To be honest, I didn’t pay attention to whether or not the seedlings were thornless. It wasn’t my main objective at the time. All but one of the D.E. seedlings from 2008 were eaten by the voles, and the one remaining seedling definitely has thorns, but not the viscous “hooked” thorns like D.E. (VANAsong). I’ll keep you posted if any new seedlings are thornless from the ones I just germinated.
Kathy,
VANAsong has excellent scent, and is one of the reasons I like as much as I do. I had another seedling from D.E. from my 2008 batch that was pretty good health-wise, but had no scent at all. I didn’t have time to plant it in the ground, and was afraid I was going to lose it to the voles over the winter. So, gave it to a member of my local society. I didn’t care as much about this one because it didn’t have any scent. She promptly lost it to the voles in her yard. Oh well. I could use the rose now. I have a use for it. Live, and learn.
This is a picture of that rose. I call her the “show queen.” She got me up to the head table at a rose show a few years ago. I reference her as this in an article I wrote.
Many of the OP seedlings do have the nice curved thorns!
What I was happy to see was that a few, especially the ones that seemed that they would be blooming earlier, had very few thorns. I am not sure whether any of them are completely thornless, since thorns can show up later on seedlings. Also, I have correlated earlier blooming with fewer leaflets, with overall greater floriferousness. I am considering eliminating the more vigorous ones that are still not showing any flower buds so that the others have more room to grow, but probably won’t do that unless they don’t bloom at all.
I have grown many darlow seedlings and have had one of D.E. X Lynnie now for about 7 years and have been trying to incorporate in my program.It does set seed some but very poor germination. I am now using its pollen with some success. Darlow accepts pollen from Mini’s and shrubs better than anything else. I have tried to use its pollen on hybrid teas but not much luck. Jim the ones that you say are vigorous are probably once bloomers which Darlow has quite a few of, depends on the pollen parent. I had a lot of rebloomers from Lynnie. I tried baby love on it one year and did not have much luck, lots of once bloomers. I am assuming these are once bloomers as they did not bloom the first year and I did not keep them to find out. As you know some will not bloom right away and may become repeat bloomers as they mature. Some of Darlow’s seed will germinate within a few weeks of warm stratification, usually 4 to 6 weeks. So if you are in a hurry to see what you have you may want to do that before you cold startify them. I just put them in sandwich baggies with damp soil less media and kept around 70 degrees of lower. I don’t recall having any thornless ones except a few with Lynnie which is to be expected but they mildewed badly. In fact I threw out more because of mildew than blackspot. The one I kept which I call Ovey is actually more disiese resistant than Darlow. Darlow will have a few spots here in the Fall. Good luck with Darlow, fun to work with.
Thanks Andy, Jim, and Pat for your responses and information. I was hoping it would throw more thornless progeny but I guess it will take a bit of work. Kathy thanks for your input. It will remind me to pick a small bouquet for the house once it blooms.
Thank you Patrick for your insights using DE! I am looking forward to the first blooms and hoping for some fragrance.
Although I think that OP seedlings for the most part tend to be “self” seedlings, I am beginning to wonder whether some of these might be cross pollinated with other roses. It just so happens that DE is planted right next to ‘Gina’s Rose’, ‘My Stars’ and ‘Basye’s Thornless’. So, maybe that is why I am seeing a few thornless seedlings in this group???
It will be interesting to see the foliage and flowers of the DE’s that are thornless. If they were pollinated by GR,MS, and BS, it will be interesting to see if they lose any of the wafting fragrance.
Today I carefully looked at each of the DE seedlings to try to make sense of how the characteristics were sorting out. It is too much to put here, but can be seen on my blog.
Thanks for the update and the meticulously charted ressults of your germinated DE seedlings. It should be very helpful to all of us. Totally agree with you, the only negative of DE is its many sharp thorns. None the less,it is one of my favorites and would be excellent in park like settings where people could see it, smell it, and yet not get pricked except for people with evil intentions who might try to hide behind it.
In the mid sixties (last century) I worked AT the Library of Congress for the National Agricultural Library. I use to wonder as I entered and exited one of the side entrances why it was so heavily planted with Chinese Holly. I later realized the thorns served as a crime preventative since NO ONE was going to hide behind them to want to jump out and rob you.
I’ve probably shared this before, at a Huntington Old Rose Symposium in the nineties, a lady asked if I could bud her a Waldtraut Nielsen . I found it in the Study Plot and asked her how I’d offended her, it was SO terribly prickly! She laughed and said I hadn’t, but she and her husband had a beautiful, sixteen year old daughter and wanted to plant it as a “security rose” under her bedroom window. If the daughter resembled her mother, she was a beautiful young lady, indeed! The rose had layered itself and Clair Martin gave permission for me to pot the plant for her to buy at the sale. Prickles have often been used for security. An enormous Bougainvillea is used as a barbed wire fence here. NO ONE ventures on this hill from that direction! No, the “yard art” is not still here, thankfully. The remodel is long finished!
I had one of my Darlow’s Enigma seedlings bloom yesterday. This one was a little different than the others. (The others are all pure white with many petals). This one is bi-colored and has one set of petals that dominate the others - a kind of flower-within-a-flower pattern. Not sure if she will ever have five full petals? This bloom only has three. The bloom is rather small (1/2" across). Is this something that happens frequently? Will the inside flower become larger in time, and become one pattern? She’s still young, and hopefully, she won’t lose her bi-coloring.
In my blog I had posted that the “non-remontant” OP DE seedlings had all been culled except for the 2 that had different foliage (I assumed that they were clearly not self pollinations so I wanted to see how they behaved). Well, both of these finally did produce blooms as new seedlings so are NOT non-remontant. That makes me wonder about the others that were culled. It is likely that some of those were also remontant, just a lot bigger than the ones that bloomed early. I am still glad that I culled them since early blooming on shorter internodes on the ones that were saved would suggest to me greater floriferousness. The ones saved have been continuously blooming since they started 2 months ago.
Another observation is that a few of the OP seedlings appear quite pink and have many petals and are of the same form as ‘Blue Mist’. ‘Blue Mist’ is growing intertwined with DE so may very well be the pollen parent of some of these.
The more that I watch this rose, the more that I like it. I have made several crosses using it both as seed and pollen parent.
I don’t know why, but I’m excited about using Darlows Enigma up here in Zone 3. Some posted pics of them blooming well in Canada north of here. I will have to wait a year or two, because mine is just planted. I haven’t even smelled it yet, but it is fun looking at the pictures.
Attached are a couple of pictures of my first second generation seedling from Darlow’s Enigma. It’s parentage is (Darlow’s Enigma x unknown) x unknown. VANasong is the momma. She has already bloomed about six times since I planted her seed on February 6th. Blooms are larger than momma and grandmomma (3" across). Some scent, but not as strong as most of the other progeny from Darlow.
We all say to be patient, that seedlings often change as they age. Back on May 14th, my little seedling created something that looked like a flower within a flower. This trait I wanted to try to keep, but when she grew up a little (7 days) she gave me something a little different. This rose has that “neon” effect going on with her coloring that is hard to capture. She has a little scent, but not very overpowering.
It works really well! haha