When I moved to my present home some 30 years ago I found the rose below growing in the garden.
It was surviving without any special attention.
When I started hybridizing roses in the early Ninties I made a few attempts to hybridize with it without success.
In 2006 I was able to get some results putting its pollen on Armada.
This year I was emboldened to give it another try using the Canadian artist series rose “Campfire”
I was rewarded with three hips that yielded some beautiful seeds- can’t wait to see the seedlings.
How serendipitous, I was hoping to" Wasagaming ’ to my collection of early Canadian roses. Little did know I had it for 30 years.
This is also the rugosa I hybridize with “Armada” in “New Dawn hybrids”
Over the years I notice that “Wasagaming” is prone to stem galls. How common is this in other areas where " Wasagaming" is grown,
and are rugosas more prone than other kinds of roses?
Chuck,
How has the fertility been of this rose? Does it set many hips? All three of the offspring of Wasagaming listed on HMF were with it as the seed parent. I noticed that Wasagaming is listed as a diploid though its parentage would suggest a triploid. But it’s not unheard of for a tetraploid to produce 1n pollen and thus Wasagaming to be a diploid.
I don’t have Wasagaming but my (Showy Pavement x R.blanda) had several galls on it this year. I didn’t notice them on any of my other Rugosas but I wasn’t looking for them either. What I did notice was that stem borer was bad this year. I lost canes from a number of roses this year. All were either native species (R.blanda) or were hybrids with a native species, including Metis, the rose above and a number of other seedlings of my own.
I never associate this Rugosa cultivar as having great pistillate fertility, although I haven’t paid close attention to it. But obviously, since it has had progeny as a pistillate parent, it does have some. Furthermore, Charles, you have further successfully demonstrated this by obtaining hips using ‘Campfire’ as a staminate parent. A wonderful cross to make!
Many years ago, when I was travelling on a secondary highway in central Alberta, I checked out a rose growing in front of an old store/gas station that hadn’t been operated for many years. It was ‘Wasagaming’ and it likely had been there for several decades. And once I discovered an old shrub of it in a small village (Lampman) located in southern Saskatchewan. So at one time this Rugosa was likely well distributed on the Canadian Prairies. And why wouldn’t it be, since Skinner’s Nursery sold it for many years.
Rugosas can be prone to stem/root galls, especially older shrubs. I’ve never seen it on Spinosissimas. I wonder what the difference is. Tougher plant tissue perhaps.
Thanks guys,
This is the window I was searching for. if I can remember the circumstance under which I made these crosses.
The buds of “wasagaming” are very tight; to wait too long will result in the flowers shedding their pollen
when the flower is still unopened. I pollinated every at least twice.
In all the years of having this rose I’ve never seen open pollinated hips on it.
Is “Wasagaming” self sterile?
I’ve also put PH’s R-15 on it and had seeds developed, but they were infected with the galls too.
I don’t recall ever seeing hips on ‘Wasagaming’ shrubs. If I had, I likely would have considered using it in a breeding program.
One thing to keep in mind is that the parentage given by Frank Skinner, the breeder, is likely incorrect. This is a cultivar cold hardy to Zone 2 and no rose having one half HT (‘Gruss an Teplitz’) in its parentage would be this hardy. Same goes for Dr. N.E. Hansen’s Rugosa ‘Yatkan’, which also supposedly is one half ‘Gruss an Teplitz’. But ‘Wasagaming’ does have something “extra” in it, which accounts for its very large flowers and possibily its self-sterility.
You’ve given me the idea of attempting to cross ‘Wasagaming’ with Damasks to obtain cold hardy (Zone 3) shrubs with OGR type of flowers. Thanks so much!
If Wasagaming is not suppose to have hips, then I have found I have another mislabeled long caned rugosa rose that taking over a large piece of the garden. Mine is always once blooming and smothered in large hips and absolutely cane hardy … this rugosa would be a Clydesdale in anybody program.
Great post for me chuckp…I had found the same unknown rugosa last year in an abandoned city house and lot in Grande Prairie, Alberta.
When I saw this rose, I knew it was something special…by the old house architecture the rose could have been 60 yrs old…Zone 2 (USA)…located 4 hours north of Edmonton, Alberta. Not only had it competed with grasses in it’s wild state, it had spread to outside of the fenced area…not that common for this area and in comparison to the old rugosas planted in the 50’s at Beaverlodge Experimental Agriculture Station…it seemed to be doing very well indeed.
In the fall I returned to the mystery rugosa to find only one hip in the whole 20’ X 60’ patch…what a disappointment but I was able to get several seedlings from it so I’m happy. I even dug out some suckers and planted them in my yard…they took this summer…and now I know what rugosa it is…thanks Paul for that. It’s hip and flower form are quite distinctive.
Very heavy fragrance to my nose.
The only other roses in my area that I am familiar with that have the ability to withstand the climate and the challenges of “going wild” without losing significant vigor are the spinosissimas. Wasagaming could be a significant breeder…it sure has passed the test of time.
Will try to post some photos when I figure out how to.
Doug, posting photos is easy. First, make sure they aren’t larger than about 300 dpi file size. That size posts quickly, easily and opens fine for pretty much all ISP speeds. Larger files may not go through and may take forever.
