I have a seed of ‘Robbie Burnes’ that is a bright, candy apple red color. The other seeds in the hip are brown (6 in all). I’ve never seen a red seed- is this odd? Robyn
I’ve seen rose seed vary in colors from red, tan, cream, black, white, and once in a while a brown.
I’ve never seen a red seed- is this odd?
It’s unusual except for the spins, for which it is unusual not to have red colored seeds. Since Robbie Burns has R. spinosissima as a parent red colored seeds would be expected.
The most memorable non-spin with red seeds that I have seen so far is Veilchenblau, which does make me wonder whether Veilchenblau has some spinossima in its close ancestry. You can see red spin seeds at HMF by looking through my posted images (Prairie Peace, Yellow Altai, the Ross Ramblers, etc). Here are seeds of Veilchenblau:
Link: helpmefind.com/plant/l.php?l=99.115044&tab=9
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I’ve also noted ‘Anne Endt’ seeds to be fairly red too.
Thanks for the pictures Don. The seeds of ‘Prairie Peace’ look very similar. Very interesting! Robyn
Another observation…
I’ve feed colored seeds to my doves, and they come out bleach white once they’ve passed out of them.
So the color may not be part of the seed coat, but the staining from the hips.
Enrique, that would make sense to me, except that only one seed out of 6 was red…what kind of doves do you raise? Robyn
even within hips, seeds will vary in color. Especially with some of the yellow spinnosimmas. I had a few hips with dark brown seeds, and one red one.
I have pet ringneck doves, and I’ve raised quite a few OP seedlings using their help. I’ve noticed that some seedlings tend to be stronger.
I am thinking that weaker seedlings are digested, and the stronger ones undigested.
And they tend to germinate slightly faster-- and without any mold on the paper medium.
I am resurrecting this thread, to mention that I noticed some bright red exogenous seeds on OP hips of Pierre Cardin (Meilolipo, 2008).
Pierre Cardin has beautiful stippling.
![IMG_20230625_095027|417x500]n(upload://zAPGmQ1uTWy3BzOyjdVuSUMqbbn.jpeg)
This rose sets huge OP hips for almost every flower, so I’m experimenting with it to see what germination will be like, and hopefully use it next year.
Parentage is undisclosed, but as I wrote in my comment on Pierre Cardin’s HMF page, I think it may be at least a sister seedling to the unnamed pollen parent of Cinnamon Dolce (MEItadeha), which Meilland introduced a couple years later. In that case Pierre Cardin would be Meizincaro × Prairie Princess. Or else, Pierre Cardin could be a sibling of Cinnamon Dolce itself.
Prairie Princess has spino ancestry, so I guess this would fit well with @Don 's explanation for the red seeds.
This forum’s archive really is wonderfully helpful!
The red coloring is in a fleshy aril that comes off when scratched while fresh, revealing normal-colored achenes. It happens frequently enough in roses with no close relationship to the Scots’ briars–there is no need for that to explain the coloring.
Stefan
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Thank you @MidAtlas ! Heh, I am still new to all this and it seems that the things that seem unusual to me are
often actually very typical… Still have a lot to learn! Thank you for the info!
