Ross Rambler seems to produce tons of hips. What is interesting for me is that every op hip I have collected from Ross Rambler do not have any seeds. I collected around 30 hips last summer and put them in baggies in the fridge. Last week I took the time to cut them up No seeds.
Is this typical? Has anyone used it in crosses? Is it a better pollen parent that seed parent? If it does produce seed, what are typical seed counts for a hip?
Steve,
Are the hips small?
If they are, this might be the reason.
Could the problem be those chalcidoid wasps that lay eggs in the hips and whose larvae eat the seeds before fall?
(These wasps are supposed to be one of the ways that multiflora can be bio-controlled. They are described in the link below after the Rose Rosette part.)
http://www.invasive.org/eastern/biocontrol/22MultifloraRose.html
They were smaller hips. What was odd is that they went from flower to hip and finally to ripe hip (bright red) very quickly.
I do have wasp problems. Several of my species roses have been developing the fuzzy growths that result from wasp larvae. One of my r. rubignosas looked like Oscar the Grouch for a while till I cut them off. My kids like to have me cut them open so they can see the little wormslarva. Out of Yesteryear was even affected.
Rosa elganteria and californica do this for me like clock-work. One year they tried it on Linda Campbell, but stopped. I dunno what it is about those 2 similar species that the wasps love.
The gall forming wasps are different from the wasps that lay eggs inside of the hips. (What makes the egg destroying wasp effective is that when it sticks its egg-laying apparatus IN the hip, the wasp eggs are laid right next to the rose seeds that are beginning to grow. This doesn’t interfere at all with the swelling of the ‘hip’ itself.
The gall forming wasps just got to my garden this past year; I thought I knew what they were, but the local plant pathologists had never seen them before. Ah, the joys of having a rose collection. Minor problems get multiplied because there’s a rose for every potential pest. Jadae, thanks for the warning about californica; mine are small (dry summers) but are starting to put on size and I’d really like to keep the galls away from my garden.
The wasp is one of the reasons given for using 2 inch by 2 inch zip lock bags on polinated flowers.
See:
Clarification: I only get the gall/moss wasps. I think theyre cute, to be honest, lol. Theyre a good convo piece hahaha.
My Ross Rambler set op hips this year and there were seeds in them, I don’t remember how many, but there were quite a few…I haven’t had any germination though, but nothing I’ve planted has germinated, so I think it’s my method, not the seeds. When everyone started posting their germination results I was pretty jealous! I’m still checking them though, but now I feel like I’m waiting for a miracle!
Koren in Saskatoon
I just checked on them…still nothing.
There are lots of seeds though, and they’re big seeds, dark brown, very round.
I’ll let you know if I have any luck with them.
Koren