Has anyone ever tried (or grown even) an Alister Clark rose called ‘Nancy Hayward’? I was in a garden near Hobart (Oatlands) last Friday which had one growing and it was covered in BIG OP hips. It gets quite cold there in Oatlands over winter (down to -10
Were those hips like the usual gigantea hips which are massive but contain only 3 or so achenes? Gigantea seed is very very thick, and the embryos are so tiny…encased/cemented in, very deeply inside. I dont know HOW they get to germinate in nature…
NH looks like an OP of its mom (Jessie Clark).
Externally similar. Don’t know about No. seeds. They weren’t mature. Gigantea hips I’ve had in the past usually had good numbers of seeds but are, as you say, very hard and the embryos hard to extract. The ones I have in now have been stratifying for 2-3 months and for the last month I’ve been cycling them between the fridge and room temperature to simulate spring. They’ve just been sown and I don’t expect they will start coming up for a year or two though when stratified in peat, like they were, there seems to be some kind of biological action, different to being in paper towel, that looks like it is degrading the achene… so I am hopeful of being surprised.
The pedigree of NH is given as ‘Jessie Clark’ x seedling. NH resembles gigantea in every way except flower colour and remonatncy. Probably doesn’t get as big but not far off it.
I am speculating here that the peat idea you mention is a very good idea over the paper towel… It is acid, and it probably works on a number of levels (antimicrobial, etching/scarifying properties against the achene wall etc)… I am not experienced with any rose seed stratification, however I can tell you peat did wonders for me with cold stratification of peach stones when I tried that for fun a few years back.
Best of luck with your Viru Gigantea, I believe the clone has some yellow coloration, right?!