Hello! I am in Australia, and did my winter pruning a couple of weeks ago - there’s a bunch of ripe hips on the bushes - is it recommended to stratify them, or seeing they’ve literally just come through a cold spell, could I take the seeds out of the hip and plant them straight away?
Hello @mountain_rose
You need to extract the seeds, clean them thoroughly and stratify them in moist perlite or sand, 4℃ for about two months. The flesh of the hips may contain chemicals inhibit germination, so the seeds could not be “stratified” in hips.
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That makes total sense. Thank you Mingwei, I’ll do that this weekend.
Make sure that the hips you collected are still fresh. If they totally dry out, it’s better to soak the seeds in water at room temperature for about one day prior to stratify, which can “activate” the dried seeds. And if it’s your first time to work with rose seeds, be aware that the seeds in the hips may surrounded with tiny hairs, sometimes they may “sting” like caterpillars, so wear gloves and don’t let them blew away.
(I tried hard to find the original post by Johno - South Australia.) He contributed the following super helpful details:
“I don’t, all germination happens during autumn and winter for me, it’s the first day of winter here and many of the seeds I planted the early autumn (march) have tiny little flower buds. Hurray Australia!
I never had much success with stratifying of any species:
Harvest seeds end of Feb/beginning of March, sown within a week in small flats (or in reality, ferrero rocher chocolate clear plastic containers, easy to maintain moisture, they sit behind glass so mileage may vary if in direct UV) with maybe an inch of potting medium, they germinate and develop a few true leaves and get transplanted, shallow = super easy transplant, then into 68mm forestry tubes (carry trays hurray!) until they get culled or moved into bigger pots. This is the 3rd year of around 300 rose seedlings, the tubes are generally empty by mid spring…just playing around seeing what appears, culling off mildew and spot babies primarily, bit exploratory, only 4th year of rose seedlings. Still acquiring genes and thoughts getting closer to developing tangible goals and a plan…probably this season or next will see things ramp up beyond just curiosity.
I’m in Sydney, my roses are in two locations for now, most of the mini’s are with me in Sydney (limited space) as are a few other slightly bigger roses that are happy (or at least, flower without issue) in pots. Bigger types (and a few poly’s and mini’s) are approx 120km (north) away at parents (no space issues) and in the process of getting certain traits onto much smaller plants.
Mostly just mini’s (because of space and it’s not with commercial intent) but there is a bit of FB, HT, poly and an increasing amount of species/near species happening (if only due to learning about traits that aren’t really in moderns…like foliage fragrance, ordered a few via Thomas for Roses for the upcoming season to see what that is all about).
But yes, just harvest and sow straight away…extremely mild frost free winters doesn’t seem to prevent them growing or flowering except maybe for a month or so during the “coldest” month but even then day temps are usually 10c+ (aka 50f+) which is spring temperatures in many parts of the world.
I tend to sow early march outdoors (and then as anything ripens). As long as temps dip down to 15c and below (even if just at night) germination seems to occur, if temps haven’t gotten below that for a bit germination seems to stop.
I don’t stratify, I tried I got mold, I don’t want mold in the fridge near food. Things that get harvested before I sow because their hips will be mushy/over ripe by the time of sowing (ie rugosa) just end up in paper envelopes in a cupboard. I’m lowest possible effort with it and I’m not having any real issues, even from the cold hardy species that you’d think would want far more chill, still germinate.”
I missed the boat and mine were in the fridge already…MM
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Wasn’t Johnno, was me back in 2017
Is still relevant to Sydney as I still wasn’t stratifying and was still sowing early march (just had moved outside) and things just germinated from roughly April onwards every year. Winter doesn’t stop germination in Sydney, everything after germination (like developing true leaves and growing) slows down though. I did give up on forestry tubes (I got lazier!) and just use planter troughs (ie, sowed directly, left to grow until culling or potted on, sometimes they’d be in the planter trough for a year)
Since then, I’ve moved to Melbourne (ish) end of last year, did the same thing (sow in March) some things (polys/hybrd musks) germinated as usual, but everything stop in winter and has only in the last week or so picked up again (germinations from rugosa, centiflolia, moderns, etc). Unsure what the difference is, things are colder here but not significantly so, some frosts but still relatively nothing. Could just be the location of the seedling bed (more shaded than in Sydney) or that it was all “new” soil/compost/etc rather than partly reused (so bacteria and things may be missing) …but not sure at this point (maybe next year will be different and may be able to rule out one of the above)
Because of how big Australia is, things are likely to vary though, stratifying in Sydney seemed pointless, there was never a lack of germination and I still had more seedlings than room to sort through each year. I had pretty much every class and species available in Australia (notable exception being Gallica, was never game enough to try because of chill requirements for blooming and just lack of chill in Sydney…have acquired 1 here in Melb, so will find out next year when I sow it’s seed in March) and there wasn’t anything that didn’t germinate from straight sowing, somethings germinate faster than others.
Thing to note, harvested seed are harvested pretty much as soon as hips are ready so likely very limited chemical inhibitors. Unsure how seed that have been sitting in hips for the whole of winter would fair, may have absorbed a lot of inhibitors, may not be a problem, not something I’ve explored. If it’s just exploratory for you though I’d just split it, half direct sow, half stratify…if nothing else you’ll get to see if there’s any difference and may just end up realising you don’t need to do extra steps (if you don’t have to make chores for yourself it’s a plus)
Stratifying may increase germination or uniformity of it but I haven’t encountered the need for it.
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OK…half and half it is…these were flowers that bloomed in autumn, and formed their hips during winter, they’re definitely 4 months old (or maybe a tiny bit older) so I’ll plant half now, and leave theother half for maybe a march planting.
Funnily enough, my most successful bush-to-seed ratio was from seeds I planted on Christmas day last year - yep, right in the middle of summer! They’re about to flower for the first time now, so they’ve been slow, but the strike rate was higher than previous years. I’m still very much unscientific in my approach, but never had many hips after autumn flowering, so didn’t really know what peopel did with them - everything I’d read was from hips born from spring flowers.
Gosh, sorry Plazbo - that at least explains why I couldn’t find the post… I’ll see if I can edit and correct.
The extra tips for Melbourne-ish are great for this recent North Coast Tasmanian (previously South Coast NSW). I was surprised and dismayed to discover “Mediterranean climate” means sodden winters and ultra dry summers, so unlike NSW’s clear winter days and Southerly buster summers.