This next seedling is a 2007 selection, also bred using ‘Midnight Blue’ as the seed parent. The pollen parent was a striped red miniature.
This seedling is miniature itself, individual blooms being about 1.25 inches in diameter. I have nicknamed it “Purple Poodle” because it resembles Ralph Moore’s ‘Pink Poodle’ but in purple. It has an excellent sweet fragrance and is continuous in bloom. It starts out reddish and deepens to royal purple as it ages. This bloom shown is two days old, so halfway between color shifts.
Here’s another. No doubt it will pick up more petals. This photo taken while temps were well above 100 degrees.
Very beautiful seedlings! They all look like they should have some good fragrance - which is also a frequent trait passed along by ‘Midnight Blue’.
‘Ebb Tide’ has great fragrance also, but I chose not to use it because it’s clusters are a bit too tight and it gets powdery mildew in our climate.
Jim Sproul
Those seedlings have the most beautiful colour and are a great inspiration!
I am interested in ifusing some ‘black’ into the purple as well, like in this picture of my mini ‘Black Jade’ (see link). In my area this particular mini has almost black flowers that mature to a very dark black-shot-red (garnet) and the foliage is very healthy on a vigorous plant. HMF shows ‘Black Jade’ as having many descendants too so fertility should be good. So I was wondering what effect putting a dark red/black like this over one of the dark purples would be. I guess the best way to find out is to try it and see huh
Link: www.helpmefind.com/plant/pics.php?l=99.112464&nr=81568
I get black-toned seedling from my own Shadow Ninja. I think it is an influence of multiple layers of types of red, including pelargonidin – notice that the modern “blacks” have a lot of orange-toned lineage?
hmmmm… that’s interesting… certainly is a lot of orange in the bg of Black Jade and Shadow Nijna… not such a great idea then…
Why not? Purples can produce red-black, too, I imagine. they do seem to carry a lot of cyanidin, which is one of the red pigments (peonin, cyanidin and pelargonidin).
Simon,
I strongly recommend crossing a purple like ‘Midnight Blue’ with dark oranges and dark scarlet hues. ‘Black Jade’ is probably not an ideal choice because its offspring tend to have serious problems with Blackspot, as I’ve learned. I would suggest perhaps ‘Lavaglut’ instead, or something like it. The first seedling I posted came from a dark orange variety crossed onto ‘Midnight Blue’.
I would definitely skip Black Jade. It is a piece of garbage. I would also skip Lavaglut due to blackspot. Raven would probably be a better choice. It sets hips easily, too. My other choice would be Coffee Bean. It looks like it can produce black-reds. It is just a hunch. It is one healthy mini, too. I regret not using it more this season.
Hmmmm… I think garbage might be a little strong… can’t fault it here. It wasn’t sprayed once last year and hardly lost a leaf… it even retained leaves right over winter… in fact I would say it is a winner here (I’m in the lower end of Australian zone 4 to middle Aust zone 3 - equiv to US zone 9-10 and have long wet cool winters to -6 degrees Celcius (light to moderate frosts and some snow)and dry short mild summers). I have a number of dark miniature reds though that may fit the bill, like “Galaxy”… minis of any kind are pretty hard to buy here in Australia… I have not seen “Coffee Bean” available here and the closest I can get to “Midnight Blue” is “Ebb Tide”.
Simon,
‘Midnight Blue’ has given me near black seedlings very similar in coloring to the one that you made reference to. I am sure that ‘Ebb Tide’ would work likewise.
Near black seedlings tend to have smaller blooms and tend to burn in our intense sunlight.
Jim Sproul
Simon,
Ebb Tide is a perfectly good alternative. Go for it!
yep - looking for a plant now… I’d really like to use it to make really deep purple minis too.
Simon,
Back-crossing it to Sweet Chariot might get you some interesting results, as Sweet Chariot is one of its grandparents. Can you get that there?
Thanks Paul. Ross Roses has it listed on their 2008 catalogue so I might be able to have it sent across. I am trying to have a few plants of ‘Si’ sent over from them so with a little luck they could send some ‘Sweet Chariot’ too (living here in Tasmania we have additional quarantine laws prohibiting the movement of plant material from the mainland to here… so nurseries have to be accredited to post here, making it even harder to get roses (or any plnat for that matter) down here). Some of the HMF photos of Sweet Chariot are pretty impressive.
Link: helpmefind.com/plant/pl.php?n=6152&tab=10