Hmmmm… Having grown Ebb Tide for a full season now, I kinda like and dislike it…I hate its poor rebloom especially. Hot Cocoa really peeved me off with all those nasty dense carpet of prickles +++++ and the proliferation/vegetation potential it transferred to the Ebb Tide seedlings…I mean some of the colors of these seedlings were ok (eg. black/chocolate-red), but who cares when there are green whips sticking up through the unopened flower buds, like lizard tongues! LOL.
George, you aren’t making lemonade! black/chocolate-red with green tongues? How about “Green Fire”? It actually sounds rather pretty…
The “black bud” one was very unusual Kim. The flower form also had a rosette-DA type look about it. Its small flower fried badly in the rain and hot sun combo that it got. Yeah the green tongue phenomenon was gross (it was not evident in the black seedling, but it was in so many of it siblings).
I know 10 seedlings in no way expresses the potential of the cross, but I have moved on from HC, period.
I am starting to have ambivalent feelings for poor old ‘Ebb Tide’. If I had Midnight Blue available to me, I think I would use it in preference to ET, from what I have read about it on this forum.
Also, I get the feeling that ET is tending to breed smallish sized flowers, which in itself is not a bad thing, but not so good if the progeny have one or only very few flowers to a stem and repeat poorly.
Daybreaker tended to give the proliferation on seedlings with low petal count (below 20). Hot Cocoa gave me all proliferated seedlings but I only used it on Orange Velvet, which is highly double.
Ebb Tide is only slightly larger than Midnight Blue in all aspects. It is not giant by any means. One thing which you must do in order to appreciate Ebb Tide is to let it grow out more than one season and be sure to only tip prune it. It isnt like Purple Heart where you can just chomp down at it where ever one thinks is best. Once Ebb Tide builds up both a crown and root foundation, then it takes off and tends to become larger in proportions. Remember that this whole line is bred from miniatures, dwarves and synstylae types. I honestly think you need to give patience towards these roses. I mean no offense by that. Its a huge part of rose culture and horticulture as a whole. I tend to think of horticulture in terms of cycles, pathways and time as a whole. It is definitely a practice that is against the grain of general western thought. It has a massive learning curve because it is largely an internal process.
Midnight Blue and Ebb Tide, which very similar sisters, will give off different traits. Paul can tell you more about Midnight Blue than most, but what I have seen is that Ebb Tide tends to breed better form and Midnight Blue tends to breed plants with more branching points. They both breed “ugly pink” or purple. The thing is though, when I see full stands of either, it is Ebb Tide that I am drawn to. A display of Midnight Blue is hard to find in the background but Ebb Tide stands out. Midnight Blue has a more lace-like appearance despite its dramatic color. They are entirely different when it comes to usage, and it should be noted when selecting for hybridizing.
BTW, if you want an alternative to Hot Cocoa, I think Coffee Bean is one of the best miniatures I have ever grown. Its a really good miniature. Its major fault is its strongest attribute as well. It can look so shiny, so polished and so commercial that it can come off as overwhelming, much in the way a bed full of vivid yellow french marigolds or a table full of polished silver can be. I once saw a mutation at store here called Fred Meyers where the miniature expression was not being shown. The 1G container definitely Coffee Bean in it but the plant had full sized stems, petals and leaves. I was tempted to buy it but it was the end of the month and the last thing I needed was an impulse buy based on curiousity. I have no doubt Coffee Bean can bred full-sized roses. It offers better branching and thw width that Hot Cocoa lacks, which is evident by offspring like About Face (it has a swimmers build like me, lol).
A complex answer!
We’re both extroverts. What do you expect? 
Btw, if youre still into purple then you may want to ask Simon and the California folks (it wasnt marketed far in the US) how it did for them re: breeding. At minimum, the near-single nature would make it easier to work with. The thing I hate about working with all purples (except Purple Heart, which didnt do the following) is that they often crisp in the sun right on the day you want to use them here!!! They do not do well going from rainy weather to hot within one week, lol. It drove me nuts.
I was hoping to eliminate Coffee Bean from my list. Now I can’t.
Mike - how do you feel about Playgold? Is that one I can eliminate?
They do not do well going from rainy weather to hot within one week<<<<
Tell me, even worse in rainy weather followed by scorching direct sun in the same part of one day!
I loved Playgold in my climate. It might be different down south.
Gah, Im brain dead. I should have tried Coffee Bean x Rosa virginiana. Duh. I think that light bulb hit me 3 years too late 
George, all the dark purples do it. Its unavoidable, especially the fragrant ones carrying more oils. Purple Heart has more substance but the trade off seems to be highly variable fragrance. I am unsure if its highly chance of turning neon violet in the heat is related. So far, it is the price the snifferific dark purples pay. Paul might be able to tell you how well they meld with his ideas.
