Curious if anyone has experience with this Radler/Meilland introduction. (The pollen parent of IceCap is also the seed parent of White Out, RadSweet.)
I’m just noticing it was just introduced this year, so probably too early to get appraisals from folks…
I don’t know that it has the same contrasting dark foliage as White Out, but is touted as a huge improvement over/substitute for i.e. iceberg. (Dunno how well the dark foliage of White Out gets passed on to offspring anyway.)
http://www.starrosesandplants.com/plants/landscape-shrub-rose/icecap
I got some plants last year and they overwintered well with good crown hardiness in zone 4. The plants are more upright and rounded than White Out and the foliage is not as dark as White Out, but still very nice. The plant is more compact and dense than Iceberg and healthier. The flowers are very nice and the plant produces a lot of them. They don’t open flat. The middle petals are still somewhat upright, so the blooms look full and the tighter flower form is nice. It hasn’t set op hips, so maybe it is triploid.
From those “glamour shots”, it looks impressive.
I love this rose here in north Idaho it is a true star as it stands out both in blooms and foliage as it shine in healthy form. I plan in crossing it with some of my other top performers we just had the 5th highest snow fall in the history over 120 inches and an average of -10 degrees colder through last winter’s months. This was one of the few roses that remained green all winter and out of that few that remained green, it was the first to start fresh foliage growth. I can’t say enough about this rose, last spring why’ll looking to add some white color to my landscape I came across this rose on sale and ended up buying around 10 all are growing well some in shade, some in full sun, others in a mix of both in all cases it out performs it’s neighboring roses to the point that I had to rethink what roses I placed next to it. There a few photos that I’m sure you’ve seen on the site below off the top of my head I want to say set hips last year, disease resistances is strong, it will drop foliage (low center area) lightly after setting a massive bloom not sure if it due to lack of sunlight as this rose looks like a small compact rose tree when it’s in full bloom. If you have, any follow up questions let me know and I will head outside and report back, as am sure you have pickup by now I love this rose and dream of find more like it, NWR…
I had some come through one winter here (Zone 3 but probably a Zone 4 winter) but it is too early to comment on overall performance.
I also have one in a pot for hybridizing and it does set small hips. I checked and last year I got 3 hips containing a total of 35 seeds. Probably about six or seven germinations. Not bad.
The blossoms seem to hang on and look ok for a very long time, despite the petals being fairly thin.
I am just realizing that blossom longevity is incredibly important to the overall landscape impact of a rose. This is another important characteristic for us to think about when breeding. The attached chart illustrates what how many blossoms a rose has if it starts with a flush of 20 blossoms and then opens 5 new blossoms each day, for varying lengths of blossom life.
Joe, that chart is kool, it appears days 6 and 7 are the most productive if I am reading it right.
Thanks, David - it should be noted that the chart is not based on any actual data! It is charting fictional, mathematically perfect roses that produce exactly the same number of blossoms at the same time, but whose blossoms last different lengths of time on the plant.
I just want to drive home, mostly to myself, the vast impact that blossom longevity can have upon the color display of a plant.
A rose like Icecap might check all the boxes for color impact:
- a big initial flush
- fast repeat bloom
- long-lasting blossoms
- Blossoms that seem more double than they are. As David mentioned, the center petals kinda stay together. Why does this matter? Energy. The rose can put less energy into each blossom and therefore has more energy to spare to create new blossoms.
- Maybe the relatively thin petals of IceCap take less energy to create and sustain.
I have a seedling that is a cross of Belle Poitevine x Commander Gillette. It is a very healthy, full, everblooming shrub, but rarely has more than a smattering of blossoms on it. It always seems budded. I created that chart to help remind myself that this plant’s stingy bloom display is less about how many blooms it is producing than about the fact that each blossom lasts just one day. Looks like I need to cross it with IceCap.
Reviving this thread to see if anyone has continued growing this one, and how attempts at hybridizing with it went.
Looks like a really good rose, but I am weary of adding more roses that aren’t fertile, and this one has no descendants listed on HMF.
How does it do as a seed/pollen parent?
1 Like