Steve,
Not wanting to hijack a topic here, however, might the answers be quite different if the question is “Which hybrid tea has consistantly produced the most disease free seedlings?” I love disease free roses in any shape or form, but in seedlings it might be the most desirable.
Warren, thanks so much! I tried for two years to germinate QE seeds with no luck. How long do you leave yours on the bush?
Judith I normally leave them on untill they colour, but I think its all in the strafication and they probably have thick walls surrounding the chamber in the seed. They do take a long time to germinate as well.
A lot of the Queen Elizabeths out there have viruses and this can negatively affect germination.
Hi Adam its not the Queen Elizabeths which have the virus’s but the dirty rootstock they have been budded onto and then those used as mother plants.
I’ve never tried to germinate QE seed the usual way (only done a couple of embryo culture trials on it…I found the embryos have a weird shape to them, and there are higher than usual twin embryos). If I were harvesting hips from QE (or whatever other rose for that matter) and the hips had not turned color by 3 months of hip set, I would just go ahead and harvest the hips at 3 months anyways, most of the embryos should be mature enough by then.
Elina does real well here in BS/fungus heaven, but by early fall, it too has lost a good half of its bottom foliage to BS. It also has fantastic rebloom for the size of its flowers. QE not quite that good here. As stated countless times by many participants on this forum, location/climate factors really are key to conversations regarding “disease resistance”.