Hi everyone,
I grow old roses and my preference is for single or semi-double flowers.
Faced with the multitude of gallica or moss roses with full or nearly full flowers, I wonder why there aren’t more single-flowered varieties?
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Most likely due to “unnatural selection”. When Nature provides you with only four and five petal flowers, when one with more petals arises, that’s the one you select for and retain. There may well have been more single petaled types but Humans have selected and maintained those more heavily petaled types.
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I’m including one of my moss roses. It’s called “Lisa”. I also wanted to throw it away, but a woman from England saw it on Facebook and said: “I love this rose”. That’s what I named it after and registered it. It’s a hybrid of rose “Henri Martin” x rose “Splendens”. I like it more and more.
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And also “Alain Blanchard” seedlings.
I threw away quite a few half-full seedlings, and now I regret it.
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Congratulations on these wonderful seedlings! The shades of mauve and purple are gorgeous.
N.B: I’d love to know, how long you waited for the first flowers?
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Why this disinterest in simpler flowers? Is it really so easy to obtain new, simple roses?
I also obtained mossy plants with simple flowers (which flowered in 3/4 years)
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Your flower is very beautiful. I think we need to work in this direction and there will be people interested. Simple-shaped flowers are very charming, it’s just dramatic that old roses bloom only once. However, their beauty is unique and I feel an irreparable weakness in them, which is very difficult to overcome by including modern roses in the selection. Therefore, I am very glad that there are people interested in old and, more importantly, simple-shaped roses.
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Thank you very much. These seedlings were planted in 2020, they bloomed in 2022. Two more of their sisters bloomed last year, but maybe because they were in a very poorly lit place. And these seedlings have already participated in hybridization, aiming to reduce the influence of wrinkling on the leaves of rosa rugosa and to include thorn hybrids. The conclusion is that by continuing the line, the flowering time of old roses is shortened to one, two years. The first and second
photo is a rose “Alain Blanchard” seedling x and “Franciška”. The wrinkling of the leaves has decreased, the flower has a pleasant shine. It blooms once, bears fruit and pollen. And continues to participate in selection, aiming for repeated flowering.
Next, the first cross used the thorn Rosa helenae semiplena, which added a human height to this rose. This purple-lilac color also transfers well, acquiring all sorts of other shades. And the last photo is a seedling of Rose “Alain Blanchard” x “Rose President de Seze” x “Nuitz de yong” seedling. The result is a moss rose. All these seedlings were planted in 2023. They bloomed in 2025. They bloom once, bear fruit and pollen, so they again have their children, which were planted in the bed yesterday
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wonderful color on those seedlings!!
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Your roses are stunning, hoping a few of mine turn out like yours!
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Alain Blanchard, nuit d’young and la belle sultane (or merveille) are good parents. I have some seedlings from 2022 that flowered a few days ago, which is quite interesting. But the risk is producing roses that look very similar.
I closely monitor the progress of some to see if they stand out, but I throw many of them away.
The range of obtaining the single rose is perhaps more restricted than that of the full roses.
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These seedlings are just starting to bloom for the first time and they have beautiful, soft colors. These flowers will continue to change and develop for at least 2-4 years. Besides, I know that they are even more beautiful in person than in the photo. From my experience, I would not rush to do a quick selection now, because it is worth using their pollen in further selection. Sometimes the result is pleasantly surprising.
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Yes and why do breeders only bring out roses for zone 6 78 .I live now in zone 4 and have to breed zone 4 proof plants .It is led by fashion not by love of roses .The breeders have it easy try breeding zone 4 proof roses and see what a job that is ,Single flowers are easy to use as mothers double and cabbage flowers are hard to propagate
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I want to say that I live in zone 4 and I will be growing roses specifically for this zone. Although the climate is warming, this winter has been particularly harsh, with frosts starting right after Christmas and freezing temperatures of -25 to -34 degrees Celsius. Even some ancient roses froze, and the thorn and rosa rugosa hybrids did not even react. With warmer winters, you always have to keep in mind that a cold winter will come point.
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Scientists rebranded global warming as climate change for the simple reason that all weather patterns are warmth driven. The polar vortex’ descent in the northern United States was actually used by politicians in the US in an effort to disprove global warming.
While overall, the planet is warming, the main thing one can count on at the local level will be wider swings in the weather and more extensive patterns of disruption from the norm. All that to say that I would argue that there’s still a lot of validity (if not more) in breeding for resilience and cold hardiness.
I have found that there’s actually a seemingly wider embrace of simple flowers then 50 years ago. The appeal of landscape roses (and those that benefit pollinators) has driven a greater interest in (tolerance for?) such. The plants, imho, need only to have strong flower-power, look good in the landscape, and be carefree to have market potential.
Unfortunately, most of the single flowers I am familiar with generally don’t do well in a vase, so there is that obstacle for those that view roses as cut flowers.
Beautiful seedlings!
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One of the elements of “climate change” is extremes are becoming more extreme. Heat gets hotter. Cold gets colder. Wet areas become wetter and drier areas become drier. When they experience a wet period, they are getting wetter, heavier rain, more extreme. Storms are becoming stronger, more severe. Fun times…
Thankfully, a number of the single or semi single landscape types are less fertile, hence more self cleaning. Ideally, from a landscape prospective, they should be completely infertile and seldom to never require dead heading. Maintenance labor is already creeping outside many municipal budgets. Eliminating the chore of removing fruit and/or “used Kleenex” dead flowers would go along way toward getting more landscape roses planted in more compatible areas.
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Here where I am in the UK we had a mild end to winter however have been having quite a few late frosts. In fact we have one tonight… This is the latest frost I can remember in many years. Most of my roses flowers on once flowering roses are dead… never seen that before. Last week we had 14+ degree celcious through the night now it’s 0-1… driving me mad!
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