Experience with mini's?: Lavender Delight

I just came across info on Moore’s Lavender Delight: Thornless, fragrant, high-centered mauve with an interesting pedigree. I can find no information on anyone using it, and HMF has zero member ratings: 'Lavender Delight ™' Rose

I was wondering if anybody has any familiarity/experience with this one?

Also, it would seem that the darling mini breeder of yesteryear, Baby Love, is not much in use anymore. I know that a strain of BS has been found to which it is susceptible, but wondered if this is still considered a rose to acquire, or if other healthy yellows have bumped it. (Lemon Fizz does admirably here where Sunsprite succumbs, and I suspect Sunsprite’s susceptibility is similar to BL. Would LF be the preferred “healthy yellow” these days?)

Thanks.

I have no experience with Lavender Delight, but are you sure it’s worthy of being called “fragrant”? HMF calls it “slightly fragrant”, which usually means “detectable” and little more. The parentage doesn’t really suggest to me that it should be better than that, either.

As for your second and probably more interesting question (you sort of buried the lead, there!), I can only say that after trying both here, at least Lemon Fizz Kolorscape holds onto some foliage through the season, making it easier to keep alive so far, which also makes it easier for me to use in breeding. It isn’t completely healthy here and does seem to lose all but its uppermost leaves under my ruthless no-spray regimen, and seems to have a near-total shutdown of flower production in summer, at least when used as a seed parent and not kept diligently dead-headed. The flowers are significantly larger than those of Baby Love, but I wouldn’t say that the latter is useless in breeding. BL certainly needs to be crossed with roses that have complementary resistance to the primary black spot strain that takes it down (Sunsprite might actually be a particularly good choice for that).

Stefan

Lemon Fizz has been a very good seed setter with healthy offspring, but yeah, her rebloom leaves a bit to be desired, honestly. I’ve never had anything off of my Carefree Sunshine, but if the pollen proves fertile, that is an intermediate cross I fully intend to make. CS blooms fairly consistently for me.

I am looking at a couple other roses to fill out a purchase from Burling, but I suppose, in the interest of not burying a lead, I suppose I should ask on another thread. :wink:

Not necessarily, it is, after all, YOUR thread and YOUR choice how to handle it. If you’d like to ask other questions, ask. Or not. Your choice. But, there shouldn’t be any worry about hijacking the thread because it’s YOURS.

Not so much concerned about hijacking my own thread as I am failing to catch the attention of those who might have knowledge of the topic not in the lead. On the flip side, I do hate clogging the forum with a lot of fresh posts, thereby burying other folks’ queries and discussions.

And now for the REAL derailment… :wink:
Stefan, I am completely no-spray, and my garden does a good job of breaking down the many levels of what others consider “excellent” disease-resistance. I don’t know if you have access to the same Kordes cultivars introduced stateside by Newflora, but wonder if or others you have experience with:

  • Earth Angel (Herzogin Christiana) – completely clean for me, but have yet to have successful hip set all the way to seed maturity
  • Plum Perfect – also very healthy, relatively new, but appears to have a few hips thanks to bees.
  • Dark Desire – heading a little downhill on the health-scale, (perhaps on par or a little better than my Carefree Sunshine and WAY superior to e.g. Sunsprite for me) but still almost on par with LF. Plant falls way short of ideal in architecture and rebloom for me, honestly, but is in a tough location, and a trooper.
  • Sunny Sky – relatively new. In a very tough location for me, but impresses me thus far, and sets hips. Maybe a bit less bullet-proof than those above.
  • Soul Sister – a little less healthy, but still a trooper. The one time I got a controlled cross from this one, it set 16 seeds in a hip. (The squirrels thought all the babies were delicious, I assume.)
  • Quicksilver – I have yet to work with this one, but thus far, the beast looks remarkably healthy.

(Wow… Writing it all down now, I really had not before appreciated how heavily I have been trolling the clearance racks at all the local garden centers over the last four years…)

I am also no spray, located in Northeast OH about 5 miles from Lake Erie.

Earth Angel - This one is pretty disease resistant for me. My only issue with it is the balled centers when there is excess precipitation. Unfortunately, it seems like there has been high precipitation events right before the bloom every time for the last 2-3 years straight. I think my bush has some hips on it currently, crossed naturally by bees.

Plum Perfect - I had the same experience as you. Relatively healthy with few hips.

Soul Sister - This one frequently has blackspot. I have it planted next to some cultivars that aren’t blackspot resistant, which may be hurting its performance.

I have Sunny Sky, but it’s still young. I’ll be keeping an eye on it in the future.

Philip, all of the Kordes roses on your list that I’ve grown get at least some black spot for me, although I haven’t had them all for the same amount of time. They probably do better elsewhere, but in my garden, if a rose can possibly get black spot, it will.

–Earth Angel – still in a pot, growing vigorously but very unproductive of flowers (which have been small, although I’m sure that will improve with better conditions and plant age–their short lifespan might not); it was extremely healthy during the summer, but the foliage became progressively more spotted as fall wore on. The foliage didn’t drop quickly after becoming diseased, so the plant never looked bare and probably kept up relatively normal levels of photosynthesis. If the spots start earlier or increase in severity in the future, though, it might go downhill, but maybe it will improve instead. Overall, the plant seems almost like a relatively healthy Austin rose, and doesn’t resemble typical Kordes shrubs.

