At my wit's end looking for these rare species! Please help!

Golden Chersonese

R. sericea pteracantha (R. omeiensis)

R. stellata mirifica

R. moyesii ‘Geranium’ or simply R. moyesii

R. hemispherica ‘Flore-Pleno’

I’ve searched and searched and searched for these roses and what I’ve found is that every nursery is out of business/defunt/sold out/not in English/or does not ship to the US. Needless to say after pulling my hair out I figured I would reach out as a last resort to see if anyone has any of these roses. I’m looking to increase the species representation in my breeding program/population so if anyone out there would be so kind and merciful as to send me plants, suckers, or rooted cuttings of these or ANY of your leftover species, species crosses, or species hybrids then I assure you that I will be MORE THAN HAPPY to pay for any shipping and packaging. Feel free to comment or send me a PM. Oh and by the way, here are all of the species, in some way or another, that I already have and so do not need any more: Rugosa, Beggeriana, Virginiana, Carolina, Foliolosa, Laxa, Kordesii, Spinosissima. I hope everyone else is having a great New Year!

-Andrew

Andrew you should come to OZ, most of what you have listed is available commercially. Most botanical gardens have a rose species section where you could find these growing. I reckon if you told them what you are doing , they would give you a flower or two for pollen harvest.

R. moyesii ‘Geranium’ : from what I have heard around the traps this one is not fertile.
R. hemispherica ‘Flore-Pleno’ : This one is extremely double and is difficult to find anthers for pollen harvest. It took 4 yrs of determination to finally get two seedlings which were (Altissmo X R.
hemispherica ‘Flore-Pleno’ ). Each leaf was small and rounded, stems extremely thorned and cat clawed shaped. One seedling one harvested for pollen and this cross was done(Charles Austin X R. hemispherica ‘Flore-Pleno’ F1 Hyb). The result was (Oh by Jingo). The reason for using Altissimo was its fertility and hip set is very good and because of (R. hemispherica ‘Flore-Pleno’) thin and lax growing, using Altissimo, thickened cane structure. A big plus also was, vigour was strengthened . Using (R. hemispherica ‘Flore-Pleno’ ) is not for the faint hearted , it is extremely difficult to get results. This is the end result (Oh by Jingo)
Oh By Jingo 2.jpg

Thanks for the reply Warren! Yes, I frequently find myself attempting endeavors, not just in roses but in life in general, which are not for the feint hearted. For example, I don’t know if it’s my particular specimen or what but I’ve found that The Crocus Rose is so double that it rarely produces any pollen anthers or even a fertile pistil/stigma pad. After much persistence I obtained one hip set from ironically…Bull’s Eye as the parent. The hip ripened and just two days ago I used my surgeons knife to extract a nice plump testa or embryo from the single seed. Still waiting to see if it grows or will melt, but I typically have good luck with such methods. Sorry for going off on a tangent lol. I would say my most desired rose right now is Golden Chersonese, talk about hard to find.

R. sericea pteracantha is a ***** to propagate by any means than matching it to the right rootstock and budding it. Some brave individuals (glances in Burling’s direction) have managed to get cuttings to root on occasion, after much hoop-jumping and assorted spells, but in general it is extremely difficult to propagate. Years ago, I had a much easier time of it by sowing seeds from a plant I once encountered that bore some fruit. I know of no source for the species in the US at this time.

By the way, it is a very difficult species to breed with, and it tends to make hybrids only with other species that are closely related. (See R. pteragonis: 'Pteragonis' Rose which in fact I have a plant of. Never was able to propagate it though.) Most attempts to breed it with modern roses will result in either ZERO viable seeds (if it doesn’t just abort after pollinating) or a handful of plants that are generated by apomixis, and therefore none of the pteracantha genes is used. I’ve learned this from my many attempts to breed this obstinate species.

R. stellata mirifica may be available from Greenmantle Nursery. Also R. sericea pteracantha.

I was logging in incorrectly, sorry. I have purchased roses from Greenmantle a number of times. I believe you actually have to call them (no email if I remember correctly).

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.

I can help you with R. sericea pteracantha (R. omeiensis) and R. moyesii, send me a pm and we’ll discuss your options.

As Paul mentioned, Sericea is a bear to root but it can be done. Use mallet cuttings under mist and use the potassium salt of IBA as it is the most soluble and, therefore, the most ‘bioavailable’.

Pickering lists R. moyesii ‘Geranium’ as available and with a prediction they will be able to ship to the USA for this coming spring. At one time they carried both Geranium and the norm species … planted both and got a pink flowering “norm” and geranium never bloomed. They dropped the norm along with scores of other OGR over the last years … but still in business.

However a hybrid Ruys ? effort labelled as EOS was spectacular for me (still grows and blooms with no protection and looks to have moyessi in it) - from an unreliable nursery in Canada (got lucky).

