it’s grazy… but
does anybody know if a rose hip is climacteric and if so, the after ripening can be speeded up e.g. by storage together with tomatoes due to ethene respiration?
maybe a good idea to test it?
cheers
Bernhard
That’s a great question and idea. My suspicion is no. Let me tell you why. Strawberries are not climateric. Strawberries have achenes, complete individual fruits, connected to a swollen recepticle. The recepticle is what we eat. The whole fruits are individual achenes, the dry seed like structures. They happen to be a single embryo with a seed coat, and then the whole pericarp, or fruit, attached thinly and securely around the embryo. Roses have achenes and are the same in that regard. The whole structure is just inside in instead of inside out as a strawberry. It is recepticle tissue that turns color in roses too.
It is fruits that typically respond to ethylene and not recepticle tissue. Apples and other pomes are a bit unique in that recepticle comes around the ovary and swell. The overall fruit/ recepticle tissue is responsive.
I used ethylene in experiments to germinate rose seeds (achenes) and there was no effect.
I may be wrong, but from these pieces coming together I suspect roses are not very responsive to ethylene to speeding up color change and softening of the recepticle tissue. In the past I tried what you are doing, but it didn’t really seem to speed things along. An experiment with replications and controls would be great to help confirm one way or another.
David
The real question is whether speeding the ripening of the hip would nave any effect on the embryos inside, or even on the pericarps. I suspect not.
David, Don,
thank you both for response, although your comments are not very encouraging. My thought was that a rose hip is more like an apple than a strawberry and therefore it will maybe work.
The procedure of after maturing at a warm place, inside the house, has been mentioned still in old books e.g. by Rudof Geschwind. But he forgot to say us, how it works. He recommended to put the harvested hip in a pot of wet soil and to keep it inside, until the hip is red. Anyhow, a lot of the hobby- hybridizers follow this, without making a short test or comparison any time, if this is really useful.
So, the small test arrangement will also show if this method has an impact or not. There is also another hip in the same age remaining on the shrub, which I will include as control and which goes directly in the Stratification process,2 weeks warm, 8 weeks fridge.
As it is still prepared, I will continue and if I will find a visible impact, I will schedule a more reproducible test design.
The question is indeed, if the embryo has ripened enough when harvesting the hip (The hips have grown about 16 weeks on the shrub and show little red cheeks at their
“It is fruits that typically respond to ethylene and not recepticle tissue.”
Not always though. Ethylene gas makes pineapples bloom. (If anyone has an indoor plant, place rotten bananas by it to make it bloom).
Bernhard, if those hips have already been on the bush for 16 weeks the seeds should be mature anyway, regardless of the coloration of the hip. The hip will probably develop more color as it ages, but it’s doubtful that the germination of its seeds will, on average, be any better than that of other mature hips from the same cross. If you were to take some underage hips, perhaps 7-8 weeks old, and treat them in this way and leave others of the same age untreated, you’d have a better chance of showing that the treatment has a significant effect on germination.
“if those hips have already been on the bush for 16 weeks the seeds should be mature anyway”
I’m sceptic, it’s rather green, very firm and taste astringent.
As it was a cold summer here, the corn harvest is also 4 weeks behind.
But your proposal is also good stuff for more eperiments, I will notice this for my later retirement activities 
cheers
Bernhard
“Not always though. Ethylene gas makes pineapples bloom”
…and roses too.
just found this between my older pics.
cheers
Bernhard
Bernhard, where are you located? I’m near Edmonton, Alberta, the summer here was also very cool and I had needed to harvest many immature hips before the severe frost of several weeks ago, what a poor season! Most were struck as cuttings and have continued their ripening, though many of the HT hips have instead just rotted.
Terry
“Bernhard, where are you located? I’m near Edmonton, Alberta”
Terry,
I’m writing from near Hamburg, Germany, believe the ‘global warming’ was absent here, most of the time.
“…If you were to take some underage hips, perhaps 7-8 weeks old, and treat them in this way…”
Peter,
I forgot to mention the other reason, why not starting earlier in the ripening process. The final initial step of fruit ripening must still have startet, otherwise it will not work. You can ask an apple farmer
cheers
Bernhard
to continue this topic…
my little test I’ve cancelled after one week as I recognized my mistake in the test design. The test hip was covered, the control hip not. One should take more time for the schedule…Shame on me…
but I imposed a member of the German ‘planten forum’ to participate. She startet with banana peel as ethylen donor and has reportet now, that the hip with the banana is clearly stronger red than the control hip.
maybe the banana is anyhow the better promotor, as Tomatoes can have lost the ability to produce the ethen, due to hybridizer activities. Those fruits can be ripened controlled.
continue, when a pic is available…
cheers
Bernhard
the pics are now available and it looks very promising.
I know that we need more of such results to be sure, so keep your apples away and change to bananas
regards
Bernhard
Link: forum.planten.de/index.php/topic,21228.msg436065.html#msg436065
The embryos are mature and possible to germinate with time. Isn’t ripening and coloring of the hip to permit the release of the seed, and to potentially attract something to EAT it, to release the seed?
Bernhard: Thanks for the link. I normally follow them to see where they go and this one led to one of the best if not the best I’ve seen for roses. I really liked the full size rose bush pictures and the diversity of the plants and some with a huge amount of hips. The rose garden pictures and commercial set ups was also great. It’ll take me days to explore. Thanks again.
“The embryos are mature and possible to germinate with time. Isn’t ripening and coloring of the hip to permit the release of the seed, and to potentially attract something to EAT it, to release the seed?”
Kim,
that is indeed still the question as I mentioned above. Does anybody know a germination comparison of hips at different Maturation states?
cheers
Bernhard
maybe someone will be interested in the (interim)result of the small experiment done in the last autumn ?
Test (afterripened with tomatoe): 4/9 germinated (10. Feb. 2011,11. Feb. 2011,15. Feb. 2011,24. Mrz. 2011)
Control 1 (without tomatoe, same temperature conditions): 0/6
Control2 (instaed of afterripening direct stratification resulting in 4 weeks longer stratification time as the test and control 1): 0/11
the girl which had done the test with banana peel got 3 germinations from the test and also none from the control.
with this result I would suggest, that it is useful to treat unripe hips this way. More test would be helpful to confirm this.
cheers
Bernhard
Wandered by a place called Yungay, Peru which no doubt has one of the largest rose gardens in the world. No spray, no fert, not much upkeep. Thousands of hips on thousands of roses. These hips where well mature and then some. Some gardens where just weed patches with vigorous roses outgrowing the weeds. Wouldn’t surprise me if there where naturalized seedlings or bushes growing. Had to keep up with the guide so snaped pictures fast and can maybe show some later.
In Lima 24 cut roses for five bucks, thornless after plucking. Rose plants bud grafted for 1.45.
I will never forget this day, I was using a rose as a seed parent at some ones home, had it loaded with D Austin crosses. I went one day to check on their progress, and low and behold, they had dead headed the bush plus my hips, which were all placed neatly with tags and green as limes on the back porch. Out of 10 crosses I only got 3 seedlings, way to immature.
I can remember just standing there totally shocked.
Yungay
I didn’t realize how big this was till about 1/3 into it. The photos are of about 1/2 the area. There was probable 10-15 gal. of hips going to waste.
Neil, I’m curious how one happens to wander by a mountainside garden in Peru.
Could the garden be Yungai National Cemetery? It is built on the ruins of the town of Yungay which was buried in a massive landslide in 1970 in which 25,000 people died. It takes the form of a cross a half-mile long.
See the wikipedia for Yungay a description of the event.
If you have Google Earth installed download this file to see the town that once stood where the garden is now: