Experience with newer Kordes' varieties

I have been trying to collect info about some of the newish (last 10-15 years) Kordes from those with more experience with them. In the past years I hadn’t paid much attention to Kordes’ new introductions, since many of their varieties have some major issues for me (despite their terrific disease resistance). Specifically, many of their varieties seem to be prone to balling/rain damage in general (surprising, since their nursery is located near Hamburg, in a relatively wet part of Germany). Moreover, many of them tend to have a rather awkward growth abit. I’ve now started considering more important some good qualities that they have and that make them more suited for my climatic area:

  • good to excellent blackspot resistance
  • good spring freeze resistance
  • good vigor

I was wondering if any of you had any experience breeding with any of the following (Kordes’ varieties I have/I plan to acquire):

Golden Gate (Climber)
I’ve had it for about three years, as an own root plant in a container. Excellent vigor and disease resistance, nice blooms; main drawbacks for me are thorniness and size (too big as a plant for my breeding goals). It sets many OP hips, accepts foreign pollen fairly well (about 60/70%) and its seeds do germinate (30% germination for me). I haven’t grown any of its seedling to see them bloom (I’m an expert in germinating seeds and letting them die); they seemed quite vigorous, though.


Lupo
First year plant, very vigorous and healthy. Floriferous, but dried petals hang on for too long. It sets a huge amounts of OP hips, but hasen’t done a good job in accepting foreign pollen (some crosses were quite distant, to be fair). its smaller bloom size makes emasculating blooms not easy, so it may be better for pollen. I’ve been told that it is diploid, but it tends to produce a huge amount of unreduced gametes. I’ve tried the following crosses:
Lupo x Olivia Rose Austin 2 blooms, 0 hips
Lupo x Tottering-by-gently 2 blooms, 1 hip
Lupo x Eyes for you 3 blooms, 0 hips
Lupo x R. canina inermis 15 blooms, 1 seed from a drying hip 2 months after pollination
Tottering-by-gently x Lupo 2 blooms, 2 hips

Herzogin Christiana (Earth Angel)
Nice plant, but it sets no hips and doesn’t have any anthers as long as I know

Novalis (Poseidon)
Excellent blackspot resistance, very floriferous, nice colour. It doesn’t seem very fertile, no hips for me and its pollen has been rejected a couple times. Anyhow, the variety is good enough to keep trying to use it for pollen.

Carmen Wurth (and its sport Konigin Marie)
I ordered both Carmen and the queen for next year, they seem to be very healthy and per Plazbo’s comment on HMF they (at least Carmen, but I don’t see why Konigin Marie shouldn’t) work as seed parent.

See you in pink
I don’t think anyone tried this one yet, but I’ve been seen it in a garden center recently and it looked so much better than other hulthemias. There were a couple of OP hips


Thanks to everyone who can leave a comment!

Carmen Wurth (aka Adorable here) works as seed parent (as per my comment) I have a number of seedlings from it using hulthemia pollen. It may just be the combination (or something I’m doing) but the seedlings are sort of middle of the road on vigor (meanwhile OP warner hulthemia often are quite vigorous).

Either way it’s somewhat prone to balling (although keep in mind the last two summers here have been very wet in the record breaking floods type of wet, so maybe not an issue in more normal weather) and does get some BS later in the season (nothing to worry about). The seedlings have pretty consistently picked up more of the Carmen Wurth foliage and late season BS (but have picked up the hulthemia eye), I don’t think any of the seedlings picked up the high glossy leaves of the hulthemia hybrid pollen parent (which I find interesting given I have Lord Penzance seedlings which have picked up the high glossy leaves and with that chromosome imbalance I would have thought that less likely than Carmen Wurth)

Thank you Plazbo for your comment! I guess that Carmen’s color could work well with hulthemias. Do you have any pic of your seedlings you can share by any chance?

Late season blackspot can be annoying, but not a huge problem for me as long as the plant is not too disfigured .

I just looked at Kordes’ website and noticed that Konigin Marie gets 5/5 for blackspot, compared to Carmen Wurth’s 4/5. It may be a marketing choice, but since petal count is higher on Konigin Marie too, it may mean that it is something more than just a color sport

It is largely an attempt to breed hulthemia breeder/s in a cooler tone, apart from Eyes For You (which is very reluctant to breed for me) all the hulthemia available here are warmer tones and none of them have been particularly (if at all) fragrant.

Mostly got many petalled neutral/cool pinks, but that’s probably not at all surprising. No pictures of seedling flowers but it’s early spring here now so will post in a few weeks (or when they start blooming again)

Lupo is diploid, but as you raise op seed off of it, it tends to readily produce a good number of what appears to be polyploid seedlings (thicker wider leaves and less branching, etc.). The seedlings from op for me tend to look like selfs as they tend to be single and pink.

Good to know it tends to produce offspring with high petal count even when mated with pollen parents with few petals (which I assume was the case, since they were hulthemias)

I look forward to seeing any pic you can share, thank you! Do you recall if any of them had any/good scent?

