A few more new seedlings

Again, please forgive me for the highlighted rose names not being all in red. Blogger is fighting allowing that. Some come out red, most don't, but if you click on them, you should be taken to Help Me Find-Roses to see more about those specific roses. 

Here are some you probably haven't seen yet. This first one is a cross using Florence Bowers Pink Tea as the seed parent. Unfortunately the tag is missing so I'm not positive what the pollen parent was. I used Paul Barden's 42-03-02, Purezza and Tom Thumb extensively and this could have resulted from any of them. It has rather nice form, color and scent and the foliage appears it may be good. It's definitely from Florence Bowers Pink Tea as it was in the middle of a cluster of pots of her seedlings.

 This should be quite interesting. Nessie [(R. Brunonii X R. Gigantea) X Mlle Cecile Brunner] X Tom Thumb! It should be a polyantha type plant. It has some scent and it repeats regularly.

 This is from the same cross as the above, but tremendously smaller in ever detail.

 Nessie X Annie Laurie McDowell created some monster climbers as well as several odd little things. This one is about four years old. It repeats and grows in a three gallon can. Not a lot of scent. Not much growth, lots of flowers and fairly decent foliage. No prickles, either.

Seedlings are flowering! More will come as they push their flowers through the weeds! Thank you for reading!

Some fun results from R. Minutifolia

I have worked with R. Minutifolia for some years now and am finally seeing some success. Previously, the few seedlings to germinate were terribly diseased and very weak. Now, using fertile triploid roses, there are some healthy, vigorous seedlings showing some promise. I'm intrigued with the triploid crosses because they express a very wide range of each of the parents' traits and have succeeded where the diploid and tetraploid crosses didn't.

There are four seedlings from its pollen now listed on Help Me Find-Roses. I planted self seeds of one this April, just two months ago, and already have flowering seedlings from those seeds! The first rose which produced successful crosses with Minutifolia is Jim Sproul's L56-1, 

a brilliant, healthy, fertile single red mini he bred from his healthy Thrive!. The chromosomes haven't been counted yet, but L56-1 certainly breeds like a triploid. Here are foliage samples from L56-1, Minutifolia (Otay Mesa version from the Otay Mesa in San Diego, CA), L56-1 X Minutifolia and a self seedling of the L56-1 X Minutifolia. I didn't record which of the original seedlings these seeds formed on. 

Top left, L56-1; top center, Minutifolia; top right self seedling of L56-1 X Minutifolia; lower right, L56- X Minutifolia.

 Stipules of the above. The L56-1 X Minutifolia foliage is in the center.

These are the self seedlings from which the sample above was taken. I'm amazed the seeds were only planted back in April, 2016. Today is May 30, 2016!

The second new Minutifolia seedling of 2016 is Lynnie X Minutifolia. Here are foliage samples from Lynnie, Minutifolia and Lynnie X Minutifolia. 

Minutifolia and the Lynnie X Minutifolia seedling have very serrated foliage. 

Lynnie's foliage is rather smooth edged. 

 The seedling is extremely well branched, right at ground level, something Lynnie seedlings generally don't produce. It appears to be without prickles, which is very surprising.

 The sepals are quite interesting. Traditionally. Lynnie seedling sepals are very strap-like and not very lacy. These show more of the Minutifolia "branching".

 This is the most spreading of the L56-1 X Minutifolia seedlings. It flowers repeatedly.

I'm eager to see what results from these and from crossing Minutifolia and Pure Bea, the white Minutifolia with larger foliage and flowers, on the L56-1 Minutifolia seedlings. There are already hips forming on one of them from those pollens. Exciting!

Longer than expected germination

I don't usually hold on to seeds planted longer than their originally expected germination period. Here, I find what I want to raise germinates within a few months (at most) from sewing, so there really isn't the need, much less room, to hold an "empty" table until the next season. 

Last year, I was given seed from R. Xanthina. I planted half last year, hoping for something to result from them. Only one seedling came up and I'm honestly not convinced it is from those seeds. Fortunately, I know what was planted in the row beside the Xanthina. I use the soil in the seed tables to pot the seedlings in as I remove them to make room for the next round of new seeds. I noticed in the pots containing the seedlings from what was raised beside where the Xanthina seed were planted, some odd appearing little roses are germinating. These have been under soil now for 15 months. 

