David, looking at those photos of the mini x Angel Rose, do you think the small stature of these roses is due to conventional miniature genes or something like polyantha dwarfing? Mine (below) stays small and compact and all its OP seedlings stay small. Those ones of yours seem to be quite large and would I be correct in saying the shrub form is a little more open? Are the Angel rose features easily lost in crosses with moderns? Do the Angel roses you’ve raised normally stay as compact as this one? I have problems with this one being stingy with its pollen too.
Wow, cool topic. It’s great to hear what David’s been up to…making the induced tetraploids work!
Adam, if you ever get extra seeds from that species of four o’clock I would love to try growing some in the greenhouse to see if they could work as a gnat trap on a larger scale. It could be an important trick for organic greenhouse production.
David, you mentioned your thornless Buck multiflora rootstock. Is that the one you shared with me several years ago?
If so, I have to tell you about a seedling from this year. It was supposed to be a cross of ‘John Davis’ pollen on ‘Duchesse de Montebello’. Well, the Duchesse is planted in the same bed as that rootstock, which has long, arching canes that go everywhere. (Thank goodness it’s thornless!) The one seedling that survived from the Duchesse de M. x John Davis cross turned out to have fringed stipules just like the multiflora rootstock, so I’m 99.9% convinced the ‘dad’ was actually the rootstock, courtesy of a friendly bee. So far, the seedling is dwarf, blooms in clusters of tiny, very double blooms with a pink blush at the center, and produces flower clusters nonstop! So if my surmise about the pollen parent is correct, it’s an everblooming offspring of once-blooming parents.
Thanks again–I plan to try it on purpose next year!