What to do: Temple Bells X Musquee sans souci

General Discussion
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Hi guys, last season I made the cross in the title. I got 6 hips (all took), 130 seeds of which a lot germinated and I have 70 plants.
Temple Bells is a wichurana hybrid with a miniature; it is a groundcover type rose. Musquee sans souci is a seedling of the moschata hybrid Umbrella. It is a huge shrub in my garden.

Of the 70 plants I have 10 with (very) juvenile bloom. Single white blooms, some with a touch of pink or cream. I will keep those to plant out in a couple of weeks.

The question is: what to do with the rest? I’m afraid to throw them out because the juvenile bloomers may be selfs and then I would throw out the hybrids I wanted to create.

I didn’t really have a goal with this cross. I just thought it fun to combine wichurana and moschata.

Most of the seedlings started out with matte foliage (like moschata) so I determined them to be hybrids. However, new foliage is more and more glossy so I’m a bit lost.

I guess I could take the 10 healthiest and most moschata like non-bloomers. Then pot them up to see how the develop?

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
Rob

1 Like
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Glad to hear of your success! I’ve given away excess to family and friends. If you live in a suburban neighborhood, you could do a yard sale, or “free plants” on the Saturday before Mother’s day, in plastic beverage cups. Good luck!
HH

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If it were me, I would probably separate a small number of the “best” looking (according to your own standards and preferences) as you’ve proposed, and then, if you have room for a few larger pots outdoors, cram the rest of the seedlings together to see if any show themselves to be more promising or less promising. The larger root space will help keep them going for a while even though they are crowded, and the crowding may promote disease development. You can then be ruthless in culling any that have poor disease resistance or that grow way too large for your liking, and hopefully, you’ll have a much more reasonable number to carry forward.

Stefan

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Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll keep some of the non-blooming ones to see what they do. They’re too small to give away but I can spare a big pot for the rest to keep as many as possible for outside evaluation to check on hybridity and repeat bloom.
The pollen of the flowering ones I’ll use on some modern floribundas just to see what will come out of it…