Minutifolia arrived at my place yesterday.
I am so pleased with it. I feel as if I already know the prickles and the gangly canes suggest a couple of distant cousins.
My husband looked at it and asked if it’s a rose and then he looked at the stipules.
It is so neat to meet the rose I read about and to see it up close.
It definitely won’t be grown in my local soils and will spend winters between my kitchen and my solar porch.
It held its leaves on its way east and that, in itself, is different that many California roses which have dropped leaves wantonly when boxed up for four or five days.
Thank you, Kathy, for knowing a resource for this rose and for sharing.
Ann
I will puke on sight of the next Potentilla fruiticosa I see, lol. Seeing thousands upon thousands of them will induce that. I promise. The upper and midwest need some other form of repeat-blooming color.
I think the rose is much more interesting. It would be a cool to see a heat-dormant rose for places like an Arizona landscape.
Being a species, I only see one of two possibilities.
a) The species is dioecious, like R. setigera
b) The species experiences autopolyploidism (with diploid, triploid, & tetraploid examples found in wild populations).
I can think of other possibilities, too. I’ve seen large wild populations with no hips in northern California, i.e. thickets 20 feet long the 10 feet deep. In Northern California (tho this is improbable in Southern California), midge can infest wild populations and prevent flowering and therefore hips set. Midge won’t prevent suckering, however.
I’ve also seen very bizarre flower galls on coastal populations of some kind of wild rose out at the Point Reyes National Seashore. The native plant people claim it may be R. nutkana, tho I have my doubts. The galls were so extensive, so extravagant, and so large that I seriously doubt the blooms could ever set seed. These things were just shy of tennis ball sized. You can see a shot at the link below.
There are climate variables. I’ve read that populations of R. minutifolia bloom suddenly, mid-winter, if and when it rains. No rain, no hips. And if it rains, they bloom mid-winter, not in the springtime. So looking for hips in June or July would be too late if rain and flowering occurred in January to March.
To me, this rose has all the hallmarks of being a remnant of a once-more widespread species that survives only in isolated, widely dispersed pockets. I made that up, but a look at the paleobotany, paleoclimatology and ecology of the regions where this subgenus survives would tell the story. The more highly specialized the species, the less likely it is to being very adaptable.
Link: www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=21.77063
(My new minutifolia has buds!) And me with no pollen and 17F tonight.
Cass, that gall is …a bunch of galled buds in tight little mess, or was that just one gall inside a hip?
The Paleo, paleo, paleo reminds me of some of the refugia left over from the Pleistocene. There are some valleys in the Rockies that have eastern US floras- that are missing for well over a thousand miles until you get to our mountains. There are bits and pieces of more northern biotas down here in the Smokies. These were of great excitment in the 1800s and some of the papers back then showed how much someone could do, just on mule back with a strong backside and an urge to see what was over the next ridgeline.
Ann, I don’t know much about that gall. The galls grew at the ends of laterals. I assumed that they involved flowering material, but I couldn’t tell if it was a single bloom, a cluster or a leaf gall at the tips of the canes. That stand of Rosa is far out onto the promontory of Point Reyes National Seashore, within a very unusual, coastal-influenced ecology subjected to salt spray, constant wind, and very cool temperatures. I mean to go back there this coming year in the springtime to take a look at the stand during the flowering season.
So does anyone know how much cold can these two roses take? I was also wondering if seed treatment on roses from warmer climates is it the same or do they not like to be chilled? For example tea roses…
I just read a 1993 article on R. minutifolia from Pacific Horticulture
Those of you with recently acquired plants might be interested in a few points. It grows, flowers and sets seed in winter, when it rains, usually between November and March. It seems to be self-infertile. Seed requires no stratification, not surprising because there’s no frost in its native habitat. I suspect it’s really tender. It’s leafless in summer and can live 9 months without water. FWIW, I thought my plant was dead because it dropped all its leaves by late June, but it might have been dormant instead.
A summary of the article is at the link. The article is “The Xerophytic Rose.”
Link: www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.17261&tab=7
I like it. Mine’s growing out really well… although I’m a touch upset with myself because I didn’t plan ahead for yet another potted houseplant. I think if I get some seedlings from it these next few years, I will sacrifice it to the cold just to see how much it can take. I have a few observations that I haven’t heard mentioned. It has a root system unlike any other rose I’ve seen- it wants to have very long tap roots with a mass of (azalea like)fibrous roots at the end. For that reason, I’m wondering how it would do as a root stock for desert areas and if it would be graft compatible with other rose varieties. My second observation is that it has a very piney (is that a word???) smelling resinous sap unlike any other rose I’ve ever experienced.
It survived without special care here in the low desert for a few seasons before I lost it.
I made the mistake of putting it in the ground. It seemed much happier in a container.
