Germination periods for Carefree Beauty are extremely short. I’ve had more than 19 germinations (lost a few due to attempted transplants and a caterpillar(actually two, they looked like BABY wooly bears). After so many germinations (in this case I think about four or five), I go ahead and bring in under lights. I find this odd because I still have half of the hips still ripening on the bush. I think part of it is that CB staggers its blooms, so that’s why they ripen at different times. None of my other rose seeds have even attempted a single germination. This is an interesting characteristic because it makes for quicker turnaround. What other roses besides CB do this? (a sly way of showing off my babies!)
right now just CB (and a yellow lily cross x yellow lily cross) under lights- I didn’t mess with gardenias or azaleas this year because I have too many seedlings (of those) to deal with as is.
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I don’t know what you refer to as short. I had Earth Song germinate just under two months one year. This year both Midnight Blue and Ebb Tide are germinating in under two months. If you do a warm 30 - 45 day stratification before putting them in the fridge some will germinate during the warm stratification.
Patrick
Mine just stay outside until they start germinating. I don’t do the fridge thing. We have had some frosts and maybe two nights of hard freeze but they came in even before that. I guess I planted most sometime in November.
I was going to start a fresh post, but I found this topic in a search. I collected one ripe hip from Carefree Beauty in October of this year, and I’ve already had about 30% germination in less than two months during the preliminary warm cycle before going into the fridge. I’ve never had that happen with any of the other seeds I’ve processed.
I wonder how reliable this might be? I’d read for years how Banksiae required up to two years to germinate, however the three years I germinated Lutescens OP seed, I had germinations in four months. I’ve had Minutifolia germinations in a bit less than three months. It’s seemed faster germination was a function of the conditions that year. Some years they exploded from the soil. The next, it was glacially slow and I’ve repeated several crosses over successive years to see how they may differ so the difference should be the weather conditions.
I had numerous germinations this year, like you, before cold stratification. It had also never happened to me.
If this was a competition, my leader is Francis Dubreuil (in commerce as) OP. Three weeks from picking to germination, and ≈39 days from germination to blossom. I can already smell a strong perfume from the bud. I’m excited to think I’ll have flowers for Christmas!
Others coming up quickly: Heirloom, Ring of Fire, and Mme. Pierre DuPont.
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Although I haven’t used Prairie Princess directly in hybridizing for many years, she was another Buck mama that produced seeds with some of my earliest germinations. Interestingly, one of my oldest seedlings (2001) from a cross between PP x Louis Jolliet also produces early germinations.
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Good to “see you”, Julie!