‘Ebb Tide’ has been a good reliable plant so far. I’ve not don’e much in the way of deliberate pollinations as I tried a few and they failed and then people on here mentioned it does better as a seed parent when more establshed. It set a lot of OP hips and I test germinated them all and have some great strong seedlings about to flower. The colour seems pretty stable here in most weather. It’s seedlings are, so far, tall strong and are growing vigorous on their own roots. I’m hoping this trend will continue. I have other plans for it now, however, that will hopefully result in nice purple.
Michael…you know, some of my ET buds actually start out as a bleached sort of a pink color with darker smudges… I dunno if this has something to do with the warm weather or if there is something wrong with the soil (or maybe it just happens from time to time as a normal thing for ET??)… just from this observation, I can definitely see how ET has the potential to breed pinks, as you suggest (even though in the ET X HC cross there was only one pink, and most others were red-very dark red).
They all do it, especially when formed in heat.
I finally got to see Ebb Tide in person yesterday. Our school colors are purple and something, maybe white (not black and blue except for the footballers). Anyway, this is Nov 19 and the plant is still blooming fool throttle. We’ve only had one night down to 25 F (-4 c). There is someone in the housing dept with some taste who put ET and White Meidi in a biggish garden in front of a 1930s dorm. No fungicides used, not a lot of BS on ET for this late in the year. Some hips from which I got 50 seeds, half exogenous.
But the point here is what may be going on with color and breeding. Crimson Glory has the same problem in its offspring. Scarcely ever will you get anywhere near as dark as CG. I’ve grown a lot and kept none more than a year, except one climbing CG self that looks just like it in the one week per decade that it blooms.
I believes this color change is related to RNAi suppression. CG and ET have had their RNAi pathway suppressed, but when crossed to something, it comes back. In turn that suppresses the production of pigment. This effect, which got a Nobel prize for its discovery in animals, was first documented in petunia plants. In that case, adding more copies of a gene didn’t make them a darker purple, they ended up with white stripes and patterns.
So I’m guessing you will have to collect the healthy seedlings of ET x ?? and then cross them together, hoping to find the segregating population that has reinstated the overexpression of pigment genes, by suppressing the RNAi suppression system. Confuses me too.
I’ve been thinking about this Larry, and was going to try something else… I’ve noticed with some lines of dark purples they tend to breed dark purples and others tend to breed pinks with, as Jim described it, an underlying purple. All of my OP ‘Wild Rover, seedlings turned out very dark purple. I’m assuming they are all selfs as the apple doesn’t seem to have fallen far from the tree. This is from a ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ line of purples which comes down from ‘International Herald Tribune’, ‘Blue Moon’, and ‘Violacea’, and ‘Morning Mist’. The ET line involves lots of purples like ‘Sweet Chariot’, ‘Violet’, ‘Veilchenblau’ and ‘Stephen’s Big Purple’ (and International Herald Tribune’ again). Only one of these I’ve used before is ‘Sweet Chariot’ but it too threw lots of pinks. So I was thinking maybe if I brought these two lines together I might improve my odds of getting good dark healthy purples. So I put ET onto ‘Wild Rover’ and have seedlings about to flower for the first tme. I’m hoping these will be nice and dark. ‘Wild Rover’ is a very nice rose here that also grows in a spray free garden. It doesn’t mond the heat like ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ does. I also grow ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and can only use it in the cooler spring months because in summer it hibernates. It’s pretty healthy here despite this. So anyway… it will be interesting to see what happens. I’ll be able to post some photos in the coming weeks as the buds develop and open. I alos put ‘Route 66’, which is of similar breeding to ET, with ‘Tuscnay’ to try and get some good purples too… these started germinating in the fridge but have not stuck their heads up in the pot yet.
If it helps to solidify any thoughts, Ralph used Veilchenblau and complained it threw pinks. He preferred Violette as he could get violet from it.
Still on purple… not sure where roses like ‘Ann Endt’ fit into this… but ‘Ann Endt’ went onto ‘Wild Rover’ today as well…
Does anyone have a guess-timate of the ploidy of Orange Frenzy? It’d be interesting to cross with something like Violet Hood to see if more interesting mauve and purple diploids are possible. The lineage looks like mildew galore but who knows.
As a side note to Kim’s thoughts, if one looks at Lens’ work, one would notice that pink was troublesome with the purples he created, too.