One of my Leonardo da Vinci x Abraham Darby seedlings is green. This is its first flower. it’s pretty ugly, but it’s planted in a very small pot, so I hope it gets better when it is in a normal pot and grows a bit. It is still inside. Will the color be affected by sunlight?
Rob
It’ll get a whole lot better.
This happens a lot for me in my seedlings… and certain roses such as the true Cecil Brunner and Livin’ Easy often makes blooms like this.
Could be something with the nitrogen… maybe with the weather.
Ugly?
With all due respect Henry, R. chinensis viridiflora is ugly. Yours, at least, has potential, particularly given that this is its first bloom.
(I’m not a huge fan of coffee-colored roses – they look like dead leaves to me – and personally would find a green with decent shape and substance more intriguing as a novelty.)
I’m guessing roughly a 50 petal count?
I’ll be curious as to whether the sun bleaches out the color or not. Please share follow-ups.
Do you have an update on your ‘green’ rose. I think it’s delightful.
I have some OP seedlings from a shrub Cecil Brunner that had a lot of green in them before they turned pink. The first name I was going to suggest for one of them was ‘Chernobyl’. It had a nasty green vegetative center and green and pink striped petals. The seedling has calmed down and though it looks a lot like the parent plant, the fragrance makes it worthwhile for me.
It will probably be yellow and it looks like some orange at the tips of some petals.
Patrick
I have a seedling from Sonia that starts out quite green, but is surprisingly beautiful when she opens, keeping her green outer petals. I think she’s quite lovely, but she’s not commercial material since she is too variable in her color and shape and too often has large vegetative centers. Still, when she’s pretty, she’s very pretty. (link below).
Let yours mature a bit. You may be surprised at the change that occurs.
Well, the second flower on this seedling turned out to be a beautiful white old rose type flower with a very good fragrance. Only when I saw the third flower I found out it was the green seedling, because it started green in the bud and then turned white. Unfortunately, if the flowers are white they have a large vegetative center, so the seedling will probably be prone to that in the future. If they are not white, but green they are very small and crumpled looking like the one on the picture.
We’ll see, I’ll plant it somewhere, and hope it magically transform next year 
Rob
Judith, how large are the flowers on Lady B.? In the photo she looks like she could be enchanting. Fragrant?
Blooms are about 2" and scent is mild. Wouldn’t she be gorgeous with 5" blooms like that? LOL. Still she does bloom quite a bit and has stayed a very small bush. I really would hate to lose her but I haven’t propagated her yet. I must do that. Also would like to get her grafted onto fortuniana.
Large bloom with a petal shape and form like that, I expected, was too much to hope for. Still, that’s better than the c. 1 1/2 inch size I expected.
It might be interesting to see what she does in various climates…
Judith, I like your seedling too! Maybe it will be more vigorous on fortuniana rootstock. Breeding green roses without the vegetative center problems is a challenge, I think. But green flowers are not my goal, there are other challenges that are more interesting to me.
Rob
