It is quite the surprise when crushing petals to check for fragrance and get one with strong fir scent.
Another surprise, after decades of never having a wiff of scent from Shreveport, was a good fragrance from two ft.away. This is one that hardly set hips and never germinated for me. Right away some pollen was applied and now have one germination and hope for more. Neil
Just found this thread!
I have been wondering about the possibile use of KO to make fully remontant mosses… only problem is I just can’t bring myself to use KO on anything as I really dislike the form of the flower and from what I’ve seen in its descendants it seems to be a highly pervasive influence spanning quite a few (too many) generations. I love it as a plant; mine has grown to a great big heathy 4x4ft plant in just two years and its flowers are such a bright happy accent in the garden (from afar), but as soon as I get up close it’s like… oh dear… it fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. A lot of mosses already have a ‘muddled’ flower but it is a a nice balance between muddle and charm. I wonder what a moss with unbalanced muddle would look like? ‘Double Knockout’ is not quite as good (here) as its more single sister and from memory I don’t think it has as many receptacle prickles as KO but I tend to think it still might be a better option than KO (though I REALLY love this: '06-27-13' Rose and Mike Athy’s 'ATHycuartro' Rose )
I ALMOST bought a Rainbow Knockout standard today to install in a client’s garden. Almost… As you said, it looked “interesting” from afar. Prickly monster, like Marquis de Sade Velcro, and I actually wondered about the moss idea while studying it. Finally spent more and bought a Duranta standard for the pot. Good choice…the screamed when she saw it planted!
But, honestly, MIGHT the KO genes straighten out some of the moss issues?
I guess we’ll never know unless we try it! When I started thinking about this, back in winter last year, I was thinking I might bonk ‘Dresden Doll’ with KO because DD already repeats. If I can get it to perk up a bit this coming season I still might do it. I love semi-doubles and singles a huge amount but they have to be ‘balanced’. I dislike saggy singles and semi-doubles where the second row of petals stick out at weird angles etc. To me those are the two features I worry about KO passing on.
I’m not sure if this has any relevance, but I have an Apothecary’s Rose x KO that has really fragrant hips and sepals, kind of a sweet pine fragrance. Somewhat extended and ferny sepals. I had read y’all talking about such a fragrance, but this was the first I’ve experienced it. I don’t know where it came from, but an Apothecary x Morden Blush certainly does not have it.
Hi Joe, that sounds like a great seedling! I love the fragrance that many of these have on their sepals.
Hi Simon, DKO appears to be capable of producing seedlings with decent form and color. I used it as a pollen parent a lot last year and am very pleased with several of the resulting seedlings.
Jim, I have seed from Temple Bells x dko, Bullseye x DKO, and Alice Amos x DKO in the frdige now - fingers crossed some good comes of these too 
Best wishes on those crosses Simon. For me, ‘Bullseye’ was a very poor germinator. I only tried it as a seed parent one year - got zero germination from 62 seeds. It may have been a fluke and I probably should have tried it again. Also, the DKO crosses with the Hulthemias resulted in faint blotches, similar to the earlier ones that I got with the first remontant Hulthemias. These will need to be crossed back with other Hulthemias in hopes of increasing the blotch and maintaining the cleanliness.
The resinous and evergreen scents are in there, waiting to express. Many species have those types of scents. It’s one of the things I adore about Fedtschenkoana and may well be a strong source of those scents in Old European Garden Roses. Moschatas have a little scent, and most Gallicas I’ve sniffed had some, too, but Fed. has a boat load of it and that scent morphs tremendously when crossed with other roses. Add the “Juicy Fruit Gum” scent from Foetida and there is no telling what you could come up with.
Though I’ve encountered some, most with strongly Wichurana background and which express the ‘glossiness’ associated wtih Wichurana, tend not to express much plant scent. Multifloras often are highly scented. I have a seedling from Rosy Purple X Cineraire which is strongly scented of bitter Meyer lemon zest. If the new growth, sepals and peduncles appear more glandular, even bristly, the chances for scents from them seem higher.
Jim, this was my own seedling registered as ‘Bullseye’ not the hulthemia registered after mine called ‘Bull’s Eye’ (see: 'Bullseye' Rose ) . I really question ICRA-Roses logic in approving the registration of Week’s ‘Bull’s Eye’ as I got my registration in first and I really don’t want my rose confused with something that has far more health issues than my own rose. It’s just too close. An example of the big boys pushing their weight around I’m sure.
Years ago, I registered a solid pink sport of Festival Fanfare as Festival Pink. Nearly simultaneously, a British solid pink sport of it came in for registration as Loads of Pink. Tom Carruth was on the registration committee which made the determination that both could be registered because the likelihood of them being sold in the same market was very slim. Perhaps they allowed both of your roses the same name because they felt they’d never be in the same market?
Well… I don’t really want to get into it here… chalk it up to experience.
I collected pollen from Apricot Bells this morning and thought I’d post about the plant scent. I don’t grow Aglaia, so I don’t know what its flowering parts smell like, but Mutabilis has a sweet, peppery scent. Apricot Bells has a very strong pine scent to the peduncles, ovaries and sepals. It was quite refreshing. Someone needs to check Plaisanterie to see if it has that scent.