–Plum Perfect – I could swear that I have this one, but if it is the rose I’m thinking of, it’s not doing well and is not particularly vigorous, disease resistant, or floriferous. But don’t quote me on that. I’m hoping that the tag is out there, and will go digging for it when I have a chance. I sort of forgot/ignored it after its poor performance.

–Quicksilver – this hasn’t performed very well in my garden in terms of either black spot resistance or flowering.

–Dark Desire – I’ve had this for a number of years, and like yours it is a little less perfect in its disease resistance than it was for the first few years, but it’s still pretty good. It is excessively vigorous and extraordinarily (wickedly) thorny. The flowers are consistently good in color and form and are produced well through the heat for a Kordes shrub. Its fragrance has been very inconsistent, and was only strong for me one spring, which was a surprise; often it is impossible to detect more than a hint of scent, and I have a pretty sensitive nose. It sets some OP hips and I tried it once in a cross (with Oklahoma, just to see if its black spot resistance magic was heritable), but I only had a few seedlings and the black spot resistance was pretty much nonexistent. The flowers were single and about as close to black as anything I’ve seen, though. Maybe Dark Desire just needs a better partner.

–Soul Sister – this had poor black spot resistance and is gone now.

–Sunny Sky – the black spot resistance wasn’t great here, and the plant failed to thrive for me.

Of some other Kordes varieties that I’ve tried, Polar Express is doing relatively well for me. Laguna is looking decent for disease resistance so far, as is Kiss Me Kate, but they have some maturing to do before I can say much about flowering. Savannah Sunbelt has very nice flowers in spring, but the plant mostly shuts down in growth (entirely in flowering) during summer and the foliage gets very ratty. Tangerine Skies is somewhat healthy as far as I can tell, but so far blooms a little early in the season and then decides to take the rest of the year off. This summer (and fall?) shutdown seems to be a common theme for many Kordes varieties around here. I think that like many rose breeding firms, Kordes suffers from a failure to trial its roses adequately in diverse climates where its varieties are sold.

The hips that I got from Lemon Fizz with this year’s crosses weren’t overly large and didn’t have very many seeds per hip (probably 5-6), so I’m hoping for a good germination rate.

Stefan

Interesting, Stefan. I don’t recall where you are located, but if BS pressures are your issues, your input is really valuable. Mostly I get those durned Californians extolling the virtues of roses that are wimps in my garden. :wink: (Actually, some of my favorite and most generous rosarians are Californian, but they have it sooo easy.)
For me, Earth Angel is healthier than the Knock Out rose, for instance. Perhaps my resistance isn’t as great as I think, and my pressures aren’t as high either?

I’m just outside of DC, and black spot is definitely the number one disease problem here. I wouldn’t say that Earth Angel is necessarily healthier than Knock Out here, judging from the Knock Out roses growing around here that don’t appear to show much if any fall BS (I don’t grow Knock Out myself, so that’s only a drive-by assessment), but Earth Angel’s fall-only BS wouldn’t be an especially terrible problem if that’s all it really is.

Poseidon is another Kordes that has done very well for others, but just doesn’t seem to like it here and suffers from disease and poor flowering even after several years. Maybe it needs many more years to mature, or more lavish care, but I’m not sure that is the kind of rose I want to grow or use for breeding…

Stefan

Lemon Fizz is healthy here, and it has good rebloom, but its SO LEGGY for a small to medium-sized plant. The internode spaces are not that great for a modern.

An interesting note about Baby Love (and its kin, Lemon Zest): it will come back from its own shredded roots quite deep under the ground. That’s some Dr. Huey skills lol. Aunt Honey and Scarlet Flower Carpet, as well as some of my own seedlings have also done this to me. It is so uncommon that I note it when it happens. So whatever its worth, it has very nice root properties.

In terms of yellows, there are many other ways to derive yellow + bs resistance in shrubs, including those with a yellow base and darker petal face. The real problem with breeding yellow shrubs is acquiring ALL of the traits expected in a modern shrub AND it not fading or looking poorly 2 days later. That is the real challenge. Yellows require quite a bit of additive stacking and/or other factors like pelargonidin present without competing colors, like violet-red. Unfortunately with yellows, substance helps, but then you can arrive at a yellow that holds onto its petals and looks like junk. Chlorophyll helps, but then it REALLY holds onto its petals then looks like junk 1 week later. So, there are many hurdles to jump just to arrive at something commercially satisfactory.

Baby Love (and Rabble Rouser, its yellow baby) will also grab every atom of crown gall and express the hades out of it. Both and everything descended from them are gone from my yard.

any further info? eg, do most pollinations take (or most flowers will form hips OP)? Seed per hip? any comment on germination rate?

Kind of stuck on Sunny Sky vs Caramella, Leaning towards SS but there’s not much info other than “sets hips”

That was a relatively new post, but the hips subsequently frozen an the bush. No idea if mature enough to have been viable, but I know Pierre was breeding with and liking Sunny Sky. Look at e.g. Orangerie.