Thank you @Plazbo!
I will keep some of them, you never know. BDdC is right next to Huddersfield Choral Society and they flowered at the same time, if they mixed that might be fun. I will admit I would not be excited about a selfling of BDdC though.
One other I am not deadheading is Wild Edric. Yes I know, he’s supposed to be infertile and not set hips but I am going to leave a few of his spent flowers on just to see if maaayybeeeee… It has been insanely windy here, perhaps it might have shaken up the pollen in the flowers as they were opening enough for a miracle to happen.
@pacificjade, I get it, I do the same online. Thank you so much for the suggestion of a possible route to go with the Rugosa-Persica crossings! I am just getting started on this journey and really appreciate the pointers I am getting on this forum!
They were blooming at the same time, so I just tried to cross Jean de Luxembourg, a Ducher rugosa hybrid (DUCjdl), with Eyes on Me (CHEwsumsigns, aka Raspberry Kiss or Bright as a Button).
I tried to make the cross both ways.
The Hulthemia hybrid’s stamens released lots of pollen, the Rugosa hybrid hardly, but a little.
I’m hoping that since JDL doesn’t look to be very Rugosa, it might work. Then again, unfortunately, there’s no information on HMF about JDL’s lineage to give me any clues about fertility.
I’ll update here if either takes.
I have always thought this would be a nice way forward to go with hulthemia hybrids. I have tried using mixed pollen of various hulthemia hybrids on some hardy rugosa hybrids such as ‘Lac Majeau’, ‘Will Aldermann’ and ‘Dart’s Defender’. The descendants do not carry much rugosa characteristics and they are below average in terms of healthiness and growth. Lac Majeau carries a juvenile flowering gene and some of its descendants flowers during their first year. I have had some interesting offspring but yet none with a blotch. The ‘Dart’s Defender’ offspring had problems with genetic incompability and many died just after germinating (roots did not develop). I have some plants left that show promise but they have not yet flowered (they have very nice foliage). I have just added ‘Will Aldermann’ as a mother in this line of breeding, as I have found that it carries a juvenile flowering gene, it doesn’t seem to accept pollen as easily as ‘Lac Majeau’.
I have not started to test for hardiness and I am not sure on how to go forward. I would like to find some nice plants that have some fertility (despite the triploidy) and work those with some hardy shrub roses. Hardiness in the F1 is perhaps not attainable at this point.
If the cross is wide enough, 1 generation of selfing could be tolerated and picked through for greater hardiness. After that, most of rosaceae are highly intolerant.
Rugosa #3 is probably a good bet for such a project, but I am not sure if anyone has it now.
Rheinaupark is a seed fertile triploid, allegedly.
Just a thought, here. The DNA data (Koopmen 2008) suggests that Hulthemia is akin to Rosa foetida, rather than off by itself.
And then, there is a growing body of evidence that Rosa roxburghii is allied to the diploid Pimpinellifoliae.
So, if you want to get some Rugosa-ness into the Hulthemia line, it might be worth trying R. x micrugosa, raised from Rugosa and Roxburghii. This might (?) be a helpful bridge. This one is called ‘Walter Butt’. http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/Rose_Pictures/W/walterbutt.html
Thank you for this fantastic information, Karl K!
I will look for Walter Butt, and any other microrugosas I might be able to order in the fall.
This information also gives me some hope about the crossing I just attempted.
Although Jean de Luxembourg’s parents are undisclosed, it is postulated that he might be a seedling of Dr Eckner, which has foetida in it’s lineage, albeit distantly (via Golden Emblem, Constance, Rayon d’Or and Soleil d’Or). Personally I believe it’s not impossible Ducher may have backcrossed Dr Eckener with one of its Pernet-Ducher ancestors (specifically Constance) to get JdL, which would have added even more foetida to the mix. But that’s all hypothetical of course.
