I pollinated my Jacqueline du Pre rose with a mixture of pollen from other roses on 2nd July 2024 and cut the hip open today, 4th November 2024. So the hips have had 4 months to ripen. They have turned red. Do these seeds look ripe?
The pollen was a mixture from Peter Pan (a deep red miniature), Rosa chinensis Angel Wings, Nice Day (a miniature climber) and a single purple Rosa rugosa, and a single yellow rose. The remaining petals’ potpourri smelt amazing and were very pretty colours. I thought I could feel the pollen taking, and both of the 2 hips that I pollinated have ripened and each produced 6 seeds.
There are things that I love about Jacqueline du Pre, scent, early flowering and floriferous from May and still flowering in November, absolutely beautiful flowers. What I don’t like is that she gets blackspot, and I am not totally happy with her growth habit though I have got used to it. If it is the Rugosa pollen that has taken, then the disease resistance could be better and what I love about Rugosa apart from its disease resistance and toughness is its beautiful flowers, colour and scent. What I don’t like about Rugosa is its invasiveness and suckering, and low flower to bulk ratio, and that the flowers are short lived so what you end up with is a shrub with not many flowers that is trying to take over your garden.
If it is the Rugosa that has fertilised the Jacqueline du Pre, I would probably use the plant mainly for further hybridising to lessen the Rugosa invasive suckering, and increase the number of flowers, whilst keeping the disease resistance and wonderful colour, scent and beauty of the Rugosa flowers.
1 Like
“Seeds” and “hips” will vary in appearance from location to location and sometimes, season to season, however, what you picture LOOKS ripe from the flesh color and the seed appearances and, you’ve provided that hip well over the threshold of time it requires to mature so I vote “ya done good”! Fingers crossed for your success with them!
3 Likes
Kim, have you also ever noticed differences in ripening time based on the mother cultivar? Anectdotally, for some time I have used ‘Sunsprite’ rather frequently, and she is always the last to show any signs of color to the hips. This year’s harvest, I had many hips over 150 days that were still green as grass.
1 Like
Another hip that I used the same pollen mixture on, except not its own pollen and I added pollen from Jacqueline du Pre. The mother is a rose with big yellow highly scented single flowers. The hip was smaller than those on Jacqueline du Pre as a mother, but had 13 seeds inside whereas Jacqueline du Pre’s 2 hips only had 6 seeds each.
5 Likes
Hi Lee, I’ve not consciously paid attention to it but why not? I know I have to watch Minutifolia like a hawk as its hips ripen quite quickly to ready themselves to stick to some unsuspecting critter ambling by for distribution. For moderns, I either just notice the date pollinated or their coloring and harvest based upon what feels appropriate.
4 Likes
I just found a seedling from the mother rose with big yellow highly scented single flowers. It was the hip that produced far more seeds than Jacqueline du Pre as a mother.
None of the Jacqueline du Pre as mother seeds have yet germinated, but today I found that this one seedling from the big yellow highly scented single flowered mother has germinated, it is probably a bit over stretched as it was in a small pot between big pots outside, and I hadn’t noticed it before.
I have brought it out to get more light. Hopefully it won’t look so stretched soon and will survive?
Very excited, my first hybridised seedling.
I have brought the two pots with Jacqueline du Pre’s seeds into the light, so I can watch for them germinating.
4 Likes
Congratulations, Julie! Your seedling should be fine after a week or two of better light. Beware, it’s addictive…
1 Like
Of those seeds so far, none of the Jacqueline du Pre mother germinated, but 2 of the Big flowered, scented, Yellow Rose mother germinated. Its name is just Simple Yellow, I don’t know if that is its patented name and there is no information on HelpMeFind website about it and the only information seems to be on Harkness’s own seller website.
Here is a photograph of Simple Yellow, which has just started to flower in my garden. Also photographs of the 2 seedlings she gave. I have struggled with those seedlings, and their new leaves started to look yellow and chlorotic so a few weeks ago I gave them some sequestered iron, which has greened their leaves, and following Roseseek’s advice in another thread I give them weak, well-diluted fertiliser occasionally though less than once a week, and I started giving them rainwater not my tapwater that is highly alkaline from calcium and magnesium. Some of my roses randomly react with chlorosis to my tapwater, though most of my roses don’t seem to mind it. The mother plant Simple Yellow doesn’t have any chlorosis, its leaves are glossy deep green.
I suspect the father is the Rosa rugosa, with big, single, deep magenta flowers, that I grew from seed. The 2 seedlings have tiny hairlike spikes, a bit reminiscent of the spikes on Rosa rugosa. I am only guessing, as I used the pollen mixture described above, which included my Rosa rugosa.
