I just recently bought Rosa blanda and Rosa Carolina. I was thinking about using them in hybridization. I no longer have most of my roses due to leaving my house and marriage last June. Pretty much the only named roses I have are the miniature Charlie Brown, Lilian Autin, The Squire, Loves Blush, and a hybrid china that I am forgetting the name. I have 10 seedlings from my own cross of The Countryman and Blue For You. I have a few other seedlings from rose hips I collected in the past.
I guess my question is, has anyone used Rosa blanda and Carolina in breeding and to what extent/results?
Both have been used to a somewhat limited degree. For good examples of R. carolina hybrids still in commerce you can look to Basye’s Legacy and Commander Gillette (the same rose under different names) and its descendants such as Lynnie, Basye’s Blueberry, and Thomas Affleck.
Looks like there’s been some r. blanda hybrids with some degree of success over the years as well.
It seems like a lot of people, myself included, think there’s a lot of untapped potential in the North American rose species. It’s a slow-going process though, since it takes at least two generations to reacquire the repeat bloom genes. And at least for carolina and arkansana roses you also have to deal with their propensity to create seedlings which are really weak and slow-growing at first, although they do eventually grow out of that.
I don’t know how this sentiment will be received, but in my opinion there’s also an issue where people work with a species and never do any back crossing so that by the 3rd or 4th generation their “species hybrid” has lost almost any resemblance to the species itself. Which is fine if you’re just looking to cherry-pick some desirable genes like hardiness or thornlessness, but to me it kind feels like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
All of that to say: yes, people have hybridized with both of those roses in the past and present.
Yes! Rose D’Orsay is wonderful, it’s a shame it’s not more readily available. The foliage is so unique, and combined with the red stems it stays aesthetically appealing even when it’s not in bloom. It’s very demonstrative of how r. carolina genetics can make for a more appealing shrub. I should finally be seeing its bloom up close for the first time in just a few weeks.
I’m just getting started in hybridizing this year but one of my goals is to try crosses with my Rosa blanda for fun. Native roses are what actually got me into rosses and R. blanda was my first. After researching I got as it is native to me in New York, has beautiful flowers an is much less thorny, although certainly not thornless.
Yep! Only lost I think two varieties out of the whole batch. There was just the one D’Orsay cutting but it was a sucker so it rooted almost immediately. It should be a lot bigger but I had to dig it up mid-summer due to gophers and only got it back in the ground in the fall.