Hi Seasiderooftop, I’m not familiar with Jean de Luxembourg, but from the (few) pics I’ve seen on HMF it looks like it could be related to Rugelda. Rugelda is 1/4 rugosa, Bonanza x Robusta. I also believe that Tantau’s hybrid tea Augusta Luise and its sport Aquarell may come from Rugelda. I grow Aquarell, and if you watch it in early spring, young foliage is deeply serrated and quite veiny. When you look old leaves it is less obvious, but still more serrated than the typical hybrid tea. All these varieties seem to have a tendency to get pink overshadings for sun exposure and wavy petals (this would come from Bonanza), a characteristic bud (when sepals start folding, the point is already opening and spiraling, like if the top part had been cut off) and glossy, veiny and serrated leaves. Aquarell and Augusta Luise also get some nice reddish foliage in the autumn. They’re also very thorny, much like rugosas, but with modern-type (and size) thorns (pruning them is not fun!). If my impression is correct and they’re seedlings of Rugelda, that would make them 1/8 rugosa: not much, but not bad as a starting point.
Thank you jac123!
It could also be Rugelda, I agree.
I didn’t know that about Augusta Luise, very interesting.
By a fun coincidence, I just bought a potted AL last week, and am expecting the delivery in a few days. I will experiment with breeding her with JdL sometime, if he turns out to have some fertility.
I wish Ducher would disclose the parentage! I did try asking them for some info after buying it from them; at the time, I only wanted to know if I should treat it like a rugosa or a HT. Their answer was “never spray it!”, so whatever JdL is, is rugosa enough to be intolerant of any spraying.
A lot of Rugelda descendants are far healthier, but lost rugosa traits. Although many of them have sandpaper-textured foliage. Kordes has disclosed some of them, but not all of them.
You could look at a new Kordes intro and throw a 6-sided die with Kronjuwel, Rugelda, Gelber Engel, Amber Flush, Bernstein-Rose, and Centenaire de Lourdeson it. 50% chance odds what you are looking at is a descendent of what the die landed on
Aquarell (which is a sport of AL, so I would guess they are similarly fertile) has at least some partial fertility. It does set OP hips, but I’ve never tried pollinating, nor I have ever sown its seeds. It does produce release abundant pollen, which led to hips and a few seedlings, on Kordes’ Golden Gate. These seedlings died in a hailstorm when they had no more than four leaves, but I did not bother trying the cross again. I guess you could try with her as a seed parent, as hips are big and with copious seeds. I think it may be partially parthenocarpic: my plant starts developing a hip basically for each flower, but then drops about half of them after about 4-6 weeks. If you open these immature hips, they had no seeds forming.
Going back to Karl K’s suggestion of Walter Butt.
I can’t find that one, but I may have found something similar in lineage that might be useful down the line.
I am on a work trip in Paris and took a couple of hours at the end of the day to visit the Roseraie de l’Hay.
As I was strolling down the Species rose section, I noticed a sign identifying one rose as R. roxburghii × R. rugosa. There were no blooms, but there were a few hips. I took three, in full view of a staff member who said nothing so I guess that’s ok.
They might not be fully ripe, and who knows if they are selfs or what they may be crossed with (nearby are rugosas and roxburghii normalis) but I won’t get another chance to take these anytime soon so I might as well try.
The shrub is about 5ft tall with low-thorn stems and nice thick rugose leaves.
Pics on Roseraie de l’Hay website : https://collections-roseraie.valdemarne.fr/index.php?metier=varietes&action=fiche&id=4103
I hope something will germinate even though I took the hips a little early!
By chance I’ve recently acquired some pollen of Eye of the Tiger and For Your Eyes Only, both Hybrid Hulthemia’s by Warner, with good repeat. I thought it to be a good gamble to put the pollen on Schneezwerg. Did the same travel you did on HMF and saw Nigel Hawthorne with Rugosa in its bloodline. Schneezwerg would have some polyantha in its parentage and the more modern Hybrid Hulthemia’s may very well also have much more modern blood in them than the original ones. So I’m hoping it would work. White flowers of Schneezwerg, maybe they’ll pick up the dark spot. If it worked I’ll post an update… that would be in a few years from now I guess
Very cool @karelbvn!
