Which is the better plant (forget the flowers for the moment)? I have ‘Ebb Tide’ and am seriously thinking about shovelling it after three seasons. It is that bad. It keeps getting smaller and smaller and has barely a leaf on it. It’s flowers start purple and go an insipid pink and get smaller and smaller as the season progresses and the weather warms up. It was the fungal year from hell here and many have curled up their toes this year but ‘Ebb Tide’ was worse hit than most. Is ‘Midnight Blue’ and better? Their pedigree is identical. Roses like ‘Route 66’ out-performed it dramatically.
Simon, of course no one can comment about how MB may out perform ET as far as fungal problems in your garden, but I have both of them growing about ten feet apart in a border at a client’s house. MB grows much more vigorously and flowers very heavily. The individual flowers are no where near what ET’s are bit there are so many of them. Neither of them have demonstrated any foliage issues there. ET hasn’t exceeded two feet. MB is usually nearly four feet. Julia Child, right beside ET is four to four and a half feet. There are always flowers on MB and JC. There are periods with no flowers on ET. I’ll keep ET there because it is pretty and the others make up for its down periods.
I haven’t grown Route 66 as I’m told it isn’t really good in my area and when I’ve seen it, the flower color looked like a sick Dr. Huey. Kim
Ebb Tide
Midnight Blue
To show relative performance, here is Julia Child, planted right beside Ebb Tide at the same time the other two bushes were photographed.
Of the Weeks’ purples, Purple Heart is by far my favorite. However, it is more hot violet in the heat, and more apt to breed violet colors. It behaves like a normal floriibunda, and had great vigor for me.
Midnight Blue was a quick one to mature … but it was so boring and wispy. Also, it fries in the heat.
Ebb Tide is a slow to mature type, but the final product was worth it. However, it just may be a cool climate only rose. Cross it with something more heat tolerant, with more cane girth.
Wild Blue Yonder gets die-back. This is my 2nd time/place with that rose, and its winter “tricks” are getting old.
Neptune is great, but its proneness to blackspot is awful. With Blue Nile in its immediate background, I’d cross it with something enerally tolerant of both disease, and with something that passes on quicker rebloom.
I ask this because we can’t get MB here and I am thinking of asking if I can have some OP seeds sent over. If it is a substantially better plant that is. It seems that although they have the same parentage they are very different plants. I’ve grown a lot of OP ET before and got lots of little ET clones and I’ve kept none of them due to health and own-root vigour issues.Before I shovel ET I will move it to another position to see if that helps… maybe a pot. At the moment it is awful. My best performing purples are all once flowering OGR like ‘William Lobb’. All the other purples leave a lot ot be desired. R66 is hardly perfect but is doing better than ET. These are the purples I grow: ET, R66, ‘Sweet Chariot’, ‘Wild Rover’, ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, ‘Violet’, ‘Veilchenblau’, ‘Starlight Rose’ (another bloody terrible rose), ‘Tuscany’, ‘Tuscany Superb’, ‘Wiliam Lobb’, ‘Charles de Mills’, and an unknown Gallica-looking rose. I’d like to try MB seeds because I’ve been watching the amazing results you guys get over a really long time now and am hoping the OP MB are a fairly uniform bunch just as the OP ET were.
Oh… and ‘Old Port’. We can’t get ‘International Herald Tribune’.
I have an interesting looking one arriving this winter called ‘Purple Rain’ too… hoping this one is fertile.
Which one of the three, Simon?
Link: www.helpmefind.com/gardening/plants.php?searchNmTyp=5&searchNm=purple+rain&rid=2176&tab=1
It is probably all a case of location, location,location… I don’t have Midnight Blue, but Rt 66 has never blinked. It is about 5’ tall and gets 100’s of flowers, has primo disease resistance,is quite heat resistant, and has a really quick repeat. Ebb Tide was a fantastic bush–about 3’ tall and lots of flowers, but then it got Downy Mildew 2 yrs ago and declined for a full yr or more. This spring it looks good, has bloomed more and is now forming more foliage and buds. I have never had flowers fade to pink, but rather they fade to a grey/purple. Very old crepe paper look. It is not overly vigorous but about a yr ago I decided to ‘coddle’ it, and this has paid off. I get the feeling that it really doesn’t like the late afternoon sun and now it is protected which I believe also helped, along with a little extra organic fertilizer. Wild Blue Yonder took about 2-3 yrs to really establish, but wow, when it makes up its’ mind it is amazing. All three have been really good with offspring. Rt. 66 seems to be the most drought and heat tolerant,and has passed that quality to several seedlings, which counts in my book. I saw the Kordes Purple rain that you refer to-it really looks good, if it can take your location.
This one Kim 
Jackie, downy mildew is what has caused ET’s demise here too. My decision to move it (probably to a large pot) is so I can ‘coddle’ it too. It really has no excuse for not liking where it is. It’s out of afternoon sun and is in rich red soil mulched heavily with well rotted animal manures etc whereas R66 is in a more ‘desolate’ section of the garden and it seems to do just fine.
