If you ever have the pleasure of meeting them, make sure you show Roger orange roses. He HATES them! LOL! When they photographed the old garden in Newhall for The Quest for the Rose, I had Beautiful Britain in full flower. Roger walked up to it as if it was a loaded diaper, held one bloom and, with a face full of disgust, began a diatribe about a huge bed of BB near his Eccleston Square home.
I managed to get a few quick pics as the sun was setting. Over all height of the R. cymosa seedling which germinated in January is now about 24".
If bracteata is heavy frost tender, its seedlings are not.
Its spines are easily bred out. Thornless seedlings not rare.
About spot desease and bracteata when tested young foliage is among the better at resistance. Only a few ground huging sp like wichuraiana and sempervirens are better.
Among species roses, none is consistently giving resistant F2 progenies.
That Moore bracteatas failed may be only because species contribution is too little and/or from not hard enough selection for health. As none crossed the Atlantic, another likely hypothesis is that breeding Muriel with miniatures did not help much.
This said, my bracteata progenies are good and promising enough for me to more and more (80% actually that is by the thousands seedlings yearly I grow for three years) interbreed its hybrids and back to different species or vars for the last ten years.
Robert shared a Clinophylla X Bracteata seedling from Viru’s seeds years ago. I requested the “runt of the litter” in hopes of it potentially having a “dwarfing” gene. It flowered for the first time this summer, three whole flowers! They were about an inch and three quarters, five petals and, surprise, white.
Link: www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=21.160582