With all these interesting threads about roxburghii I had to order one.
I had the thought: has anyone tried crossing it with mosses? Would you get mossy prickles on the buds?
has anyone tried crossing it with mosses? Would you get mossy prickles on the buds?
Joe, I got a couple embryos from Mousseau du Japon on roxburghii normalis but can’t say off-hand whether they survived. I’ll check and let you know if they did. For sure, though, none have flowered if they survive so I cannot answer that question but it’s an interesting one.
You will likely find cross compatibility to be a challenge (as well as keeping your roxburghii alive over the winter). In addition to Mousseau du Japon I got embryos from these pollens on roxburghii:
Carefree Delight
Fashion
Mister Lincoln
However, in my hands none of the following pollens have been successful on roxburghii so far:
02-036-1 Easy Goin’ X Suzanne
174-02-17
54-08-08
Blueberry Hill
Brothers Grimm
Condoleeza (has moss genes)
Floradora
Francois Juranville
Golden Horizons
Harisons Yellow
Joycie
Joyseed
Lavender Pinocchio
Lynnie OP composite
Magic Wand
Magseed
Morsoul
Orange Moss
Papoose
R-15-01
GOLDAXDORHOR (a Rippetoe banksea)
Rosa chinensis spontenea
Rosa virginiana
Rosa wichuraiana
Roses Are Red
Sweet Chariot
Tuscany
Everything in my stable gets dosed with roxburghii pollen every season. So far only these crosses have yielded embryos:
Sympathie
Francois Juranville
Fashion
Condoleeza
Of these, Francois has given the greatest number of embryos but nearly all failed germination. Of the others, I can’t recall which but there are a couple seedlings in the pot ghetto that are obvious hybrids and one or two that I am unsure about.
I should be able to offer you some OP roxburghii normalis seeds this fall, remind me in November if you are interested.
An article referenced on HMF called Cross- and self-compatibility in various species of the genus Rosa, states the following fertility data:
R. roxburghii f. normalis > Rehd. et Wils Ploidy 2x
Pollen fertility 65.8%
Selfed Fruit set 0%
If you had OP hips forming on plants of roxburghii normalis would it be reasonable to expect that most, if not all, OP hips would be hybrids with whatever you have around you making it worthwhile to grow all of them in the hope of getting a useful roxburghii link for future breeding?
Don, Simon,
Thanks for the excellent information.
I would accept and grow OP roxb. seed, Don, but with Simon’s info on self-incompatibility you may want to keep them for yourself. Perhaps some of your crosses will have occured naturally. Issues with winter hardiness might interfere with my ability to grow on seedlings unless they’re crossed with something hardy. I can give them one winter inside.
I’ll keep my R. roxbughii in a pot and put it in storage over winter. Have you tried it on Carefree Beauty, Don?
Selfed Fruit set 0%
I’m confident that my roxies are quite self-fertile. Consider domestic apples for a moment. Some are self sterile so you need a pollen partner for fruit set while others are capable of self pollination. Domestic apples are all the same species, M. sieversii, so if one population of apples can differ from another within a species then why not roses?
Even if all the seeds were known to be hybrids the logistics of managing them to a useful state for breeding imposes a limit on the number I could keep. In fact I have eleven roxburghii op embryos in the refrigerator right now that were so far down the priority list that they didn’t get germinated this season.
My main objective with roxburghii, anyway, is to see if it can induce haploidization and you could answer that question as well as I could.
I’ll keep my R. roxbughii in a pot and put it in storage over winter.
I do this, having made a lean-to against the house for the purpose. In the southern USA roxburghii gets pretty big but in a pot in the northeast it stays manageable. Mine have had two winters in the box so far.
I do not have Carefree Beauty so have not tested roxburghii pollen on it. My advice is to ignore past failures and keep pounding. These crosses are so wide that they can be expected to work almost never regardless of the partner.