Euphrates as a Pollinator

Last spring I used Euphrates on one of my own unamed seedlings, and got a hip to set , half way through the season a bird came and snipped it off. There were seeds forming inside as well. A few years back I pollinated Moulin Rouge with Euphrates which produced two badly PM seedlings, I could n’t stand looking at them after spraying time after time, so they were shovelled.

This year my Euphrates is covered in buds and it will be interesting to see if any variation has occurred on the half which growth buds were treated with Trifluralin last year.

I think that, this is one of those roses which is sterile a large proportion of the time , but now and then, pollen fertility occurrs. In the last couple of years Spring has come a little earlier and warmer and summers being a little milder, it may be the trigger

This is the worst offender of PM that I have ever grown in my climate. Mine died of PM, no joke. Not one to be using for any purpose in Sydney to be sure.

Good luck, you might get some better performance out of it in your location.

Warren this taken from ‘Eyes for you’ By Kim, how would that or changing some of the environs go,

I kept E4Y where it only received about five hours of direct sun daily, and watered it as if it was a bog plant. Seems to have worked as far as ripening hips with seed. Who knows if they’ll germinate?

Good luck, Warren. The struggling piece of Euphrates I still have is the final remnant of the plant I imported from Harkness about 1985. As long as it is high summer (HOTTER than a $2 pistol) it’s clean. Other times, it is like a powdered donut, including the flower petals. I’m seriously questioning why I continue providing it space and water because it doesn’t want to grow and it doesn’t provide much color. It just REFUSES to die!

Kim this is the answer as you say" It just REFUSES to die!'. Warren this could be your chance.

Not necessarily, David. Think of it this way, like a wart which just won’t go away. Nearly thirty years ago, it was about the only game in town. Now, it’s a museum piece, for “the collector”, as it is genuinely NOT a “first line garden subject”.

It’s ok Kim, Warren has not read any of this yet.

Even before Ralph’s “Persian” series, the Harkness Hulthemias were quite interesting because there was nothing like them. Putting up with their idiocyncracies wasn’t as difficult because there was more room and energy. If I wanted to see the “blotch” and imagine what might be possible from them one day, I endured their wimpy, prickly plants with too short flowering season. Nigel Hawthorne was a decent plant. It was healthy, fairly vigorous, rather attractive and flowered the finest of the three I grew. Tigris was the most like the very few photos of the species I could find and was pretty, when it would grow and not die back with a vengeance.

Euphrates had to be there to complete “the series”. It turned out to be the most enduring plant of the three. Ironic, because it also has the most disease issues.

I guess I’m getting too old, or my tastes have just “matured”. Even Ralph’s roses are leaving me colder these days. When you compare Eyeconic Lemonade and Eyes for You with any of the earlier ones, it really points out how far they’ve come, and how really un-garden worthy the earlier hybrids are. When there was almost unlimited room and energy, it was easy and fun to include them in the jungle. That isn’t the case anymore. Space, and energy, are limited. They just don’t provide enough bang for my buck to maintain them these days. I’d rather give their space to Caesalpinia which flower virtually year round; provide some shade, texture and much greater plant interest, on much less water AND, NOTHING eats them! They grow and flower whether I pay attention to them or not. They also provide screening from the ugly house down slope so I don’t have to look at his ugly roof as much.

It’s ok Kim, Warren has not read any of this yet.

Wanna make a bet lol.

Kim, Euphrates here in Deniliquin , from what I have seen, is clean of PM. What does happen , the canes die back now and then. The reason I am persuing this line is , even though I have EFY seedlings, I am worried about the blotch being diluted down to much by generations of crosses away from Hulthemia. Bringing in a 2nd generation Hulthemia cross may restrengthen the blotch considerably. Will also be working with Pure Chinese Hulthemia in the near future.

I must agree what they started with and what is around now , the quality has change quite a lot. But backcrossing with F1 or F2 will also help enrich the blotch.

Also , the work with the Chinese Hulthemia, maybe another source of of pure bright yellow (maybe).

Good luck with that, Warren. I’d imagine back crossing could also be a very fast, efficient way to lose the plant quality, too.

I’d imagine back crossing could also be a very fast, efficient way to lose the plant quality, too

I would agree with that. Another potential con is that there is a risk it might breed near-sterile offspring like itself.

Its also called thinking outside the box, with out, it a lot of things would not have come into existence. True, the possibility of creating sterile offspring may be certain, but that occurrs when crossing alot of diploid roses (Teas, China and some diploid species ) with moderns, in the hope of obtaining something better. When you get into this game, you must approach it with a very open mind, otherwise , before you know it, your strolling down the same highway as everyone else with no creativity. This does not only apply to breeding roses but everything, be it plant or animals.

Its also called thinking outside the box, with out, it a lot of things would not have come into existence. True, the possibility of creating sterile offspring may be certain, but that occurrs when crossing alot of diploid roses (Teas, China and some diploid species ) with moderns, in the hope of obtaining something better. When you get into this game, you must approach it with a very open mind, otherwise , before you know it, your strolling down the same highway as everyone else with no creativity. This does not only apply to breeding roses but everything, be it plant or animals.

Warren, by all means if it works for you in your climate, why… go ahead and yes…DO IT!

Let us know the results.

These hulthemia prototypes (Euphrates, Nigel Hawthorne, Tigris) share the same single hulthemia parent, no?

What would increase the genetic diversity greatly for hulthemia breeding might be, to get away from these altogether, and attempt to infuse different versions of the wild hulthemia species into the latest modern hulthemia hybrids.

Jim S and others here have talked about this sort of idea, several times on this site over the years.

It is too bad 99.999% of us cannot access such.

Maybe you can access such, Warren.

I will have access to Chinese Hulthemia from the borders of Xinjiang and Kazakhstan, which the Chinese say differ from those used from Iran.

Now that IS interesting !

Try and get the one from the “middle east” as well.

“These hulthemia prototypes (Euphrates, Nigel Hawthorne, Tigris) share the same single hulthemia parent, no?”

If I remember well Cocker and Harkness Hulthemias were from a sowing. Probably more than one plant.

Even if sharing the same parent they surely did not get the very same species chromosome.

That using a new Hulthemia accession is interesting is obvious

Trying different combinations, including backcrosses may surface something lost or never integrated in latest hybrids.

Waren you are quite right about out of the box breeding and not repeating the same crosses the big houses were doing ten years ago.

Merci Pierre. What people do not realise is the Chinese have been Hybridizing Hulthemias , using those found in Xinjiang for years. Will be looking those up when in China attending a symposium this year.

With back crossing; I am doing that with very old HT’s at the moment, sourcing out those with good health and using them. A lot of them are one or two generations away from Teas, and when crossed with todays moderns you sort of get a hybrid vigour.