I know proliferation isnt everyones cup of tea but I for one love it. Since roses that proliferate with every bloom can’t be crossed. Can anyone recommend any varieties that have a high percentage of passing on proliferation in your experience?
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Proliferation is passed on by roses that have it. About half of your seedlings will have it, if one parent is a modern floribunda and the other is a rose that proliferates.
I’ve had it with crossing Charles de Mills with a floribunda, Schneezwerg with Thérèse Bugnet (here the greater part proliferated) and crossings with R. palustris and modern shrub roses. I cannot however give you names of modern repeating roses that proliferate. If you don’t care about having roses flowering in their first year, you could try experimenting with Rugosa hybrids that proliferate. If repeat is no concern at all, I’d recommend Charles de Mills (only to use as seed parent) or Tuscany Superb and cross these with modern floribunda roses.
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One springs to mind. Gypsy Boy/Zigeunerknabe is a good proliferater. This already is a cross of a non-repeating proliferating rose and a modern repeating one. So crossing this one with a modern repeating rose, will give you about half repeating roses and some of them may also proliferate. I like this rose a lot. It is a tough one.
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Oh Cherryfire, my apologies. You meant proliferation in flowers. I was thinking of vegetative proliferation, roses creating suckers. I probably mistransated it, English is not my native tongue. So my ideas above are about roses that create suckers.
Proliferation in flowers is something that happens due to cold and humidity. Some hormonal disturbance. You can have years that no rose proliferates and some years it does occur frequently with different roses. I’m afraid I can only recomment trying to cross with rose plants that proliferate in their flowers occasionally and hope you have offspring that also is prone to this. It will be hard to test them for it.
I’ve seen it mostly with old garden roses like Mme. Hardy (quite often, but she is sterile), Mme. Isaac Pereire, Charles de Mills (not that often), Ispahan (sterile also), Great Western, Duc de Cambridge.
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Clotilde Soupert. I found most (if not all) offspring of that variety show proliferate, no matter how double they are (It seems can’t produce single seedlings). For CS itself, the first two flushes (April to June) are large, very double, with normal pistils (so you can use it as seed parent, it set seeds well), but summer flowers are small, pom pom liked (similar to Blush Noisette) and heavily proliferated. For its seedlings, now I found ones with fewer petals tend to produce normal pistils, but very double ones still proliferate. The proliferate ones still have some normal stamens so you can at least use them as pollen parents.
In addition, some double Teas or Tea-related roses like Devoniensis, Perle d’Or and even The Fairy tend to produce some proliferated flowers in their first flush. Devonensis can pass that trait but I have only one seedling.
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I never raised anything from it, but Tequilla Sunrise 'Tequila Sunrise' Rose proliferated with nearly every flower it produced in all the years I grew it. It didn’t matter whether I fertilized it or not, how hot or cold it was, nearly every flower was vegetative growth with petals. It often seemed all I had to do was walk by it with a container of fertilizer and the proliferation intensified. Otherwise, it was a splendid PLANT and it did “flower” a lot. They were just usually pretty awful.
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