Back in the late 1970s or the early 1980s, I had the foolish notion that rugosas were always hardier and more disease resistant than other varieties. Since I liked Agnes, I tried using its pollen on Golden Showers. I got more seeds than I expected, and I did grow one seedling from that cross. It was fertile, despite having few pistils and almost no stamens, but it got blackspot and mildew abundantly (so much for that experiment in improving the hardiness and disease resistance of yellow roses!). And it died over the winter of 1984–not a particularly harsh winter in Lubbock, TX before I was able to enter it in the Ugly Rose of the Year contest. You can see a picture of this seedling below.
My mother-in-law knows that I will collect hips from the different places that I visit just to see what I will get when I germinate the seeds. In the fall of 2005 she was visiting Nova Scotia and Maine. She collected a whole bunch of R.rugosa hips that were growing wild on the beach and brought them back for me. I germinated some of the seeds more because I didn
All but ONE hip has remained of the R. blanda X Baby Love cross… since last Saturday, most of the hips started to spontaneously abort. The one hip has suddenly swelling with the extra heat we’ve been getting the past few days.
At first… I took no interest in this spontaneous cross but now I do. But who knows if these will even be fertile.
Who knows. Blanda doesn’t like this weather-- and maybe its seedlings wouldn’t either.
I’m seeing a great potential of creating a line of blanda breeding that may incorporate yellow genes.
Sounds good to me. I am trying Rosa californica (the native here is pastel lilac/white, but has a tinge of yellow near the stamens. it also climbs) with Baby Love. It’s a somewhat similar concept to yours. Here’s to hoping that both work!