Second. Don’t use “Quick Reply”, but the orange “Post Reply”. If you use “Quick Reply”, you want to then use the “Full Editor” tab you should see to the right of the “submit” tab below where you type your reply. Full Editor and Post Reply both bring up the tabs for adding photos.
Third, once either of the two tabs above are activated, you will see “Upload Attachment” below your typed response. Click on Upload Attachment. It opens the window where you “Choose File”, which you then click on. That will allow you to direct it to where the image you wish to post is. Once you have selected the file you wish to add, click “Add the file” tab to the right of the “Choose File” tab. The “File comment” window beneath the “Choose File” window permits you to label the photo.
After adding the file, place the cursor in your typed response where you wish to add the photo and click on “Place in line” tab. You will then see the information about the attachment, hopefully where you want it. If you wish to move it, click on the “Delete file” tab, reposition your cursor to tell the system where to put the file and then “Place inline” again.
You may add up to three images per post. Each one is accomplished the same way. The most frustrating part of this form vs. the earlier one to me is you have to place your cursor where you wish the image to be inserted. If you don’t, it may be placed in the middle of a line if you’ve touched the mouse and moved the cursor.
Once the images you wish to add are placed, you may then use “Preview” to see if it is the way you wish, or simply “Submit” to post it. Seems involved, but once you’ve done it, it’s nothing. Have fun!
I work with ‘Will Alderman’ but essentially just to produce conventional Rugosas. However, in the future I also want to inject some cold hardy (Zone 3) species like Rosa nitida, for example, into this cultivar to obtain new types of Rugosas.
Hi,
Thanks Doug, I forgot to mention that this rose is very scented. It has a spicy cinnamon fragrance.
When I moved to my present location, the previous owners had this rose planted in a garden that was over shadowed
by huge trees and it was still taking over. One of the things I did was to move it on to the the lawn where I could
run over those aggressive suckers and keep the spread in check. It has survive there with neglect.
Here are some other pics to help.
Paul … got a question for you on rugosa/spinosissima phenotype versus genotype.
A few blocks away from me are two rose bushes…one rugosa…one spinosissima…side by side…no other roses around. Out of curiosity I harvested the rugosa hips and germinated the seeds…I wanted to know if the spin phenotype would show through on the rugosa seedlings as there were always bees in those shrubs and cross pollination potential…of course I expected sterility if that was to be the case. What I found was that one in forty rugosa seedlings was phenotypically spinosissima…strongly spinosissima…no questions what the pollen parent was. Here’s the photo of the seedling…exquisitely healthy…and prolific once bloomer…pistillate sterile…fragrant…you would never guess this came out of a rugosa.
[attachment=0]IMG_1937.JPG[/attachment]
So the next year I repeated the same process…in case I had miss labelled a seedling…and got exactly the same results…the one seedling out of approx. forty was phenotypically spinosissima again. It will be two more years before this one will bloom…but I have convinced myself that what appears to be a “pure” spinosissima can actually be derived from a phenotypical rugosa rose. I don’t know the identity of the rugosa but it will be fun next year investing a bit of effort in identifying it.
The question I have: Is it possible for Wasagaming to have been derived from spinosissima parentage? I’m just wondering what Skinner had at his disposal back in 1939…plus the suckering habit and sterility of Wasagaming makes me suspicious.
One thing to keep in mind, as I’ve previously stated, is that the pistillate parent of ‘Wasagaming’ was likely Rosa rugosa x Rosa woodsii (not R. acicularis). And ‘Gruss an Teplitz’ was unlikely the staminate parent. Instead, I suspect the staminate parent was likely an Old Garden Rose, perhaps a Damask. This perhaps accounts for the extra large and “cabbage” type of flowers of this cultivar. Rosa woodsii maybe contributes to the suckering habit of this rose.
Frank Skinner had a wide variety of rose cultivars, including OGR ones, that he made use of in his breeding programs. He seemed to bascially stick to using Rosa spinosissima in breeding programs with mostly cold hardy species or near species, and not Rosa rugosa.
Do you have suckers available of this Spinosissima seedling? If so, I would like one to trial it.
By the way, Dr. N.E. Hansen’s Rugosa ‘Yatkan’ was grown at the Beaverldoge Agriculture Canada Research Station for many years, and it may have been spread around somewhat in the Grande Prairie area. Again, it’s parentage that Dr. Hansen listed (although he wasn’t absolutely sure about it) is likely incorrect. It’s likely Percy Wright was more accurate, when he stated it was likely a sister seedling to ‘Tetonkaha’ (Rosa rugosa x R. blanda).
Paul
Good point about rosa woodsii contributing to the suckering habit of Wasagaming.
Oddly the rugosa/spin seedling described hasn’t started to sucker yet…but I will check again in the spring. But the sister seedling (just planted) that was my re-test specimen is suckering already…so I will be able to get a sucker to you one way or another. Perhaps I should just keep repeating the whole process each year to give me a true idea of the variation possible…it sure is fun…and so obvious when it happens.
This next summer I’ll get a pollen sample off to Margit Schowalter for a ploidy test.
