Experience with Perennial Blue

General Discussion
1

I just transplanted 87 Perennial Blue OP seedlings to 6oz. yogurt containers this past weekend with a few stragglers left to mature more. I had a total of 106 seeds put ino the tray so this is definitely a seed fertile variety as an OP. They also germinated quite fast. The first seedlings popped out of the perlite within a week of sowing. The next variety to pop up (Compassion) took about 10 days more. The PB seedlings look pretty healthy so far (they are about 4 weeks old right now) and very vigorous (most are on their fourth or fifth set of true leaves). About half also are showing a “blue” or “gray” cast to the leaves but these are grown inside under lights right now so I don’t know if that will stick.

My plant will be entering its 2nd full season here - it started as cuttings 3 years ago and it was already around 10+ feet by end of summer last year. It has proven to be winter hardy here in Des Moines, very disease resistant, extremely vigorous and, the one flush it gave me, was full of nice colored (not anywhere near pink) blooms.

I think I will make some actual crosses this year since it is proving so fertile as OP. Has anyone worked with it to know if it takes foreign pollen? I’m thinking about crossing it with some of my purple polys (Lauren, Baby Faurax, Heinrich Karsch) as well as some of my other polys. I’m not sure what else to use it with as I’m not sure if it is a lover or a hater. Anyone care to guess on ploidy (I’m thinking diploid possibly triploid depending on what Super Excelsa is)? Maybe some Bucks and Canadians on it will work. Open to any suggestions on using this one as I think it might bring some good vigor and disease resistance with relatively good hardiness (not sure how it does North of here). I am also wondering what the repeat is like both on momma and the children.

If I don’t procrastinate too long maybe I can find time to take some pictures of the babies to try and capture the leaf color.

2

Just an FYI, though Perennial Blue and Purple Skyliner are very similar in many details, Purple Skyliner is much more willing to flower in my Southern California, “Savannah-type” climate. The foliage is denser, larger and more closely set than PB was here. Both root VERY easily, which should be expected given their strong multiflora affinity, but PS suffers from much less chlorosis here than PB did.

3

I will have to keep an eye out for it but I don’t recall seeing any chlorosis here. Easy to root is definitely true. The year I rooted it was the first year I ever seriously tried to root anything. I had quite a few failures but I got so many of PB I was begging people to take them off my hands - I hate to throw away a good plant.

4

Andre, “make lemonade”… too many Perennial Blue? It’s called “root stock”!

5

That might be what the not so pretty OPs might end up being.

6

If they work as well, why not? Ralph did that FREQUENTLY. He budded 1-72-1 X Rugelda on the enormous old plant of Huntington Red Moss to make it a weeping tree. It was from suckers of that standard he propagated the plant he sent with me to The Huntington for them to offer for fund raising as an “exclusive”. There were many “Island of Dr. Moreau” plants all over that nursery with multiple roses all budded on prior seedlings. His cherry trees had numerous varieties grafted on them, too. All he needed was one, little piece…