something to offer, as a breeding plant. Its a good seed parent.
RE ‘Crested Sweetheart’: its sterile. Don’t waste your time. Seriously. Ralph once found a semi-double sport on his big plant of it, and it was capable of forming hips with seeds inside. However, they were not viable; Ralph let me collect a bagful of hips off it one Fall and not one seed (out of hundreds) germinated. Spare yourself the trouble. And no, its pollen isn’t viable either.
RE ‘Crested Jewel’: A passable seed parent (choosy about pollen, but it does work) but a better pollen parent. The only times I ever got a worthwhile seedling was when it was outbred to something non-crested. When I line bred it using other ‘cristata’ hybrids, the offspring were unhealthy and rarely displayed ANY cresting - if the seeds germinated at all. Case in point: in 2010 I backcrossed ‘Crested Jewel’ onto my own ‘Crested Damask’ (‘Marbree X Crested Jewel’) and I got about 14 seedlings. The few that had any vigor at all had ZERO evidence of cresting on the sepals, and the two plants that did have some cresting (it was less than either parent) were crippled things that never grew more than a foot tall and always appeared to be struggling. While the idea of line breeding/backcrossing to enhance the cresting trait was one that appealed to me, I found that it did not work in practice, and at that point, I gave up on the cresting idea. You might have better luck, of course, but I think it would be wise of you to approach the task with caution. After all, Ralph worked on that problem for over 30 years, and in reality, the best plants from 30 years work were the two original hybrids from ‘cristata’. Everything that came after it was a compromise - on many levels.[/b]