After reading a few pages from a search on Yahoo! with the word “Rosa abyssinica”, I have learned that this rose is used as a food crop in Africa. Knowing that, most people here know that there is an amphidiploid of it with R. rugosa, another rose with edible hips, and thought it would be intresting to breed roses with large round hips for human consumption. Has anyone been successful at breeding for fruit size and taste? I remember there were many using the scotch roses, but I haven’t heard from them again. The next time I collect the hips of ‘Basye’s Amphidiploid’, I’m going to taste a few to see how edible they will be raw. And then I will use them in a recipe.
Enrique
How did the hips of ‘Basye’s Amphidiploid’ taste?
-Mark Lee, Seattle
Basye’s Amphidiploid’s hips are very sweet, although I do no eat rose hips. I often use my teeth to open a hip like that and done it enough to know that I much prefer this, the spinosissimas, and the rugosas over hybrid teas. I do have a great many seed of Basye’s Amphiploid that you can have for shipping. I’ve raised a few open pollinated seedlings from this, and I have new hybrids from the cross of its’ pollen on an English Rose (Prospero). Those seedlings seem to be disease prone, but the open pollinated seedlings seem to be disease free (one or two disease prone).
Enrique,
I would like to receive seed of Basye’s Amphidiploid from you. My address is markl@nytec.com. E-mail me so we can arrange for this offline.
-Mark