Simon
Keep us apprised of what happens with your Purple Rain. What attracted you to it apart from the colour? My local nursery carries it, but alas there is no photo, and nothing on HMF. I’m tempted.
Lydia, the form looks pretty good (I like wider than high… right to the ground) and a lot of the newer Kordes roses hitting Australia seem to be pretty good. It seems to be very floriferous and not a bad purple, though not as dark as I am aiming for. I don’t know its pedigree but it has the look of ‘Sweet Chariot’ in its flowers. With any luck it will be fertile (both ways would be nice). You can see a bit about it here:
Link: www.treloarroses.com.au/products/product.asp?pID=5649&cID=9
Thanks for the link. There was a similar picture on the Kordes site. This spring I got a purple somewhat single bloom on an op seedling from the pale pink very double Harewood. I’m wondering if the pollen came from my very sad Night Owl, or even possibly Chianti.
Hi Simon,
I have grown both MB and ET. I had the same problems with ET as you mention - pinking of blooms and plant that wouldn’t grow. I love MB. It produces vigorous seedlings, however, I am not sure that it can be matched with OP seedlings. Also, it’s fertility is very good, but again, an OP selection may behave very differently. I would work toward getting the real thing if at all possible.
‘Night Owl’ was okay, but I liked MB more.
Jim Sproul
Hi Jim,
Apparently ‘Midnight Blue’ was brought in at the same time as ‘Ebb Tide’ by Swanes. Swanes trialed them both and went with ‘Ebb Tide’ and I’m not sure what happened to ‘Midnight Blue’. I have asked before and got no reply. At this stage I am prepared to try anything because so far my purple passion is not working out very well. ‘Route 66’ doesn’t seem to breed purples for me. It tends to take on most of the colour of whatever I put on it. For example, I have a really nice seedling from ‘Route 66’ x ‘Hot Chocolate’. The plant is really robust but the flowers look like a ‘Hot Chocolate’ coloured ‘Altissimo’. It’s real nice but not what I’m after. Anyway… I’m keen to try anything once
Neptune will give purples, too. You all also have access to a few UK varieties, as well as some oldies that can provide similar color atttibutes. Often, theyre descendants of Madame Norbert Levavasseur.
And, afterall, it was the land down under that re-introduced the world to purple roses with Big Purple. This note was picked up a decade after LeGrice, the creator of News, Purple Splendor, and many other new purple, russet and orange tones, had passed away.
LeGrice and Kordes were probably my favorite breeders among time.
There are always options
Yeah… I’m turning to OGR like Tuscany, Tuscany Superb, William Lobb and Nuits de Young atm cos I don’t want to go HT like Big Purple.
Has anyone tried ‘Bleu Magenta’? There are no descedants.
Simon, see if News and Great News are available somewhere down there. News reportedly led to Big Purple. Here, high heat doesn’t affect how News performs, while BP can shut down until it cools off. Roses and Friends and Tasman Bay are listed on HMF as offering Blue For You, which is a whole lot more “blue” here than anything I’ve ever grown. A friend just a bit east of me has Rhapsody in Blue. His area is much cooler and damper than here, and for him, RiB shuts down in high heat and tries to climb. Kim
My ‘Midnight Blue’ and ‘Ebb Tide’ were purchased the same year and are now 4 years old. ‘Midnight Blue’ is 5 X 5 feet and loaded with several hundred buds poised to open. ‘Ebb Tide’ has yet to exceed 20" tall and has about 8 buds on it right now. It looks vaguely unhealthy/unhappy, as if there is an imminent problem simmering down deep, waiting to present itself. ‘Midnight Blue’, on the other hand, is an astonishing picture of health and grace. All I do is remove the old panicles in February each year and it remains shapely and rounded and entirely presentable.
‘Midnight Blue’ has provided me with hundreds of seedlings, from which I have saved some remarkably beautiful individuals for testing. In spite of trying, I have yet to keep any seedlings from its brother, which rarely sets seed at all.
Now, about ‘Old Port’: lovely rose, good vigor, beautiful blooms, upright-but-attractive growth habit. Al in all, a nice shrub for the garden. What about as a breeder? I used it on many seed bearers in 2008-2009 and all of the offspring were universally dreadful. I mean really awful: totally lacking in vigor, every one a mildewy runt struggling just to stay alive. I won’t use it in breeding again. I’m sure Sam would laugh knowingly at these comments.
‘Old Port’ was ‘All Blackspot’ 
It joins the ranks of Regensberg as a blackspot magnet dwarf floribunda.
I used Midnight Blue as a pollen parent. It was like fishing for minnows, but I did get some cute seedlings I randomly kept. Livin Easy x Ebb Tide is pretty … or was it from Tatton? I forgot. Its in Saint Helens, growing out, right now. Purple on deep purple, semi-double, wavy. Weird rose lol. Purple Heart has made the best architecture, but theyre all with Pretty Lady … so theyre all violet, LOL. I have yet to try Midnight Blue despite owning it. My intention was to cross it with White Lightnin’, but WL will not set seed or given pollen for me.
Kim, I have ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and when the temperature hits the thirties (