This year I collected pollen from Cardinal de Richelieu from the Botanical Garden in Wageningen. The rose looked liked pictures from the Cardinal, although I never saw it IRL before. I know the Cardinal is supposed to be sterile, but I have several ripening hips from crosses with Bonica and St. John (a Harkness floribunda) as seed parents.
I also have one hip of Bonica X Hillieri, the latter is supposed to be a hybrid of moyesii and multibracteata or something else. Interesting, because the article Henry referred to some time ago hinted at moyesii and multibracteata having a BS defense mechanism that inhibits the fungus to penetrate the surface of the leaf.
I can only hope they are not selfs…
Rob
I also have seeds from an “unlikely cross” (two infact)–
but I’m going to wait till I get something germinating.
Don’t want to hype things out, and then have nothing to prove it.
Well, I’m not trying to hype anything. The fact that hips are ripening from such a cross is surprising enough for me to write a posting about. Your response seems to indicate that you do not appreciate me posting such information. Is this what you want to say, or do I misinterpret your response?
I am interested in your unlikely crosses. I don’t mind if the seed turns out to be unable to germinate. That’s just something extra to learn later on.
Rob
Rob, I’m sure Enrique’s comments are regarding his own outcome and not directed towards the results you achieve. Do keep us posted on what comes forth for you! Thanks!
Terry
It is always interesting to hear what others are doing. Thanks for sharing!
Jim Sproul
Not many unlikely crosses for me. I tried to use as many roses that I could that I knew I was removing (too many roses, know things are gonna be really busy the next 3 years, etc). But I did try (Dortmund x Circus) x Bukavu and the reverse cross, too. Bukavu is a rare Poly-Hmusk type from Lens. Think Ballerina in red but larger.
Rosarium Utersen crosses could have gone better. I found out that it makes a poor seed setter. It does “okay” for pollen. Renaissance x R.U. and Sexy Rexy x R.U. both took but the numbers could have been better. Oh Scarlet Moss x 2nd generation tetraploid rugosa yielded a whopping one seed 
I did find a seed in a lone Linda Campbell OP hip this week btw. I was pruning… I opened it up and one huge seed was their… but Im a clutz and the seed flew o the bottom of the recycle bin and got lost in the debris =/
St. Johns should be fairly fertile I would think. It is a distant tetraploid descendant of Penelope if I remember correctly (HMF doesnt list but I remember from other sources). I know for sure Harkness used Princess Alice for Irish Hope and City Livery butIm also guessing that St Johns or Grace Abounding was used in the mix as well. Well… that is my educated guess anyhow. Good luck with it. It’s one of the nicer whites.
A cross I thought was unlikely and yielded 10 seeds from two hips is a cross of a confirmed triploid (R. hugonis x Haidee) x a hardy tetraploid apricot climber tracing back to R. laxa and a yellow mini. Hopefully some will germinate and the yellow shades will come through. I’m excited to get some of R. hugonis’ genes potentially within some 4x seedlings.
Sincerely,
David
Oh I’m sorry-- I didn’t mean it in that way.
I’m talking about my own crosses.
I collected seeds from a very hard to make cross-- but I don’t want to say what it is until I can get something. The parent is sterile, so I’m hoping the seeds have some viability.
Well, I can release the pod parent-- the seed parent is Livin’ Easy.
Livin’ Easy is one of those great indispensible roses. It crosses very easily with a variety of rose, and there are lots of seeds. It accepts rugosa pollen easily-- although,I haven’t raised any resulting seedlings yet. But I do have a LE X rugosa cross done this season.
I’m growing a Livin’ Easy X Goldmoss seedling which maybe good enough to release to commerce. It’s not mossy, but the leaves are disease resistant, but the flowers exhibit color change. It’s starts off a off-yellow color and turns to red. Sometimes, when the flowers are in the shade-- they’re orange.
But I’m going to wait on it.
Ok, I was just checking 
Thanks for sharing your unlikely crosses! Enrique you really are mysterious. I hope your cross, whatever it is, will work out. I also have Livin Easy but wasn’t able to use it because we had a heat wave when it started blooming. I stopped pollinating then.
Do I understand correctly that a parent that is called sterile may still fertilize a good seed parent that will grow a hip with seeds in it, but the seeds will not germinate? I always thought that sterile parents did not set seed and did not have viable pollen. So, is it nothing special that my Cardinal de Richelieu pollen fertilized a flower from Bonica and St John?
Jadae, it’s interesting that you know St John. I haven’t heard anything about this rose. It looks a lot like Iceberg to me, although it is more resistant than Iceberg. It has BS now, so we’ll see next year. I hope it’s not a mislabeled plant… My brother bought me Great NorthEastern Rose, here named Sir Galahad. It’s a more beautiful white than St John: nice flower form, HT like when opening and then old-fashioned shape and it has fragrance. It has no trace of cream; it’s a cool white. I’ll hope to use it next year.
Bukavu is nice. It’s offspring from Rush, a Lens rose I have in a pot. I saw Bukavu listed as a floribunda. Does it grow upright like a Floribunda? Rush becomes really shrubby, but Bukavu has better colour contrast in the flower (and they are larger, I guess).
Rob
It is nothing like a floribunda. It is exactly like Ballerina only with larger leaves and blooms plus a little extra height and red where the pink would be in each petal.
St Johns looked okay. I’d like to see White Spray from LeGrice in person one of these days. It looks nice. Lime Sublime, which I hoped would be a superb white floribunda, was absolutely horrible on every level imaginable. I was so disappointed =(
I have one which seems unlikely to me. I have about 800 seeds of Darlow’s Enigma X Lynnie. trying to get a hardy, disease resistant, fragrant, knockout type plant. Well I can wish can’t I.
Patrick
We can all wish =D It is so beyond fun dreaming up the ideas that could become reality.
having tried for many years to crossn rugosas with a variety of other species roses and hybrids, I can tell you that some roses will simply not cross! Sometimes they will make seeds, but will not germinate. Yet others will germinate but never produce a flower(too many to mention!)! I had a Rugosa magnificaXLeda, the stamens had no anthers and it would “ball”. I have a delicataXFerdinand pitchard that is actually fertile, but the flowers arent pretty. The best one is a Rugosa magnificaXBaron Girod d’la’Ain that is really quite a flower, but it wont set a hip even with either parent.
Keep trying!
Ron
Oh, lemme clarify…
The pollen parent has barely any anthers. I literally took down a hundred flowers to make just two crosses-- one didn’t take, and the other did.
This pollen parent should be a tetraploid and thus compatible-- but it barely makes pollen, even when there’s plenty of anthers.
Enrique, I bet you were busy as a bee trying to polinate that flower.
Patrick