[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]

Andrew, I second the recommendation for Marissa and Ram Fishman at Greenmantle. A bit of explanation, I first dealt with her in 1984, or so, and she has been completely reliable with the highest integrity for the past thirty years. Extremely nice people. They live “off the grid” by choice. Where they are out in the mountains, services can be spotty. That’s what they wanted and that’s how they like it. They built their home from trees Ram felled from the site and milled at the local mill. The stone was quarried right from the site. They put three (IIRC) correctly, children through college where all three were the highest scorers. When I first met them back in the early eighties, they lived in a salvage Navy tractor trailer, trailer with the kitchen an outdoor lean to at the pump head. We enjoyed an organic, home raised, vegan lunch and walked the property, roses and fruit collection. She specializes in antique and special interest roses. He’s collected rare, historic and antique fruit. If you’re looking for an antique fruit type, grafted on a specialty stock to tailor it to your soil and conditions, Ram is your man. It may take you a season or two to obtain precisely what you desire, but they WILL get it to you. I waited two years for two budded Grey Pearl from her and they arrived, along with all the other roses I ordered, in perfect condition. Greenmantle is definitely a source you can trust.

Kim and Paul, Thank you for sharing that awesome background info about Greenmantle and your seals of approval. I never doubted their reliability, I guess it was just that I’m still young, impatient, and not yet wise as you guys are. I suppose if I can wait 2 years for rose seeds to sprout like I just did my ‘The Gift’ seedlings that germinated a few weeks ago, then I can wait patiently to get the roses I really want. Make no mistake about it, I REALLY want Golden Chersonese especially bad, so I’ll mail in my deposit today and do my time lol.

Paul, thank you for sharing this wisdom about crested roses! I’ll definitely work with Crested Jewel instead of Crested Sweetheart. Oh and you’re welcome about Unconditional Love; I was going to order your Crested Damask, but they were sold out! Maybe next season I’ll try again? Hopefully I will get lucky with trying to breed more crested roses. I haven’t been doing this that long and I’ve already noticed that with roses, the strangest things can happen and crosses that “Shouldn’t” work are sometimes the ones that make the biggest and most fertile hips and seedlings. Case in point, my largest hip this year, measuring 1 inch in diameter was from ‘Proud Land’ with a pollen parent of ‘Ballerina’ of all things! I am well aware of the apomixis phenomenon, but have yet to encounter it personally. I made the hypothesis that it did not occur in this case because OP hips of Proud Land, while large, are never as large an 1inch. I could be entirely wrong though, only one way to see. The one seedling I have of this cross is one of my healthiest of this winter’s germinations and already has 3 true leaves. One of my favorite quotes of all time is the one I’m sure we all know from Ralph Moore, “Once you think you know the rules, the rose goes and changes them!”

You’re welcome, Andrew. “Wise”? Probably more like “agedly resigned”. Thanks!

Finding certain species can definitely be a pain Andrew. Certain species you can find every where but others it seems never make it out of Europe. I still have a list myself that I have yet to find myself but one of these days. Greenmantle from what little I have dealt with them have been good.

Adam what I did was when I was in Europe I found certain species types and mailed the seed back to myself in Oz.

Hi Andrew,

I can also highly recommend Greenmantle. Marissa is wonderful to deal with and she is very knowledgeable and willling to share information. I have quite a few roses from Greenmantle (and am on the waiting list for several others). I have R. sericea pteracantha (R. omeiensis) from Marissa. It bloomed heavily this year and produced plenty of hips but alas the squirrels and such thought they were delicious and ate every last one. Appears to be just starting to sucker, but I see others have already offered to provide this rose to you. I spoke to Marissa in early December about some of the roses I’m on the waiting list for, and one of them is R. stellata mirifica. She told me she’d just planted a nice crop of babies which should be ready in 2015, so I should get one, and if I knew of anyone else who wanted one, to get the word out so they’d get on the waiting list before all these roses were all spoken for.

Since you are interested in rare species, I can offer hips from a couple species that I got at Eurodesert that I don’t think have been used much if at all. I have a couple hips still remaining on R. glabrifolia. It has low arching growth, few thorns, and spotless foliage in Southern California (homebase for rust and mildew). Flowers are single, pink, and fairly big. The other rose has more hips available. It is R. arnoldiana ‘khirgisia’. I know very little about it, and even asked Cliff Orent, and he didn’t know much either. Flowers are single, large, and pure white. They produce a huge amount of pollen, so much so that all the surrounding leaves become dusted in it. Produces large hips that taste like cardboard and are loaded with big rock-hard seeds.:wink: It’s more of an upright grower, vase to fan shape. I’ll have to go look but I don’t recall that it is particularly thorny. Never seen a hint of rust or mildew on it. No blackspot either, but that malady is so unusual around here that I’ve only seen it on a few roses in the last several decades.

Adam, that is so true. I’m finding this out myself the hard way!

Melissa, I believe you are the answer to my prayers!! I’ll send you a PM.

Melissa Paul you sent me a PM but I was unable to find it so I sent you one just now.