Does anyone know of a source for this one? HMF has two listed but it’s not offered. Has it hit our shores yet?
It’s on Cliff’s website as currently available. Kim
Excellent! Thank you Kim.
You’re welcome! You know how much fun it is to “enable”! LOL! Kim
roses…I do need a twelve step program. lol
YOU need a 12 Step Program?! YOU are telling ME you need one? LOL! The link below is the old garden. I have downsized from that to what’s current, and I know there are many missing on both lists. It IS an obsession. Only time, energy, varmints and water limit the “disease!” I’ve already scoured all the local hot spots for decent bare roots in hopes of finding things I “need” for clients’ gardens and I’m off to two which are further away to look. It sickens me to see the limited junk available here now. One of the good old stand-bys only bought from Star Roses this year and I don’t like their plants. While J&P and Week’s at least gave lip service to VI attempts, Star’s stuff routinely shows patterned leaves and cost at least as much as the others. I miss the good old days when there were places I could walk in and buy all the Week’s stuff literally bare root in boxes of saw dust instead of “biodegradable” paper pulp pots which don’t biodegrade here, with no roots and tops chopped back to the nubs. Kim
lol…you might be close to ‘rock bottom’ Kim and ready for an intervention.
I’m not quite at rock bottom yet. lol I’ve gone from 350 roses at the height down to the few that I have now.
And don’t forget age, Kim. I am facing that now. That and thorns-oh how I hate them. Have been spending a couple of hours during the “heat of the day” (above freezing, LOL) this week clearing out the thicket of r. setigera. No one ever told me it tip rooted like crazy. I need to clear it out so I can see where my rooted cuttings are and take them to NY in the spring. By the way, I have a thornless multiflora if interested. What a relief to cut the long canes and tie them into small bundles to bag as opposed to the wild setigera with all its thorns (this was one plant originally).
Olga on Garden Web forum is right. Winter pruning is great because one can see the structure of the plant and I can better see what is where.
I am downsizing a bit at this point and want to get them down to what for ME anyway are the must haves, the zingers and the speakers (my seductive sirens)!
Jim
“Age” is definitely catching up with me. Thankfully, I’ve never had to “winter protect” other than to make sure I kept things watered between rains, or I would be growing Dutch bulbs. I agree about winter pruning. How the heck can you prune if you can’t see the plant structure? That’s not pruning, it’s hedge clipping. Kim
Rob, regarding ‘Wild Rover’. I grow it and it has become my ‘go to’ rose for when I want hips and easily germinated seeds at all costs. That is, however, about as far as it goes. It’s health is about average but you only have to show it pollen and it forms hips. She breeds semi-doubles most of the time but the colours are very interesting. I have one at the moment that looks like burnt watermelon! The seedlings also have a tendency to mildew when matched with other moderns… but then even the mildew mildewed here this year so maybe this is not a fare call. Her real talent is for accepting species pollens, which she does easily, and these seedlings turn out really nicely. So, whenever I want to do wide crosses or crosses when the pollen won’t work on anything else, or when I want to try and just get seedlings on the ground that have a better than average chance of good fertility as a starting point for other work, that’s when I turn to her. This is why I put ‘Euphrates’ pollen on her (and is why it has worked so far taps head). If ‘Wild Rover’ didn’t take it nothing would. I’m also getting something like 80% germination from her seeds. Blackspot and mildew don’t seem to knock her about too hard here but the downy mildew has completely defoliated her right now in our (cooler than normal) mid-summer.
I love her colour. It’s not really purple and it’s not really red… it’s hard to describe. I crossed it with ‘Ebb Tide’ last season and look at one of the seedlings I got out of it (first flower that just opened this week):
It’s PINK!!! LOL
It has the look of ‘Ebb Tide’ and it mildewed quite badly (though I did let them dry out a bit too much in the early stages too). It has great perfume. ‘Wild Rover’ has no perfume I can detect.
‘Wild Rover’ is also half ‘Rhapsody’ in blue and RinB hates the heat here and completely shuts down. ‘Wild Rover’ slows down but doesn’t stop fully.
