Adam, I sent you several seedlings of, 'Joycie x ‘Carefree Sunshine’. I may have sent hips as well. I can’t remember.
Here is the only seedling from that cross I kept.
Don,
The hope with these Commander Gillette crosses was to recapture repeat bloom in a portion of the seedlings. Then in the next generation to recapture thornlessness by self-crossing, sibling crossing or maybe even back crossing to CG itself. Roger reported in an old newsletter that CG seemed to produce mainly CG look alike seedlings and they were probably selfs. So time will tell if these seedlings are selfs or not. Peter has several Carefree Beauty x CG seedlings and he is rooting one for me. I also just got several Dottie Louise x R.fedtschenkoana cuttings from Kim Rupert. Dottie Louise has Commander Gillette in its background also. If my CG seedlings turn out to be selfs, then I
My seeds after they come out of the fridge spends its time inside in a cooler side room. Then when it heats up out side they go out there. Second year seed trays stay out side. Most of the time the winter is not too cold here usually around 30 degrees F. Just an occasional really low temperature these negative temperatures usually last for about a week or so. More winter kill here is caused by lack of water, false springs and lack of snow protection than anything else. The soil is then recycled fr usage other than seeds.
Robert I was thinking it was you or Enrique. Hopefully I get something that lovely.
I think my post office is understaffed or some thing. Like the newsletter I see comments about it on the forum usually a week sometimes two before I have ever receive it. My bills are the same way. I do not like paying them online but that’s just what I have to do. I think this has a lot to do with it.
I
The seeds are all planted out in February or January. I start planting them when I start seeing germination. When I start to see most of the batches start to germinate I plant the rest of the bathes from the fridge. But what doesn’t sprout right away is left planted for at least another year. Many of my seeds are collected species. A lot of these species do not germinate the first year. Also I am doing more and more crosses dealing with species and varieties that are cold tolerate and many of these seem to have the bulk germination the second year.
Crosses like this year Rise n’ Shine x Marmalade Skies all seemed to sprout in the fridge. By he way this cross has produce seedlings that are clothed with PM but they seem to want to bloom to death. Maybe Marmalade Skies needs a better partner. I do not think the major PM issues are coming from Rise n Shine because its other seedlings are no where near this bad.
But I do know what you mean. It is one thing I found frustrating when starting out. Reading all the post and old news letters there was just so many ways of doing the same thing. The only definite was give it cold but don’t freeze it and don’t let it dry out. But I am finding in certain cases even these two can be broken. Some miniatures seem not to care if you give it a cold period and some wild roses seem to not lose germ ability if the seeds get all dehydrated before they have a cold treatment.
Adam, I have found dry stored achenes to have normal embryos. I don’t know where this thing about not drying rose seed has originated from…I too have come across that advice from somewhere?? …actually it is starting to intrigue me.
I must add however, that such dry-stored seed was not cold stratified at any stage.
Drying seeds does seem to be detrimental to germination of some rose seeds but other seems to be unaffected. I am beginning to take notice of which are which. I think I am going to do an experiment when I get a little more room.
oh that sounds very cool, Adam.
Adam,
I found that ‘Tigris’ and ‘Tiggle’ seeds germinated well after the hips had dried hard and were stored (accidentally) for a year in that condition in the refrigerator! That’s not something that I would normally do.
Jim Sproul
Hi George,
A few years back I did an experiment comparing the effect of short term drying and continual moisture on five different lots of op seeds- Rosa setigera, R. rugosa, R. rubiginosa, ‘George Vancouver’, and ‘Carefree Beauty’. Besides the 4 days of short term drying, the seeds were treated the same- 12 weeks 4C and then weekly germination monitoring for several weeks. Ultimately, short term drying only negatively affected R. rugosa and R. rubiginosa, otherwise germination was comparable to those seeds kept continually moist. There’s a great monograph of naturalized R. rugosa in the British Isles. It mentioned the detrimental effect of drying in R. rugosa there as well.
So, the take home message I left in this manuscript (HortScience 40:1931-1932) was that in breeding programs where germination is desired relatively soon, short term drying of seeds may be detrimental and depends on germplasm. So, in order to avoid reduced germination percents when drying for storage purposes is not needed, it is better to keep seeds continually moist.
A lot more work can be done to characterize different germplasm for storage ability and different storage conditions, especially for longer term dry storage of rose seeds.
Sincerely,
David
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David thanks for explaining!
I think I have something interesting to add to this thread. Last year I put all the seeds that hadn’t sprouted back in the fridge in the garage, still in the damp sand baggies. Did it only because I had read here that sometimes they need a second stratification. But I got busy and forgot about them.
Three days ago I went into that fridge for something, and discovered that 5 of the baggies were sporting seedlings!!! The fridge temp was 40 degrees. I had a total of 16 seedlings from crosses made in 2008! Now, some of these seedlings were from crosses that never sprouted after the stratification in 2009. (BTW, I live in So Cal, and we’re already into the first flush - so this is late, as far as I’m aware)
I was a bit baffled, until I recalled this: About a month ago, I discovered that the FREEZER side of that fridge (a side by side) had severe ice problems, so I had turned that side off and propped the freezer door open for a week to thaw it out. I kept the side with the seeds cold. None the less, i was surprised at how much warmer that fridge side had gotten simply because the freezer had been turned off. I turned the freezer back on, and forgot about it all.
I now think that the brief “warmup” must have been enough to trigger “spring”, and in that cold, utterly dark place, 16 seedlings sprouted!
BTW, it’s especially wonderful because a heat spell last summer killed EVERY seedling I had from those crosses - and they were my first ever seedlings… so I’ve been given an unexpected reprise!! And all because someone here in this forum once said they give their seedlings a second chance the next year! So THANK YOU ALL!!
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