Score at half-time

General Discussion
1

The season ended with a total of 345 pollinations, using 99 different pollens, having been made onto the plant of Sericea pictured in my first post. These gave 21 hips from 12 different pollens.

The crosses for which I had the greatest expectation of success were with those with Ralph Moore’s hulthemias. As it turned out, three of 21 crosses using Persian Autumn gave hips, as did one of nine crosses using Persian Peach. There was a hip each from Persian Flame and Rosa chinensis spontenea onto a different cultivar of Sericea too.

There were three hips from Doorenbos Selection and one from Harison’s Yellow onto the pictured Sericea as well. I’m pretty excited about the HY cross. Pollen of Carefree Copper and Doorenbos Selection onto HY gave a hip each, which was a total surprise given that this cultivar of HY is normally barren.

Time will tell whether any of these are hybrids.

2

When you say barren, I assume you mean O.P, or self for the HY. Since CC is about half Austrian Copper it is kin to HY, roughly a cousin. If the self-incompatibility happens to come from a different assortment, it ought to do OK. CC is also self-infertile but has accepted Carefree sunshine moderately, and Rainbow Knockout “excellently”. I got 73 hips yielding 160 seeds on the latter cross with 100 failed pollinations. So next year dust on the CC pollen (and maybe RKO).

We’ll hope for viability of the seeds in the hips you harvested. Really wild wide crosses.