Today when I inspected my no stratification seed tray, I found these two. I planted a lot of random mostly HT achenes about a week after the 27’th of June, and with today being the 17’th of August, they sprouted after about 44 to 51 days
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With the cold front we’ve had here the bud is taking a long time to open, but I am very chuffed with its colour! I realise now there is a good chance that it is a cross between South Africa X The Yellow, a hybrid tea, or even South Africa X Casino the climber (but I doubt the latter).
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This morning the bud opened!
It has 14 petals and absolutely no scent. I’m very happy with the outcome.
I can almost definitely say the cross is South Africa X The Yellow.
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Thats such an intense yellow! Congratulations
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Thanks!
It unfurled a bit lopsided because two sepals stuck together, but now that it’s open properly I can actually smell a very light sweet scent. Best of all there’s load of pistils and quite a few anthers.
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Sounds like a fertile future!
My second hybridising season started on the 12’th of August and as of today (4’th of October) I am looking at about 347 pollinated/actively growing hips and 91 aborted hips.
There are a few new pollinations included in the above list, so there will be some hip drop, but so far everything looks good.
Marzipan made a surprise comeback, it seems it needs an initial season to settle and then it performs quite well, like Jude the Obscure and Lady of Shallot.
Breezy is very accepting with any pollen, and it is currently a power house in hip production. Some hips pictured:
A very surprising under-performer is Rhapsody In Blue. It dropped 25 out of 47 hips. It did have a massive spider mite infestation but I have a suspicion that it is an infertile triploid. After some care and the mites being eradicated I hope that I get some more hips from it.
The hips on Stanwell perpetual are about two weeks old, so I am on the verge of seeing if they’ll drop. I’ve used its pollen on Peace, Gorgeous, and Golden wings and I have had no hip drop so far, with some of the hips being about a month old or more.
Penelope’s pollen is causing an interesting amount of hip drop in some cases but it could be that I’m not using enough of it. I’m planning on using it in more crosses soon so to test how viable it is.
Raubritter is INCREDIBLY slow growing, so far I only have one flower bud from it after planting it 4 months ago.
For my species that I recently acquired I have:
Brunonii
Schrödinger’s Multiflora/Abyssinica
Bracteata
I’m hoping to make a species lineage this season, so I’ll see how things pan out (and with Bracteata being so finicky it is going to make things interesting).
With the growing season in ZA lasting from August to May, my hybridising season will most likely end in February/March so I’m looking at 8 months of active hybridising.
Will update if I find anything interesting.
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Unfortunately, I have not had good results with Rhapsody in Blue, either as a seed parent or as a pollinator. When used as a seed parent, the few seeds did not germinate, and in embryo culture, the seedlings—if any developed at all—were very weak and unsuitable for further cultivation. As pollen donor, the formed hips were empty or had turned yellow. Therefore, I share your assumption that this cultivar is an infertile triploid. Anyway, I hope things turn out with a little more luck better for you in the end.
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In my OP HT batch it seems I have my very first miniature:
The last photo was today, and it measures at about 1.2cm by 1.2 cm and a height of 1.4 cm. It’s about 5-6 weeks old.The seedlings surrounding it sprouted at about the same time.
Another interesting seedling was this one with scraggly leaves. The rest in the batch all have rounded leaves like the one beside it.
The following seedling seems to be a write off. It’s a month and a half old and it’s only made one true leaf. It has good roots however.
A bunch of my seedlings seem to have Kordesii genes, as they have these red trimmed leaves when the leaves are still young:
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I love the holly like leaves of the scraggly one. Wonder if it keep the shape as they get larger. Would be very pretty!
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Those are some solid looking root systems for hybrid tea seedlings.
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@KDickinson these were some of the frontrunners when I potted them up:
I agree, I didn’t know what to expect from HT’s or open pollinated hips but so far I’ve gotten good root growth from the majority of them.
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