A number of my hips are apple-ripe at only about 90 days after pollenation. Can I harvest them now to keep them away from the critters? Should I cover them with foil and wait?
Don,
My gut feeling is that if the hips have started to turn then they can be harvested now, but I try to wait until they have fully ripened if I can. But some varieties never fully turn color and some don’t turn color at all. This is where it helps to know the variety.
When I harvest hips now, I remove the seed from the hips because it’s a lot easier to do it now than later when the hips have turned to mush. I then place the seeds in moist paper towels in baggies so they don’t dry out and I keep them where it’s cool. I don’t keep them in the fridge because that would be giving them a cold treatment which I don’t want to start yet. They keep that way until I’m ready to start cold treatment and if they do develop mold I just clean them up before I put them in the fridge.
I harvest mine as they are beginning to turn color. If I do not the squirrels usually get to them otherwise. It does not seem to affect germination.
In some roses it might be beneficial for you to harvest before they are completely ripe to reduce the amount of inhibators in the seed coat.
Ralph reported his Hulthemias often ripened very early, and began dropping hips long before he expected them to. You’ll notice similar behavior from Legacy hybrids. I left all the selfs on the two Lynnie plants out back and they colored quite yellow within two months. EVERY LAST ONE of them were gone in one night. The Indian Love Call hips were beginning to color nicely, so I took all of them the other afternoon.
Hello all,
I know this has probably been covered a thousand times, but I’m curious about something that happens to my hips quite frequently. What I’ve noticed (usually around this time of year) is that some peduncles start to turn brown then black, and get ready to fall off. When this happens, the otherwise normal hips attached to these peduncles also turn black. Sometimes this happens very rapidly (within a few days). The seeds within the blackened hips often are hollow or very mushy or discolored in some way. I have had very low germination rates with the seeds that I plant from these hips. What is really going on here? Are these viable seeds, that are somehow changed during this phenomenon? Or, are these seeds just aborted, and that is the plant’s way of rejecting them and moving on to seeds that are still alive?
Andy
Andy,
If I understand you correctly, I believe you are referring to a hip that looks good and is growing normally up until about 50-70 days post pollination, and then the plant suddenly aborts the cross. I have this show up when a sudden hot spell (over 6-7 consecutive days over 85+F, sometimes more like mid to hi 90s) occurs in late July or August. It almost seems like the plant is just jettisoning the hip that isn’t going to make it anyway-even though it didn’t look that way, for whatever reason. I have never considered these viable seeds, and don’t know what is the particular reason behind it. There is another, apparently more fungal (or other disease) cause which also attacks when the hip is about mature, but this doesn’t start at the peduncle, but rather at the topmost part of the hip. This also discolors the seeds, which if removed before the whole hip dissolves into mush, can be soaked in a diluted hydrogen peroxide wash and the seeds are usually viable. I’m sure both of these occurrences have a name, but darned if I know what it is or the cause, although I have assumed that the mature hip rot is botrytis caused. That is something I may have read somewhere, but do not remember the source.
This is a hard question.It depends exactly when, relative to natural maturity, the dieback happens. I find with some plants that the hips don’t do a very good job of coloring, they just go into this wither and drop routine when fall comes. For others it is clearly a defective hip. I usually open them if they look big enough to contain a seed. If not moldy I just toss in along with the rest of my seed to stratify. Because I only plant sproutlings, a few extra seeds don’t matter.
I also grow apples and plums and peaches. These also drop fruits early. There is “June drop” of little ones, then as maturity time approaches, dropping of those that had worms or other injuries like bird pecks. I think it is ethylene production that causes the peduncle, or whatever it’s called, to grow an abscission layer and let the fruit go. That ethylene flush also ripens the fruit if it’s far enough along. So I end up cutting up lots of these early ripeners to put on morning granola. Generally about half of each fruit is fit to eat. Sometimes the seeds look ripe too, just a few weeks early.
By analogy I expect roses to do the same. There ought to be a hormone that keeps the hip on, and one that grows it off. If the seed dies, the on hormone is no longer produced and the off hormone takes over. I’ve no idea what genes make and break these. Don’t know that anyone does in detail.
I’d love to hear a more detailed explanation.
In accord with Adam’s statement, I once read an article on germination tips that suggested harvesting the hips and removing the seeds before full ripening did, in fact, reduce germination inhibitors. The author even suggested that when harvested early, little or no stratification was nessessary. I haven’t tried it yet, so I have no personal experience to relate to you.
