Several years back I pollinated Rosa palustris with pollen from Rosa moschata. I figured it might be an incompatible cross like many others I’ve tried. I didn’t cover the blooms, since I figured I would be able to easily distinguish any F1 hybrids from other seedlings. The largest of the seedlings began blooming 2 summers ago; all appearances of flower, foliage and canes suggested that these were derived from pollen of my F1 hybrid rugosa X palustris which was blooming at the same time attempts. I had assumed that all the seedlings were just these contaminant backcrosses, varying from almost complete palustris to palustris/rugosa intermediates. But now that the slower growing plants have matured, what I had considered palustris type backcross offspring or palustris selfings are looking different to me. I’ve noticed that these type have hooked thorns (like synstylae) not straight prickles, and have relatively few thorns at that. The blooms are a lighter shade of pink and the petals hold a pleated V-shape, never really flattening out. Aside from these few indications of hybridity, the plants are so far, hard to distinguish from palustris. For instance, there is no elongated stigmatic column. Does anyone know of any typical moschata traits that I could expect to find in the F1 other than the hooked thorns?? I’m going to watch these possible hybrids to see how fertile they are…figuring sterility would be another good indication…especially since the other, rugosa-looking aberrent seedlings seem to be quite fertile, as expected.
That’s exciting Tom!
One thing that I see often in my Synstylae species crosses is the long, joined styles (what the Synstylae section got it’s name for). I was just looking at a R. palustris x John Cabot cross this afternoon and noticed that the styles were short, typical I think for R. palustris if my memory serves me well. I don’t have any R. palustris / Synstylae section crosses to say from experience what to expect for style length in the F1.
David
David,
Since the moschata has such extremely long styles, I was hoping that the styles would be somewhat elongated in the F1, but the plants I’ve got, have a pad just as flat as in the palustris. I do have a multiflora X rugosa hybrid that also has a relatively flat stigmatic pad. Although, I think that the multiflora I used, may have had some other rose ancestry also (it has 20-30 petals and somewhat shorter styles than the surrounding other multifloras). I can’t think of any other synstylae X short style species crosses that I’ve raised. Does ‘John Cabot’ have a long column of styles or a flat pad?? And does anyone know how long the styles are in Rosa x kordesii??
Thanks, Tom