This is my first attempt at hybridisation and after all the fears of failure I have some lovely hips coming along.
I am very pleased at this stage but there are a number with seeds forming outside the hips,about 1/2 the hips on 1 bush which is easily my best producer.
The hips look very healthy with the seeds good size and quite green at this stage
Will they be fertile and should I try to protect them in any way?
They are about 8 weeks along with a month of hot weather still to come.
Hi Russell,
We have had several of our good seed parents exhibiting this characteristic. I have often mentioned, in a humorous jest, that it is like putting 10 lbs in a 5 lb bag. When we have these hips with exogenous seeds, we typically find that there are a lot of seeds compared to the size of the hip. We have always treated them all the same, i.e., we have never separated them out to see if they have a better germination rate than the others. I suppose that to make a good case; one should separate them, plant them separately and track the results. We have had good germination from those trays that have had seeds from those hips in question mingled in, but as to whether they germinated or not - no way of telling, although the batch did do well in the float test. Bottom line as to my view - treat them like any other seed. Hope they do well for you. Keep us posted if you keep track of them. Good luck with your seeds this year.
“Outies” are just as good as the “innies.”
Cologne doesn’t make hips frequently, and when it does-- nearly all the seeds are on the outside of the hip.
I’ve kept two fine roses that were from Cologne’s outter seeds, both of them have Constance Spry as the pollen parent.
One is a once bloomer and very healthy, the other is relatively healthy but repeat blooming. I have finally chucked out a few roses and made space for them. They maybe commerically viable because lavender colored English roses are few and far between. They’re two years old, almost… Two more years should let me know which of the two I feel most comfortable submitting to a nursery.
Funny Cologne does that because it’s parent, Lagerfeld, withh make exo’s as well as split from ripening inside, too.
One seedling of it with the pollen of Abe Darby X Basye’s Amphidiploid resulted from a hip that had several “stretch marks” all over it. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a rose hip have so many seeds that it splits.
It’s crowing between the other Cologne seedlings although it’s not healthy as the others. I’ve kept it because of the very interesting parentage and hopes that it can produce disease resistant offspring latter on (especially if I can cross them with the other Cologne seedlings.)
Cologne, in my experiance, is a lousy parent, but I’m believing I’ve gotten something good.
Carefree Beauty and Country Dancer have often had exogenous seeds for me. Along with exogenous seeds, the hips on both will sometimes get so large/full that they split. That doesn’t seem to effect hip ripening.