If you don’t mind telling us more about the rebloom, I’d be very interested to hear about it.
For me it has been more or less continuous with a couple of flowers opening every couple of days (since I have had it). Obviously most fail and dry up and fall off promptly; that said, I have three hips forming!!!
Jon good luck with your seeds. I wonder if either R. minutifolia and stellata have genes for ounce blooming habit. It seems to me that them living in the desert the main factor to flowering would be water. Both also come from fairly warm climates. I do not know if R. stellata is repeat blooming but I will find out soon enough because I have several growing from seed. If your R. minutifolia seed does not seem to want to germinate try leaching out them. I noticed with R. stellata that they where staining the paper towel so after a long time of not germinating I starting changing the paper towel every two weeks with a free damp one. This seemed to start germination. Since it is a dry land plant it does make sense. Keep us informed.
By the way do you have any pollen from R. minuitolia available? And are these open pollinated seed or from crosses?
Jon, the hip looks great - good luck with it!
Update on my supposed R. minutifolia seeds - all of the seedlings bloomed like modern roses. I am sure now that they were OP seeds. Bummer…
Jim Sproul
I thought I’d post some photos on the propensity of this plant to look dead at times. Here’s a few pics of my R. Minutifolia plant in February and one taken today. I used to think it was heat that knocked it into dormancy, as the last time it did this was in August. But this time it happened in February, an unusally wet February. Go figure. But it comes right back with no special care if you just leave it alone for awhile to sleep.
Kathy
And today:
Mine used to do the same thing.
I made the mistake of putting it in the ground where it grew backwards till I lost it.
Seems to do much better in a container from what I’ve observed. It doesn’t like to go dry and enjoyed being coddled a bit which I found surprising.
Ralph Moore used to have it budded to an understock, I think it was Dr. Huey. It made a really ugly budded plant but it did flower quite a bit.
Darn! It snookered me. I surely tossed a live plant.
I guess it is a safer bet to cut away some of the dead-looking branchlets, to check and see see if the wood is green inside…before it is binned…this might avoid tossing a live plant that does this sorta weird “death trick”" lol.
Oh, I did that. The only visible green is a tiny bit of the cambium layer so small it seems like an illusion. The wood seems to be naturally brittle.
hard to be sure, but that sure sound pretty close to dead to me…I would have binned that also…lol
Perhaps it is too much water that triggers dormancy – maybe you loved it to death, so to speak, Cass. As I’m thinking about this, I surely was watering every day in August (and sometimes twice) as my normal potted roses dry out quite fast at that time of year. It is as hot as we get here, and also somewhat dry and the plants are usually getting too large for whatever size pot they are in and they just suck the water down at that time of year. And in February this year, we had rain after rain after rain - so probably too much water then too. And it looks a little yellower than normal today – maybe it’s time to stop watering it so much now also.
Well, that’s a theory anyway. I think many people have been “snookered” by this rose. I took a bloom to a show and the judges were wondering how you could keep that plant alive – it seems to have a reputation for not liking captivity. I hear “I had one and it died” alot.
And it does seem to like its little pot. That’s only a one gallon nursery can, and it is only filled halfway up with the original dirt the plant came with last year. But no roots are coming out the drainage holes, which is how I usually adjudge it time to repot.
I have to go to the nursery where I get these next week for something else. If there’s someone on this thread who wants one (or another one, Cass), they are ten dollars each and then I would expect whatever it costs to mail it. Let me know.
Kathy
It’s a generous offer, Kathy, but the timing is bad because I’m leaving on vacation 14 June. I’m not sure we have enough margin of error for mailing.
I put a two gallon dripper in the pot, which means it got about 1/2 gallon of water every other day. Sounds like a lot, but drippers water pretty much straight down, so it’s less than you’d think. I was struck by how small the rootball was.
Adam, I tried collecting pollen yesterday from a flower that was just opening. I waited until today to see if the anthers would release but it appears that it is not making any more (temps in the high 80’s). I know for a fact early in the season it was but I didn’t bother collecting it. I can try early next season if you’re interested.
As far as hybridity- anyone’s guess. I have been working it over… with lots of things, tetraploids and diploids (like multifloras, rugosa, golden chersonese… I mention those three because those hips all came from about that time). Informally though.
I would be interested in that.
Seems like multiflora and rugosa are to safe bets to try with just about anything.
Shoulda been named The Possum Rose. Its rather…odd.
“Seems like multiflora and rugosa are two safe bets to try with just about anything.”
yeah, and I used the endemic wild species multiflora also and a once blooming Carefree Delight x R. multiflora- both singles. So I would expect single once blooming progeny.
I also used the single flowered species rugosa.
golden chersonese is single as well… see no imagination. I crossed a single with all singles.
I love a good single… almost more than semi or double flowers. Don’t write a good single off 
Jon no imagination at all:) But really I think that just trying to use this subgenus suggest you either have a lot of imagination or a great amount of curiosity. Maybe a little of both. I know with me a lot of things are more curiosity than imagination. I was planing to do basically the same cross myself with R. stellata when they got to that point. Right now they are just seedlings. But I figured that by using multiflora or rugosa I would have the best chance of getting something fertile that would bridge the gap between this subgenus and modern roses. So if you took my comment as a knocking on you I did not mean it to come out that way.