I have a Buck rose named Earth Song that is showing some behavior that I am curious about. I planted Earth Song last summer. It was a smaller own root bare root from Kedem. It produced no open pollinated hips last year though it did bloom well.
This year it has bloomed a lot more and has been a strong growing rose. I have not dead-headed this rose this year but it set very few open pollinated hips. It did set some but all were very small. There are 3 exceptions. There are 3 very large hips almost the size of ping pong balls and are literally bursting with seed. One of these 3, one is from a flower to which I had introduced pollen from a rose Golden Age. The other 2 are OP.
What I am wondering is this. Is it reasonable to expect that the 2 large OP hips are a result of a cross pollination from a different rose and not a self pollination?
Earth Song and Golden Age are right next to each other and all the OP hips are on the branches that are right next to Golden Age. I would never claim that these are a ES X GA in my notes, I am just wondering what the probability of this being the actual cross.
-Steve