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When Kim talked about his blue foliage on his CHERRY Parfait X DLFED last yr, I thought why not try some pollen from Basyes Legacy on Cherry Parfait–I had some to spare. And then I pretty much forgot about it. This week as I was organizing some more seedlings so as to better see what I was throwing out, I came across the sole survivor of the Cherry Parfait X Basyes Legacy, and it has blue foliage also. Then I checked another cross with CP done at the same time as CP X BL, and the 6 surviving seedlings are also blue, but not so much. The first photo is of a two yr old random seedling (taken as a seedling), and the lower photo is CP X BL alongside another Basyes Legacy seedling from another cross that is more typical of the coloring I have got from BL’s pollen. This might be common knowledge, but it kind of just dawned on me this week that CP might be the source of good blue foliage. This week I have applied pollen from a random blue foliaged seedling from two yrs ago, to CP and will do a couple reverse crosses to check that out. Will know about the blueness of CP seedlings then, perhaps.
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Congratulations, Jackie! Those are pretty!
Jackie, I was thinking the blue probably came from Fedtchenkoana and hybrids like ‘Cherry Parfait’ (aka ‘Fire n Ice’ here) contributed more red/purple to the mix. Here is a ‘blue baby’ that has popped up here recently from some seed Kim over. This one is from op DLFED2:
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Also up are ‘op DLFED5’, ‘op 1-72-1xDLFED’, ‘OP Indian Love Call’ and ‘OP Carlin’s Rhythm x CHD’ (CHD= CHina Doll… seed from Robert’s CARxCHD seedling) and they all show fairly blue foliage… probably from the Legacy blood too. Keep in mind, though, that we are in our 2nd day of winter and so the colours might be seasonally affected.
On a side note… ‘Cherry Parfait’ (Fire n Ice), has proven to be one of the better floribunda here and has accepted pollen this season from Rosa wichurana and ‘The Fairy’. A 100% better proposition than something like ‘Double Delight’ which is one of my Hall of Shame roses.
One has to wonder if there is any R. glauca in there somewhere. Although, come to think of it, I’ve seen a lot of very blue seedlings come out of R. arkansana crosses as well, although they didn’t keep their color after the first year.
Simon,
That may very well be, for sure the Cherry Parfait does intensify the blue. The other seedlings by Cherry Parfait (I think I made 2-3 crosses with it last year) are quite blue, but definitely on the purple side of blue-but it is a different cross totally. This AM I went out to check to see if everything is watered (we had a water main line break last night-so the water is off for 2-3 days) and I saw another seedling with this characteristic blue-purple hue, picked it up to see its’ label and it was another Cherry Parfait cross from last yr. So it is quite dominant. Cherry Parfait is a great bloomer/fast repeater here, and is one of the first roses I planted when I moved in, so it does not have gopher protective screen around its’ roots. I think that it would set seeds and perhaps germinate better if the plant was not under attack so often. I do have a couple of blu-ish foliage seedlings from Gemini, so that is one cross I made today. (Gemini seedling X Cherry Parfait)