In 2018 I found a strange rose in the rose garden of Shanghai Botanical Garden. I checked FOC but still have no idea about its identity. Then I asked a rose expert and he told me that it’s R. pseudobanksiae, but some characters seems not identical to the description of that species. These days I red a book about species roses of China, it said that R. pseudobanksiae is a hybrid between R. banksiae and R. multiflora.
I found that the unknown rose certainly has characters of both R. banksiae and R. multiflora, and has some interesting characters: moderately vigorous, umbels of flowers like R. banksiae but the flower looks like R. multiflora, slender canes with small, narrow leaflets like R. banksiae, and all parts of the plant are completely thornless. Although sometimes get slight mildew, it’s relatively healthy.
Although I never find this rose set any hips, I’m considering use it as a pollen parent. Perhaps it can be a “bridge” for R. banksiae and garden roses.
The following photos are a semi-double R. banksiae variety I found. It can set many hips even no compatible pollen sources nearby, have some normal anthers and completely thornless.
I have some that look similar, both the bunches of tiny single flowers with 5 petals and the hips. I grew them from seed a few years ago, and they flowered in a few months from seed. The seeds were sold as Rosa chinensis Angel Wings. They are very healthy, floriferous and scented, have lots of these tiny flowers followed by bunches of tiny decorative red hips. I find that I have to prune them well to get them to produce lots of flowers and look tidy. I let one overgrow and it didn’t flower so well. They are quite small, miniature rose bushes, about two feet tall.
Mine were just white and pink with 5 petals, probably because I didn’t plant the seeds carefully and only two came up, and I took cuttings from those, but it seems they come in lots of different colours, and sometimes the flowers are double.
As this doesn’t appear to be in the US, perhaps someone may find crossing 'Pookah' Rose with Banksiae useful? In my experience, Pookah is what Ballerina should have been in the warmer areas of the US. Ballerina remains “polyantha” growth in more severe climates, but when released in the “endless summer” areas, it produces rampant, climbing growth. I observed one literally eating a pine tree in Huntington Beach, CA years ago. Add that it has never met a fungal disease it didn’t adore and it leaves MUCH to be desired. Pookah not only remains a more respectable garden shrub, with significantly better color and NO disease issues in areas Ballerina can’t be kept clean without chemical intervention, and it would definitely be my choice to use with Banksiae to produce something hopefully useful.
I have two varieties like this, one is single, looks like a dwarf, ever-blooming version of R. multiflora but leaves are glossy, it’s bred by a Chinese rose expert. The other is labled as R. multiflora ‘Nana’, it’s semi-double with matte leaves. Both of them set a lot of tiny OP hips. I’m planing to collect some to discover the trait of its seedlings (the varieties nearby are LCLs, Noisettes and climbing hybrid multifloras).
I wonder how different the first-generation results of the proposed crosses might be from, say, ‘Purezza’ (‘Tom Thumb’ × R. banksiae). The dwarf, reblooming hybrids of R. multiflora are pretty closely related to the dwarf hybrids of R. ×chinensis, after all, so any dissimilarities really might come down to slight differences in parental disease resistance and rebloom. Whatever its parentage might have been, I can attest that Mansuino’s ‘Letitzia Bianca’ was not especially blackspot resistant when I tried growing it years ago. For what it’s worth, some hybrids of R. banksiae are not Rose Rosette Disease resistant, either, even though I’ve never seen the species itself contract RRD even under high pressure. Rosa ×fortuneana is extremely susceptible to RRD. I haven’t seen any symptoms on ‘Purezza’ yet.
I don’t think ‘Letizia Bianca’ has any typical character of R. banksiae despite HMF classify it as Hybrid Banksiae, at least it is very unlikely to be F1 or even F2 of R. banksiae. ‘Purezza’ looks like a “pure” banksiae, does it has any character of ‘Tom Thumb’? I don’t have any experience on both.
As my observation Rosa ×fortuneana is not healthy. It always show noticeable damage of blackspot or other type with leaf spot while its parents, R. laevigata and R. banksiae are almost trouble free.
I agree that it’s difficult to detect the R. banksiae influence in ‘Letitzia Bianca’, although it seems from other breeders’ work that it is a species with characteristics that are at first dominant, and then very quickly diluted in very much the same way. It could be that ‘Purezza’ was its parent, with a non-banksiae rose the other. The everblooming, small, shrubby habit could not have arisen in an F1 hybrid, that’s for sure.
The fragrance of ‘Letitzia Bianca’ certainly seemed to have elements of the species, and the unusual petal shape (for something that otherwise resembles a China) might also owe its origins to the R. banksiae in the background.
‘Purezza’ is quite similar in overall appearance to R. banksiae var. banksiae, but there are some differences. The flowers are larger and the flowering branchlets are longer, and it seems to start flowering here slightly later and continues over a longer period of time. I haven’t had any repeat yet, but others have, and that might come with time and age. The disease resistance in the early part of the growing season is also not as good as R. banksiae, although the leaves on vigorous summer shoots generally remain fairly clean.