Here, ‘Wild Rover’ is advertised as a climber or large shrub. Mine has been in the ground 3 years and has reached about a metre tall… maybe it’s a really low climber LOL. It strikes readily from cuttings and its seedlings seem to grow well on their own roots when paired with others roses that also grow well on their own roots. I’ve put 'Flowere Carpet Pink and Scarlet on it this year and my little sv-2010-8 (Plant Search) to try for purple wichurana-like ground cover/landscape roses. These seem to have taken as well.
Hope this helps some.
Simon,
Thanks for your input on this one. I was kind of unsure of WR because of her RinB parentage. I’ve not had good experience with RinB and based on some of what you wrote I’ll take WR off my list in place of Route 66 if I can get her. Thanks for your input…it’s much appreciated!
Rob
Don’t write it off too soon, Rob. I have done about 40 crosses onto mine this seaosn with everything from Rosa longicuspis var sinowilsonii and Rosa rubiginosa to ‘William III’, ‘Comtesse de Labarthe’ and ‘M. Tillier’ to ‘Popcorn’… and they’ve all taken. I have seedlings growing from it now from ‘Flower Carpet Scarlet’ to ‘Mutabilis’. I grow ‘Route 66’ as well and it performs about the same healthwise and takes pollen less willingly. I still use it… but it isn’t as reliable and the seed doesn’t germinate as easily and the seedlings have still mildewed for me as well.
Winter pruning is one of my favorite parts of rose culture. Its like meditation to me. I basically just zone out and go. I do not use gloves and every plant’s growth needs are memorized. The space around them is felt. Their future growth is projected inside my mind. I love it. I love the feeling of knowing winter is leaving and spring is returning. I used to own a motorcycle, which I sold for rent the month I got laid off. I drove it to work and back every day regardless of weather. I had a rain suit for it. I LOVED walking into New Seasons (think Whole Foods minus the dry, insular arrogance) where some of the urbanites would be shocked. I knew some of them were thinking I wasnt being green friendly or whatever. So I’d always be sure to state at the check out that I got 65MPG. But that is not why I rode it daily to work. I simply liked to feel the external elements every day. It felt good, and I think it was good for me. There is something to be said for feeling connected in some way or fashion to the external environmental world. Its just like getting your hands dirty w/ roses 
I do cheat on a few roses though. I am sorry but Im not winter pruning Gourmet Popcorn. I just grab handfuls and CHOMP until it is a smaller ball. I’d love to see someone prune it stem by stem, LOL.
Simon,
Are you getting many purples and/or purple-oranges from WR or is the majority pinks? I may easily be swayed to WR instead of R-66. lol
Rob
Get your order in to Cliff for Wild Rover. It is selling! Kim
Kim,
Just placed my order…thanks for the warning!
Rob
Any time! He who hesitates is lost (or, looses out!). Kim
I’d go for both… they are very different roses… ‘Route 66’ has very similar breeding to ‘Ebb Tide’ and ‘Midnight Blue’. It makes much large trusses of flowers than all of them. I have only two seedlings from it so far and that is with ‘Hot Chocolate’. One of these will be thrown out any day due to poor vigour (nice colour though… like a browny red with a white eye like Route 66). The other is mildewy but I’ve kept it going for now to see what it does. I had one germination in the fridge of something I was really excited about between ‘Route 66’ and ‘Tuscany’ but it failed to finish germinating once I potted it up. It’s another string to the bow if you know what I mean 
. The purple in ‘Route 66’ is a much darker saturated purple than any of them… like black shot silk (this is mine: 'Route 66' Rose Photo).
I’ve been getting a lot of purple from WR, a lot of very deep reds, some burnt oranges and one lone pink, which you saw. See link to an entry I made about it a year or so ago:
Link: cherokeehill.blogspot.com/2010/01/my-first-dark-purplered-seedling.html
Simon, that photo is drop dead gorgeous! I wish it looked like that in our heat and sun. Route 66 isn’t as good a grower as some of the others are here, but it is beautiful. Interesing seedling. I wonder what colors Wild Rover and Mutabilis would generate? Kim
I think I’ll take your advice and go for both. Will pick up Ebb Tide as well. Thanks for the link. That is a beautiful seedling you have there!
Rob