I have it on order but it will be two years or more before I can generate my own OP hips from it.
I think I have it out in the East garden somewhere, but Iām not sure. Iāll have a look.
Did you get the email I sent you late last week Don? I sent you an offer for plants that you might find useful.
Paul
I did get it and thought I had replied but discovered I had let it sit in my Drafts folder. You should have it now.
Yes, I did, thanks.
I have a 6 year old plant of Francois Juranville that is 70ā (stretches about 35 feet in either direction from the base along what was once a nice tidy picket fence. It must have had at least 4000 blooms or more last year. I donāt believe that I have ever seen a hip on it, but perhaps we donāt have the right kind of bee. I just braved the beginning of another Washington DC snow storm with a large light in the dark and confirmed that I see no hips, only some small shriveled dried bloom remenants that contained no seed. I donāt remember seeing any hips on Aviateur Bleriot or some other wichuriana ramblers eg - Alexander Girault, etc? Are these triploid? Best, Nick
Thanks for looking, Nick. That may help explain why there are no descendants listed for Francois Juranville on HMF. I have no idea about the ploidy but somethingās obviously going on.
From photos of Francois Juranville blossoms that I have found it appears that much of the problem with fertility has to do with the very heavy petal count. It likely makes few anthers and when it does they are buried among the petals so cannot release their pollen onto the stigmata.
Iām only guessing, but there is a likelihood that the Barbier Ramblers are mostly diploids. I say this because they almost certainly used a diploid R. wichurana to create them and most of the crosses were made with Teas, which, for the most part, are also diploids. I suspect some of these are pollen fertile, but rarely seed fertile. I have a massive plant of āAlberic Barbierā and have never noticed a hip form on it.
Paul
Years ago I collected every āBarbier typeā ramblers from different sources. Most are not very fertile but one I got as ā¦ āLeontine Gervaisā set rather big hips with every pollen applied. In 2002 I grew from it a lot of progenies that with other crosses I did this year and previous ones led me to think that, in my climate, fertility or scent being put aside, looking for the elusive dwarf-desease resistant-recurent-nice flowered recessive was not the easy wayā¦ even from diploid x diploid crosses.
Much too many were undistinguished ramblers and in these and others wichuraiana health was heavilly diluted just as was flower quality.
I am making this post to update progress with my Francois Juranville.
My plant of Francois came from Rogue Valley last springtime and bloomed that June despite its size. I recorded making four pollinations on it all with R. roxburghii normalis. Two of these stuck, giving 12 and 8 seeds respectively. I got eight embryos out of these, of which only one lived (my own fault) but it is doing well and is an obvious hybrid.
This season it had quite lot of blooms for its size and I managed 50 or so pollinations. There are several hips on it but Iām not counting chickens yet. The point is, though, that it is fertile as a mother and you can get a good number of seeds from a hip.
Despite the heavy petal count you can also get pollen from Francois with some patience. I managed enough pollen from the fifty blooms to do about 20 pollinations though I donāt know yet if any have set seed.