I’ll be looking forward to seeing how your crosses with Schneezwerg work out. Schneezwerg does seem like a great candidate for this!
Over here, I am cautiously optimistic as the 60 days mark nears, it seems the cross between Jean de Luxembourg and Raspberry Kiss took both ways (2/3 on JdL and 3/3 on RK) and hips are continuing to swell on both.
Just yesterday I put some pollen from Schneekoppe on Eyes for You. I didn’t do the cross the other way yet because I need to repot Schneekoppe soon, so I’ll try EfY pollen on her when she’ll be in her new pot. I’m not so sure about that cross taking but I’ll keep trying it, in my mind the result could be quite nice.
It’s comforting to know someone else is on this crazy journey too! Good luck
I hope that you have better luck using ‘Schneezwerg’ than I did, and would love to know if you actually get any hips to form–my small plant steadfastly refused to accept any pollen that I put on it, but it was small, a bit feeble, and maybe the pollen that I used wasn’t the most fertile. One of the pollen parents attempted with it was Easy on the Eyes, which I’ll be the first to admit has only successful for me on occasion even with relatively easy seed parents. If I were to try a similar cross again, I might give ‘Henry Hudson’ a shot instead, since it seems to be more robust here than ‘Schneezwerg’.
White Roadrunner possibly accepted Easy on the Eyes this year. Hips seem to be acceptable so far. Usually they abort
I put White Roadrunner on Raspberry Kiss this year. Even with its horrid germination ratio, it still sets more readily than many roses.
We have had Eyeconic Lemonade on the other property ever since it was first sold, but we’ve never used it. I try to avoid using miniature, because its a really domineering trait that is hard to breed out when need be. It has traits like a miniflora, so I have assumed it carries miniaturization. And opposite of expectation, miniatures can easily make massively giant rugosa hybrids, as some of you know. It wasnt a road I wanted to bother with. Rugosas are challenges, because of the space they require to wait out 3 years to evaluate blooms before culling. A large effort for a single cross.
That’s great news @pacificjade!
I hope the hips will stay on, I’d love to see what comes out of those White Pavement crosses with your Hulthemia hybrids. Ugh, I didn’t know about the poor germination ratio on Raspberry Kiss seeds, thank you for the heads-up! I will pollinate a few more of her flowers to get a decent amount of seedlings from Jean de Luxembourg’s pollen.
Regarding the last point you make: perhaps this should go in a different thread, but I’ve been wondering about that.
When breeding with rugosa hybrids, how far away from the species do we have to go to have decent juvenile bloom?
Do seedlings from, say, Robusta or Wasagaming for example still not bloom for the first couple years?
It was White Roadrunner. A true dwarf. Easily 33% the size of Pavement roses.
The answer to question is that it depends on if moderns were used to eventually replace the repeat type of rugosas. And a host of other factors that may boil down to rugosa losing whatever genetic mechanism causing it. hybrid x modern can produce a sum of normal repeat.
Oops sorry I misread that ! Very interesting rose, I’ll have to look for that one. Dwarf varieties are most welcome in my container-only garden.
Thank you for the explanation on the question. I guess it’s just a matter of trying and finding out.
You might be able to get them if you can order from Germany. Unsure how it works there. For North Americans, Freedom Gardens sells them but they have specific buying times.
They have the shortest internode spacing I have seen on most roses and especially rugosas. I probably wouldn’t bother with this project with a full-size rugosa due to the space and scratching involved. I once did a Rosa rugosa alba x Livin Easy. It was 10’ tall and armed with killer hooks. I am fairly sure I once saw it creep behind me with a shovel in its prickles and an evil smirk in its foliage. I’m just sayin’… lol.
Awesome, thank you @pacificjade!
I did find White Roadrunner, it’s the same Dutch seller I am getting Glorious Babylon Eyes from. I will get them as bare roots at the end of the year.
Lol at the giant evil rugosa hybrid! I’d rather not end up with those either!
