‘Laura Ford’ (aka “King Tut”) was the lucky recipient yesterday of pollen from my own OP seedling of ‘Mutabilis’, simply because “it was there” (Thanks, Ralph!) and I wanted to see if it’s pollen was fertile. The seedling did produce a hip last year with two small seeds in it. (They haven’t germinated yet.)
There may be ploidy issues, because LF could be 4n and my seedling is almost certainly 2n, but it’s worth a try! And who knows, a fertile triploid may result, right?
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It aborted. Poop. I’ll try my own seedling in other combinations.
So I tried my own seedling (Mutabilis x Trier)’s pollen onto François Juranville, to try for more colour, petals, and juvenile bloom.
Put pollen from Abraham Darby on Julia Child, and in a repeat-breeding inspired by someone else on this forum: Danae onto Mutabilis.
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SUCCESS!!! The pollen of my OP seedling (‘Mutabilis’ x ‘Trier’) made a good hip on ‘François Juranville’, on the far right.
Just one flower was done to see if it would work; can’t wait to see what result may come! They should be healthy, and I would expect warmer shades of colour, in larger shrubs/semi-ramblers.
Here’s hoping for some juvenile-blooms.
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I notice the mother is Sunsprite. For me, SS hips never really turn color. I just recently picked practically every hip because frost was predicted. They ranged from about 120 to 154 days, and most all were green as grass, regardless of the father. Did yours turn color at all?
Lee, though I waited and waited for it to colour up, the best it seemed to do was go a little less-green when the sepals dried, so I just plucked it. “Long enough”
(One hip: 90 seeds/achenes. Nice.)
Dusty
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Just totalled up the number of seeds from my deliberate crosses collected so far… #Yikes
There are many hips still maturing out on their mothers, and more hundreds of OP seed…
What have I done!?!?
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Only a couple hips left to collect:
Laura Ford x Graham Thomas (just colouring up),
…and one OP hip from one of last year’s best tea/polyantha type seedlings.
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Some fun crosses there. Best of luck!
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