Thank you David for sharing your experience and knowledge! I find Lupo to be a very interesting variety, with probably several species in its background. I think there’s much more multiflora in it than what the known parents in the stated parentage could justify (mostly in the flowering pattern). A couple years ago a German nursery discovered and introduced a climbing sport from it, which behaves as a repeat flowering mini-rambler. It is only available from a couple nursery in the EU and I doubt they have the funds necessary to introduce it elsewhere in the world (it hasn’t even been patented, as long as I know). I considered acquiring it, but I’m waiting to see what I can get from Lupo before

Plum Perfect yielded a high percentage of viable seeds from just a few OP hips. Shades of purple, lavender, and one odd ball pink and white single.
Stephen

Thank you Stephen! Plum Perfect looks quite interesting, but unfortunately it is not available in Europe

Just two pictures of OP Carmen Wurth seedlings. Just to highlight potential color, most are pink (should have a pic in a day or two, some are so close to blooming) but sometimes, something else

is mostly ok but not perfectly healthy, no idea what the other parent may have been, nothing yellow was nearby, there is another very similar one to this around that’s more powdery mildewy
20221018_085412

runty and you can see the spotting on the sepals…it’s a year old, just kind of “hanging on” and just doesn’t seem to have the energy to put up a more mature shoot…but it’s red.
20221018_085427

Thank you, Plazbo!
The first one looks really good in my opinion. How’s scent?
I see what you mean about the other one: nice colour, but probably not worth keeping as a plant. Good to see it allows different colours, though.

The yellowy center one is fragrant, has that obvious lemony scent to it. Red is fragrant too.

Here’s one showing the usual shade of pink (main colour regardless of OP or intentional cross) but with a hulthemia eye. it’s CW x Eyes For You
20221020_083911
none of the cooler lavendar/purple tones turned up from either parent (disappointing). In pretty much every way it (and siblings) are more like CW (short stems, single flower to stem, lowish thorn)…generally true when Bright As A Button/Raspberry Kiss was used as pollen parent too.

Viable parent, not every flower will take, seedlings are mixed results. So far everything from it has been double flowered and tends toward stiff upright growth. There’s probably more compatible pollens for it than what I’m trying to mine from it, feel like good HT’s could come from it.

This one looks nice as well!
At least as a semi-opened bud, it looks like that in this case the hulthemia eye is not the huge main focus point we often find in semi-double hulthemia hybrid, rather like a nice addition to the color pattern of the petal that helps adding depth and interest to an otherwise plain high-centered pink bloom. I often wonder how long will the “hulthemia” denomination last as a class of roses; in my opinion there’s no reason to continue classing them separately and it would be much more helpful for the gardeners to know if they’re more shrubs, floribundas or HTs. There’s no difference from what happened to pernetianas, that were considered a class of their own for the first years of their existence, just to be later merged with HTs. Of course, marketing conditions are completely different from the ones they had when the pernetianas were bred, so we’ll see how the market develops

I’m adding to this a few months late. For the newer Kordes roses, I have used the following:

Lemon Fizz: Fertile either way. In my opinion, one of the more promising yellow roses since it can pass on unfading yellow color (unlike so many other yellows)

Souvenir Baden-Baden: Lots of hips but I got nothing remarkable in the seedlings. Might be useful when crossed with the right thing.

Beverly: Few hips but tons of pollen. I have two excellent roses from Beverly crosses which have inherited its vigor, flower form, and disease resistance. It’s fragrance, unfortunately, does not seem as willing to pass on.

Poseiden: No hips and limited pollen but the few crosses I got as a pollen parent were quite notable. One was entirely blackspot resistant and powerfully perfumed (think Angle Face with no blackspot). Sadly, it lacked any vigor and succumbed to RRD.

Plum Perfect: I tried for two years and could not get a single cross to take as a seed or pollen parent.

Dark Desire: Same as Plum Perfect. A dud.

I tried Novalis last year but it didnt do anything. I give it one more try this year but it is on the discard list for hybridizing.

I also had Novalis occasionally in my selection. So I have tried to use this rose for multiple years sometimes as seed parent, but mostly as pollen parent. Both variants have not led to success. Therefore, I agree with you that hybridizing with Novalis is quite a difficult undertaking.

I don’t think it’s out in the USA yet, but there is a USA patent for it so maybe it’s just around the corner.

Tangles (would assume name will change, given the name was about an event here that would mean nothing over there) is another lavender/mauve (leans pink) but it sets (intentional crosses/manual dabbing, OP almost not at all though) seed easily and they germinate pretty well. Fairly large sprays and the foliage is thicker than typical moderns (it just stands out to me). But no significant fragrance and like a lot of new kordes prone to balling.

I got about 12 op seedlings from Plum Perfect in 2021, all very healthy. Dark Desire has produced 1 op seedling from last season, still growing.
Stephen

I wonder if anyone in Europe has the newer Kordes rose “Ile de Fleurs.” It’s pedigree and reported health both intrigue me.

I just ordered Bright Smiles (Fiesta Veranda), Lemon Fizz, Sunmaid, Sterntaler (Golden Fairy Tale), Mentor-Rose and Alexander von Humboldt from Kordes to try this year. Last fall I also acquired Lambada. Perhaps I will have some experience to share next year…

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