Open pollinated seedlings from F1 carolina X gallica

Many years ago, one of the only pollens that successfully set hips for me on Rosa carolina, was from Rosa gallica (Apothecary’s Rose). Although the seedlings resembled their mother more than Rosa gallica, they have subtle differences that make me think they’re probably actual hybrids. In any case, I decided last year to collect a bunch of open-pollinated seeds to grow out an F2 population. So far, they all look relatively similar to each other at this tiny size. But there’s one oddball that made me think of the “Where’s Waldo” books. Do you see which one I mean?

Hint: think purple…

I’m guessing that this purple one came from a stray pollen grain of “3/4 Native” which tends to give seedlings with a lot of purple coloration.
The parentage of “3/4 Native” is: (‘Fragrant Cloud’ x Rosa Carolina) X Rosa virginiana ‘V3’ [I think V3 was distributed as ‘Harvest Song’]

Hoping your 3/4 native blooms for me this year. :slight_smile:

I’ll let you know when we get bloom on it here, because you shouldn’t be too far behind us.

I was out mowing yesterday and think I saw some ‘Harvest Song’ still there. If I’m remembering right, didn’t you want a piece of that?

Thomas,

I’d love a piece of Harvest Song if you have some to spare. Thank you for remembering.

I’m collecting anthers from your R. rugosa x R. xanthina right now. I’m hoping I can get some pollen to use?

Pretty sure I can dig you a piece of ‘Harvest Song’, I’ll e-mail you when it’s on its way.

As for the viability of the rugosa X xanthina pollen… I never germinated the seeds, but did set a bunch using that pollen to backcross onto rugosa. So I think you should find that it at least has a small percentage of viable pollen grains.
Good luck!!!

Thank you Thomas.

Still haven’t forgotten Rob, just so mucky out there from all the rain…
In the meantime, I took an update picture of that purple seedling and some other batches of seedlings for 2016 and posted them to my BlogSpot.

Kim, if you’re reading this, please check out the picture of the Legacy seedlings and tell me what you think. I remember you saying that Legacy is difficult to use as a seed parent, because it usually selfs before opening. I think you also said that those selfed seedlings are typically weak and runty. So I used Darts Dash rugosa pollen on Legacy flowers, thinking that it might help the vigor of the seedlings. It also would hopefully put a “rugosa stamp” on them so I could maybe tell that they’re actually from the cross. Do you think that they look much different from what you’ve typically seen from Legacy as a seed parent?

Whenever is good for you Thomas. I have 3 buds on your 3/4 native so I will have pollen to use this spring. :slight_smile:

Tom,

Your R. carolina x R. gallica will bloom for me this season for the first time. I’m looking forward to see what I can get from it using it as a parent. FYI, the plant has been disease free here.

I love the idea of a carolina x gallica cross or the reverse.

I haven’t experimented with Apothecary’s Rose for a while but it seems like can have a greater than the sum of the parts effect in crosses.

Last season I used pollen from Tom’s R. carolina x R. gallica officinalis on the hybrid musk Lichterloh and had a number of seeds that germinated from that cross. I have 3 of those seedlings that have a bud developing on seedlings less than 6". In correspondence with Tom he indicated that his species hybrid tends to occasionally bloom after the main season, on the tips of new canes. Exciting stuff…

Rob, I’m excited and skeptical at the same time. It would be super cool if Tom’s hybrid could throw rebloomers. Super cool. However, it just doesn’t make sense with those two parents.

So these germinated this winter? How many non-blooming siblings do those three have?

Hi Joe. You are probably right about the juvenile bloomers not being hybrids of the pollen parent. I always hope that mother nature will produce the exceptions, like Ralph Moore’s (Golden Angel x R. soulieana) a repeat blooming F1 for example. I had about 30 germinations with 2 in bud now.

A little off topic, but I strongly suspect that Ralph’s R. soulieana was not the species. He got a number of repeaters from the plant, and the foliage and stems lack the grey bloom of the species. Nonetheless, there are a good many purported species offspring out there that repeat when they shouldn’t.

I bought R. soulieana from Moore, 25 years or so ago. What I got looked more like R. wichuraiana, or something akin to it.