Minutifolia isn’t as tender nor as water intolerant as thought. I had a stand of it in my garden in Newhall nearly twenty years ago which flourished until I messed with it. The soil was native, virgin desert adobe, drained fairly well but was quite “loving”, becoming very sticky when wet. Neither minutifolia nor Stellata mirifica had any difficulties with water, drainage nor temperatures there. It got hot and it got cold, with a hundred degree swing between summer and winter (15-115 degrees F). The Santa Clarita Valley is just over the Grapevine from Jim Sproul in Bakersfield.
I dug tip rootings of minutifolia and potted them in commercial planter mix I purchased from a local soil company and they grew quite well for many years. They’d flower and them tip root in all of the surrounding cans in the pot ghetto. I found both roses bloomed as long as they were watered, and they received the same water at the same schedule as the other roses in the garden.
The three minutifolia plants I have now are from Tree of Life. They’re blooming now in five gallon cans of Miracle Grow Moisture Control potting soil on a south facing hillside in the Santa Monica mountains. It’s definitely a Valley climate with slight coastal influence. They get exactly the same treatment as the commercial roses and all of my seedlings. Stellata mirifica is with them, but receives more western exposure with some shade from a walnut and California pepper at mid day.
I’ve pimped pollen on both and pimped theirs on most of everything else around, all with little reward. The closest I’ve come was one hip on Anytime, which was eaten before I could harvest it.
I’ve noticed more of the “dead plant” look when the minutifolias have been in too sandy soil, too fast drainage with too little water holding capacity. Good air circulation in the root zone appears to be the trick. As long as there is some moisture available, they don’t look dormant, deciduous nor ‘dead’ in the heat here.
Las Pilitas Nursery in Escondido has two Rosa minutifolia growing well at their nursery site, under slightly different conditions. Both of these are likely from the Otay Mesa genetic stock collected by Tree of Life Nursery.
The first is growing under a 100+ year old Coast Live Oak tree in native heavy clay soil. It never receives supplemental water, goes completely dormant for half the year during the hot months, and leafs out with the winter rains. This one puts out a minimal bloom unless the winter rains are significant. It has thrown small canes, and looks like it wants to form a thicket but can’t break into the hard soil. It is several years old at this point and still a tiny plant, but alive! It gets half day, morning sun, then afternoon shade from the oak.
The second is growing near the front of the nursery in a large mound of decomposed granite near a seasonal creak bed in full sun. This area is within their hand-irrigated gardens and gets occasional summer water when they are not under drought restrictions. The rose responds excellently to summer water greening up and putting out blooms, though the spring bloom is far more intense. One year when it got regular water this plant did not seem to enter dormancy at all. Interestingly, this specimen has spread by rhizome, rather than by natural layering, and gets a little bigger each year. It does throw canes, but I believe the nursery staff cuts the plant back to the ground each fall.
I have watched these plants closely for several years and, at least within these specific cultural conditions, they appear to be long-lived and suffer from no pest or disease issues. Very minor amounts of summer water give excellent results, at least in good drainage, and with no fertilizer or even top mulch used at all.
I have tried unsuccessfully to root this species from cuttings twice. Layering and rhizome propagation seem more likely to be successful.
We finished planting all of our seeds yesterday and as it turns out, we had 2 hips with a total of 32 seeds from R. minutifolia as the pollen parent. I have my fingers crossed that I will have some non-remontant seedlings sprouting from these!
Jim Sproul
Congratulations Jim! I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you! The only thing I ever may have gotten from it was with Anytime and nothing ever came from that hip.
I have to wonder what one would want with a minutifolia cross (although curiosity is a good enough reason). Shortened internodes and perhaps that deeply incised rugose foliage would look good in a slightly larger version. I have a flower bud starting to show some color now (I like the bristles/moss!)- sure looks like it has very tiny (but prolific) blooms.
Drought tolerance would be reason enough in our Mediterranean climate.
Then there’s just the challenge of accomplishing it.
We never know how a new species might influence the genome. Sometimes there are some nice surprises.
Jim, have you considered letting Don have a crack at a few of those seed via embryo culture?
If Kim’s experience is any indication you might get a better shot at viability that way.
I have some stellata distant recurrent progenies combined with bracteata, rugosa, foliolosa, nitida from a year 2000 initial cross. Nice flowers with quite distinct foliage. The rather stiff growth is not surprising as all parent species share this characteristic. One seedling with very large smooth purple flowers is actually being entered in Den Haag international roses trials that looks more like rugosa than like the other species.
I am yearly adding other species in order to diversify ornamental features.
Without backcrossing to species shortened internodes are lost in two generations. Just as recurrence is added.
Fertility within these combinations is generally high as is germinability.
Pierre, sounds like you have some very interesting things coming along! Glad to hear there is good fertility!
Thanks Kim! Although, I am not certain that anything will come of them… we shall see soon!
Robert, embryo culture may be the way to go. I have already planted the seeds. I will see what happens in the next 2 months, then if they don’t germinate, may try to find them and get help from Don if possible.
Jim Sproul
It’s the little things in life that make me happy. I’m super excited because I have a couple of hips forming on minutifolia. If I get some seedlings from it, I will set it out and sacrifice it to the winter gods.
BTW it took me awhile for it to dawn on me, but this species is recurrent.