Andy, I’ve had that happen repeatedly over the years, and in my case, the problem was rose-borer beetles who start puncturing the peduncles, and sometimes the hips, for sap. I made sure to spray this year and didn’t have a problem.
Van Mons (1835) collected unripe pears and let them rot (or “ferment”) before planting the seeds. Peter Gideon (1899), father of the Minnesota apples, planted apple cores or pomace from the cider presses an inch deep. No cleaning at all.
Finally, John Cook (1905) on roses:
“When the stem of the hip begins to get yellow then the seed is ripe, take it off, wash the bulb and put it in a pot in sand, which is to be kept wet, and in a short time it will be rotten, when the seed can be washed out, and sown at once, before it gets dry. If the shell gets dry, it gets harder and consequently it takes longer for the seed to germinate, which takes usually from three to ten months.”
One reported advantage of using seeds from unripe fruit is a shortening of the juvenile period, which translates into a more compact and floriferous bush. This would not be a useful technique for many Minis, because they are bushy enough. But it would be worth the experiment to plant ripe and unripe seeds of a too-tall variety (e.g., ‘Mister Lincoln’) – say, 100-200 in each plot – to see whether the unripe seeds yield shorter plants.
Some of the effects of unripe seeds are cummulative, becoming more pronounced with each generation.
I’m eagerly watching some seeds I have in moist peat now that are ‘Softee’ x R. bracteata. They stayed in the hip on the bush FOREVER (well all of summer, all of autumn, and all of winter) and they stayed green while all the OP hips on ‘Softee’ around them went orange. I picked them and sowed them straight away. The seed was a fresh creamy white in colour with a hint of green but they were hard shelled. After about a week in the peat it appeared they matured and went a golden brown colour. No germinations yet. Today I tried an experiment. I took the bags of seed outside and lay them in the morning sun for an hour. I’m hoping this will act like the red light in Henry’s red light experiments and will encourage these seeds to begin germinating more quickly.
I’ve found with a lot of immature seeds that they are more likely to develop chronic black fungus issues. I seem to remember a comment on here over the last 8-9 years that this may be due to excessive levels of carbohyrate in the immature seed coat that the fungus ‘feed’ on. This is also why I warm/cold stratify in moist peat. It seems to have an inhibitory affect on fungus.
Thanks for the feedback, everybody.
I decided to take the hint from Mother Nature: harvest the blushing beauties and leave the rest to ripen (wrapped with aluminum foil to thwart the critters). The weather has been so good here that even the apples are nearly a month ahead so my hips are starting to drop.
[Paul] >> I don’t keep them in the fridge because that would be giving them a cold treatment which I don’t want to start yet;
Good advice but, since I germinate my seeds by C-section, my seeds go in the fridge asap to slow down their metabolism and preserve their vitality in case I need to hold them over for several years.
[Adam] >> it might be beneficial for you to harvest before they are completely ripe to reduce the amount of inhibitors in the seed coat.
Also good advice but the hard part is knowing when that sweet spot is - when embryo is mature enough to germinate yet inhibitors are still at a minimum. You could do that study pretty easily, actually.
[Kim] >> Ralph reported his Hulthemias often ripened very early, and began dropping hips long before he expected them to.
Yup, along with the spins and omeiensis. I was picking up all of these from the ground in early July this season.
[Kim] >> You’ll notice similar behavior from Legacy hybrids.
Not so much, here at least. I promoted a whole bunch of Lynnie OP to breeders last year and they are holding their hips tight at the moment.
[Larry] >> a hormone that keeps the hip on, and one that grows it off…I’d love to hear a more detailed explanation.
Sounds like a grant application to me.
[Simon] >> I’ve found with a lot of immature seeds that they are more likely to develop chronic black fungus issues.
In my experience with extracting embryos I found that disease is the most significant reason for failed germination.
[Karl] >> Some of the effects of unripe seeds are cummulative, becoming more pronounced with each generation.
Sputter, gasp, cough - ahem. Ok, I’ll bite, can you cite a reference that’s not out of the Lysenko?
Would you harvest these hips at this stage ?
If the hips are starting to get a little soft, then yes. This being for rugosa roses such as the one pictured.
If hips crack and are orange all around, no green where the hips are in the shade. The seeds are easiest to extract and easiest to germinate. The mushy hips are a nightmare to get the seeds out and observe that germination is less. This of course is with Cassiorhodon. I have little experience with other sections.
Right Johannes ! I just try to open one of these muchy hips and it’s not a good idea unless you want to cook some roses jam ! 