It’s awfully early in the season, but I’ve collected my first ripe hips of the year. Cross was R. rugosa alba x mixed pollen (Canary Bird & Miracle on the Hudson). The rugosa was grown from seeds from Sheffield’s Seeds. Rugosas don’t much like it here on the Gulf Coast, but they survive and I get a handful of blooms each year. They bloom early and, since they only need a couple of months to ripen their hips, they’re always the first to produce ripe hips. Out of five blooms I got four hips and 134 seeds. I’ve been trying to get something from Canary Bird for years with no success. It’s also a very early bloomer. I know Tom Silvers successfully crossed rugosa with xanthina, so I thought I’d try it. This is my first season with Miracle on the Hudson so I’ve been trying it on everything to see what works. I have a second rugosa alba seedling from the same source that also bloomed early this year. I tried a straight cross with Canary Bird pollen on two blooms of that plant and have one fat hip forming there too, so hopefully I’ll get at least a few seedlings from the Canary Bird pollen.
Mark
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What became of it? I acquired rugosa alba myself just yesterday, via guerilla-gardening a root shoot from outside a steakhouse. Also found a cluster of last year’s hips FULL of seeds, with other rugosa and landscaping roses in the parking lots surrounding. Think I’ll give them a little pot of their own, in case they want another winter before germinating.
I only got one seedling from the direct R. rugosa alba X Canary Bird cross. It is an obvious hybrid and I still have it. It doesn’t like the heat and humidity here but it continues to grow slowly. No blooms yet. I had a total of 5 seedlings from the mixed pollen on the other R. rugosa alba. Three were obvious Canary Bird crosses. They were extremely lacking in vigor and all eventually died. The fourth seedling has a very modern look and I’m sure it’s a cross with Miracle on the Hudson. The plant is reasonably vigorous but hasn’t bloomed yet. The fifth seedling is a bit of an enigma. I originally thought it was a self seedling of the rugosa. It is the most vigorous of all the seedlings. I planted it in the ground last winter and it’s grown tremendously. In looking at it now the foliage seems a bit too smooth to be pure rugosa. It bloomed this spring with white blooms like it’s mother. I tried a few pollens on it this spring, but the only one that worked was Canary Bird. It bloomed so early that not much other pollen was available. I got five hips from the Canary Bird pollen and about 250 seeds which are already stratifying. I also got one OP hip with a little over 50 seeds. Since Miracle on the Hudson is a triploid I have wondered if one of these seedlings was from tetraploid pollen and the other from diploid pollen. It could also be that the mother rugosa isn’t pure itself and this is a self seedling. I’m not sure how much this year’s seedlings (if any) will help to resolve the issue since the cross was with one of the possible parents and the rugosa parent is growing only a few feet away with a bloom time that overlapped the later blooms on the seedling.
I removed one of the R. rugosa alba plants after I collected the hip from the Canary Bird cross two years ago. It never had more than two-three blooms on it in a season and never rebloomed. The other R. rugosa alba plant isn’t as vigorous as the one I removed but it blooms a little more. Last year I put pollen from a found R. wichurana based rambler on the few blooms of this rugosa and have a total of 6 seedlings from that cross this spring. Curious to see how they develop. This spring this plant only had three blooms on it and I only got one OP hip. Not really sure how to proceed with this plant. It doesn’t bloom much and blooms so early not much pollen is available but it obviously accepts a wide range of pollen. It even provided a number of seeds from a cross with R. laevigata although none of those seeds have germinated after two years.
Mark
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