Hello everyone! I’m a new breeder, I’ve lurked here for a long time but haven’t signed up or posted. I’m hoping to start doing some breeding of my own and was hoping to get everyone’s opinions on what are good seed parents, especially with species roses? I love the idea of working with species roses but sadly have had a hard time finding some of the varieties I want. I’ve been dreaming of r. foliolosa for years!
I’d also appreciate suggestions on where to buy interesting rose species online. I’m in the deep south US, zone 9b, and there aren’t any places I can buy in-person nearby.
To a novice, rose breeding can seem a daunting task. Choosing the right parents can be overwhelming, but fear not! Below you’ll find a list of 25 roses that make good parents for beginners. Some of these perform better as mothers (), fathers (), or can be either ().
‘Stephens’ Big Purple’ (STEbigpu) mauve-blend hybrid tea
‘Sunny Knock Out’® (RADsunny) light yellow shrub
‘Winter Sun’® (KORbatam) light yellow hybrid tea
In addition, I would add that ‘Faith Whittlesey’ is an excellent seed parent. I also enjoy ‘Lemon Fizz’ as a seed parent with species work. ‘Lynnie’ is very fertile, but it tends to shed pollen while the buds are still tightly closed, so you’ll have to emasculate earlier than usual.
I am always interested to see what others are using as parents in the crossing of rose varieties. Besides Aloha I also have the variety Penny Lane (Hardwell) which is also a New Dawn cross, so giving interesting set of offspring that are effectively cousins, and perhaps hoping to see some familial characteristics. Penny Lane always produces a percentage of bright yellow seedlings without any chlorophyll which die without further development. I don’t have a lot of space for very many crosses so I am looking to gradually generate families of material where I can direct the production of offspring more in line with my interests.
Hey Roseseek! Thanks for the links- I hadn’t found forestfarms before, so I’m excited to check them out. I think I’m most interested in species modern crosses, there are a lot of features in species roses that I think would be interesting to try and introduce into modern.
I’ve long been interested in rosa foliolosa- there was a blog I followed as a kid who worked with it, but I’ve never seen anyone selling it.
Oooh thanks for the comprehensive list, Jwindha! This will be very helpful. I also saw an earlier post you wrote about breeding roses for hips- I’d love to hear more about that sometime. Cooking is one of my other passions, and I enjoy the flavor of rose hips and the surprise on people’s faces when I tell them it’s fruit from a rose
Also- where have you found Joycie? I’d love to work with it but haven’t been able to find a place to purchase.
I read Paul Barden’s blog as a kid. I enjoyed seeing his work with species roses, and I enjoy how… uncomplicated isn’t the word exactly, but many of them have different features that aren’t necessarily considered the “ideal” for roses. Things like unusual foliage or a unique scent, even if they have simpler flowers. I love a good old garden rose as well, but I really love seeing the variety of unusual features in species roses. I have a rose that I believe may have been given to my by Paul (it was at least 13 years ago and my memory is a bit fuzzy) that is some sort of species rose I believe. It has very tiny flowers and ridiculous long thin spindly canes, but it’s got a lovely scent and is the most stubborn plant in existence and I love it for that!
I was far more inexperienced when I wrote this list, had only been breeding for 2 years at that time. This list was gleaned almost entirely from blog posts from private breeders and consolidated reviews of roses posted to this forum.
No, no it’s not critique but a certain sadness on my part of what I am limited so far north. I have learned to live with my Rosa rugosa. White, pink and purple.
The only thing you might have left out for this gentlemen is Teas and close relatives in zone 9b. The first time I saw them my heart dropped. Absolute beauty.
As species seed parents go, for me, the Synstylae species have been pretty hard to beat overall for their relative ease and percentage of germination and their willingness to cross with a wide variety of other roses. Rosa rugosa probably comes pretty close, along with some of its more seed-fertile cultivars and hybrids. While other species can germinate reasonably well, the difficulty may come in getting them to produce and germinate seeds well from wide crosses. It’s hard to generalize because they can vary so widely from species to species and clone to clone, and it can be difficult to find named clones of most rose species. Species identification can be an issue, too. Some species roses are simply more difficult to germinate or have special germination requirements. In many cases, those may be used more productively as pollen parents.
You might also consider crossing species roses with hybrids, since species characteristics are often quite dominant in at least the first generation of such crosses. Then you are then free to use hybrid cultivars as parents that have proven track records as seed parents. Many breeders would consider that an early step in a long process because they are only looking to introgress certain traits from a given species into a hybrid with otherwise conventional, i.e. commercially appealing, features.
You’ll need to shop around widely to get the widest variety of species, and some are simply difficult if not impossible to obtain, as you have discovered. Make a list of your biggest targets, then shop early and often!
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