So, I’ve been checking around about roses for zones 9-11. It seems that Alister Clark in Australia made progress with this. Viru Viraraghavan, an Indian hybridizer who spoke at the Houston Rose Society, has been working on this and has 50 releases in India. Viru has been working with old roses such as Mrs. B.R. Cant and Archduke Charles, which are well adapted to India, plus modern roses that have done well there and R. clinophylla and R. gigantea. Is anybody else working along these lines? Does anybody plan to bring these roses to the U.S.? The one Alister Clark rose with gigantea blood that is available in the U.S. is Lorraine Lee. It’s at Amity Heritage Roses. That’s all I have found out so far. As you can probably tell, I don’t know anything about hybridizing. I just want there to be roses available that are better adapted to Florida and other subtropical/tropical areas. Thanks for listening, and I will be interested in all your comments.
Barbara
I hybridize with some of the old teas and chinas. My favorite seedling so far is this one of Mons. Tillier X Duchesse de Brabant.
This seedling does very well in my climate but I don’t know how it would do in Florida. I can only select seedlings on the basis of how well they do in my climate. Someone would need to breed roses in your conditions in order to select seedlings that are optimized for your conditions. If no one else is doing it, you might want to consider doing it yourself. Likewise, if no one is importing Viraraghavan’s roses, you might want to look into importing them yourself. There is a little information on importing roses on this page:
Link: www.helpmefind.com/sites/rrr/gl.php?n=130
Jim -
Your seedling is stunning! Will it be commercially introduced? Thanks for your suggestions and the link. Please keep us posted about your roses.
Barbara
Hi Jim that is a nice one. Is it fertile? Where are you located?
Barbara I just tried returning your e-mail but it came back for some reason. I’ll try copying and pasting my reply into an e-mail here from the site. Thanks, Robert
This seedling is still a baby. It’s too soon to tell whether it will perform well enought to be introduced, but I’m hopeful. (You have to be an optimist to be a hybridizer!) I haven’t tried any crosses with it yet, but will in the Spring. I live near Monterey Bay in California.