Bantry Bay

Has anyone used Bantry Bay (New Dawn x Korona) as a seed parent? I collected only one op hip last year from a 1 year old plant containing only a few seeds but 2 germinated in June and have produced large fragrant flowers within 2 months, a nice tan 10 petal and an orange pink 10 petal. It seems too good to be true!

Looks like some good potential there. With any luck your seedlings will be fertile? I wonder what the pollen parent might have been?

Thanks Lori.

This is one I have often coveted. I have heard wonderful things about it as well as its offspring Dublin Bay. (I don’t know about breeding with DB though.)

Apparently BB has the potential for rather resistant and fragrant red offspring as well.

This Bantry Bay is adjacent to a 1/2 acre of wild roses including Rosa Multiflora, Rosa Rugosa and Rose Cinnamomea Plena and a host of hybrids of these wild roses so the pollen parent is a mystery. One of these days I’ll have enough time and good weather to do some select breeding of this rose. This year the plant had just a handful of blooms but has produced to huge hips that I’m looking forward to harvesting if the deer don’t get them first.

I also have Dublin Bay which blooms very late in this cold climate and has never produced any viable seed. Last week a porcupine destroyed this plant as well as 8 others so there will be no seed this year.

Unfortunately both plants die back to the ground in winter so their climbing features are never fully realized, something I am working on with my hybridizing program.

Yikes. Zone 4?

Thanks for the info on Dublin Bay. I may refrain from acquiring it as my space is limited.

Dumb question I suppose, but BB is tetraploid, no?

Yes, Zone 4 is a challenge and very limiting.

My best guess is that Bantry Bay is tetraploid. One of the hips had bent and turned brown so I picked it the other day and opened it up and the seeds look fantastic. I was wondering what would happen if I planted then now, right out of the hip.

Hi Lori, I have tried to make heads or tails out of this subject for several years. I can tell you that some years the seed I sow fresh germinates like crazy and other years it doesn’t.

I have about half my seed sown fresh this year. These are from from seed parents I’ve had success with in the past sowing fresh.

I’m doing several crosses that involve Basye’s Legacy and these I have decided to chill.

The hardier the roses in the parentage the more I tend to chill. This may be flawed logic but it’s what I am doing for now.

The Viraraghavans shared with me recently that they have noted a tendency for crosses involving yellows to require seed chill more than other cultivars.

Hi Robert - Thanks for the response. Do you live in an area where you can grow year round or do you care for the seedlings indoors under lights or greenhoused? I would like to try but having to keep them inside from now til April is discouraging.

I’ve been a seed saver of vegetables, wildflowers and annuals for many years and never chilled any seeds and never had any germination problem. So why are roses different? Also in northern climates “wild” rose seeds are exposed to months of freezing and yet they keep germinating, so it would make sense that hybrid seeds from these “wild” roses could possibly survive freezing.

On professional rose hybridizing “farms” how are the hips and seeds handled? Because of the large volume of crosses I would imagine they have one system of seed sowing.

It’s very interesting that yellows and hardy varieties may require chilling over other varieties. I am not familiar with Basye’s Legacy but will look it up.

Lori, folks in climates such as yours often sow their seed in cold frames from what I understand and let nature take it’s course. This is what one of my friends in NY does.

We have very few chill hours in this climate. I sow my seed out of doors without a greenhouse.

Most professional hybridizers artificially chill their seed and sow them under controlled conditions to get the most bang for their buck and to protect their investment.

“The Viraraghavans shared with me recently that they have noted a tendency for crosses involving yellows to require seed chill more than other cultivars.”

That seems true (for me) of Selfridges but not the newer yellows. For example, Freedom, as a pollen parent, was highly potent in seed set and germination. Likewise, Princess Alice is fierce seed parent and germinator.

Thanks Jadae. Mmm. I like ‘Freedom’ a lot. I wish it were more readily available. Interesting that Dickson only used it for pollen?

‘Princess Alice’ does look good.

As have I only used it for pollen. It is pretty much sterile as a female parent. Tequila Sunrise is the same way. It seems as if there is a mechanical (biological) malfunction where the seeds should be but it is just pithy fuzz instead and does not connect properly. There is one cultivar with Tequila Sunrise as the female parent. The order was either switched or they were severely lucky.

Princess Alice is nice. It’s only defect here is that the growth is too tall and linear.

I have 3 seedlings of Princess Alice x Freedom. I am monitoring them.

I will be ordering the Princess Alice seedling, Moondance, next year. I have seen this at Washington Park. The linear growth has been fixed. However, it is pure white.

I had noted ‘Moondance’ earlier. It’s interesting to see a rose introduced in 2007 derived from ‘Iceberg’. I guess you really can’t beat the classics?

Link: www.helpmefind.com/rose/pl.php?n=49227

Yeah, isnt it great? It loooked good at Washinton Park so Im gonna get it despite it being plain jane white. I think a good, true white is useful in breeding tho. It’s also good because it adds a way for future floribundas to retain their clustered nature since Iceberg is a close link to the poly-multifloras (the false hybrid musks, imo).