I'm glad I deliberately planted the Xanthina seed next to something which appears completely different! I'm excited to see these beginning to show up. I'd looked for R. Hugonis "flore pleno" or Double Hugonis as well as the double form of Xanthina pretty much in vain. Each source listed on Help Me Find - Roses responded theirs had only five or six petals, or they had simply lost the variety entirely. 

Per the 1919 American Rose Society annual, Frank Meyer, the same Frank Meyer responsible for discovering and bring to the United States the Meyer Lemon, brought Xanthina seed from China and raised seedlings in 1906. He found some of them varied quite a bit in petal count; some were true singles with only five petals,while others had up to several rows of petals. For whatever reason, the more double forms of Xanthina appear to have fallen out of commerce here. Hopefully, one or more of these Xanthina seed will provide flowers with multiple petals! 

Some years ago, I raised a cross of Ralph Moore's climbing yellow miniature breeder, 1-72-1, crossed with what he gave me as R. Hugonis. The seedling has been code named, 1-72-1Hugonis so I can keep track of it. I've used it as both seed and pollen parent with some very interesting results. Seedlings from the use of its pollen on other more modern roses appear to germinate easily in the expected few months from planting. Seeds from this plant, whether they were apparently self-set or from my deliberate attempts to pollinate it with other roses, germinated sparsely. As I did with the spoil containing the Xanthina seeds, I know where the soil containing the 1-72-1Hugonis seeds was used. I am also seeing these seed now germinating after 15 months in soil. In some cases, the original seedling from last year failed, but others of its siblings are coming up to fill the pots. 

My suggestion is, if you intend to raise seedlings from species, plan on needing to retain the soil and containers you initially plant them in for at least a full year after planting. Not all species have expressed this delayed germination, Fedtschenkoana for one, but these from the Yellow Chinese Species definitely are. You may need to reserve those containers much longer than you may have originally intended to obtain the results you desired. 

Oh, Goodness!

Oh Goodness! A friend emailed me this evening to alert me I am now "famous"? She discovered I am now listed as a "Reference" about the rose Iceberg on Wikipedia! Scroll down to the Reference section and you will find my article, "Poor Old Iceberg", published on Help Me Find-Roses. Is that a hoot, or what?

Wikipedia article about Iceberg

Looking for Louis Lens' Pink Mystery

Quite a few years ago, I had the pleasure of sending many rose to Louis Lens, the remarkable Belgian rose breeder. Sharon VanEnoo, a great friend whom I met at The Huntington years ago when we were both volunteers there, traveled to Belgium frequently as her son and his family lived there. She graciously hand carried garbage bags of individually prepared bags of various roses several times over the years she visited. She met Mr. Lens and they became fast friends. Mr. Lens named two roses in her honor, Sharon's Love, and Twins, in honor of her twin grandchildren.

As a "thank you" for the material I sent him, he had Rudy Velle and Ann Velle Boudolf who bought his nursery when he retired from that area of the business, send me a large package of his wonderful roses. Pink Mystery was one of the most exciting.

Mr. Lens was well known for his ground breaking work with species roses. He shared my fascination with the little known American species R. Stellata mirifica, the Sacramento Rose. Of the seven unique hybrids listed on Help Me Find-Roses, six belong to Mr. Lens. Unfortunately, my only photographs of Pink Mystery are unavailable. The closest I can illustrate it is by posting photos of Stellata mifirica and pointing out how it differs; providing the link to the Help Me Find-Roses page for Pink Mystery (the red "Pink Mystery" above); and by linking to photographs in Roseraie environnementale de Chaumont-Gistoux in Belgium.

Pink Mystery's flowers are actually a bit larger with wider petals than Stellata mirifica. The foliage is denser, larger, heavier and a darker green, much more "elegant" as if created from "better cloth", though knowing one will make the other immediately recognizable. Both will flower all summer if given adequate moisture and both have been totally disease free in my old mid desert garden.

Marvelous photos of Pink Mystery growing at the above mentioned garden are Photo of plant; Blooms and foliage; Flower detail. I find it very attractive how the bush in full flower resembles an annual Cosmos.

 Stellata mirifica sets very odd hips, while I never observed any on Pink Mystery.

I grew it for years in my Newhall garden and spread it around as far as I could find people willing to take it on for their gardens. Unfortunately, I lost it and it appears, so have the others who grew it as it isn't shown as being available anywhere in this country. None of the nurseries who had it, still list it. It is conspicuous in its absence on  the Lens Nursery rose list. Requests for any information concerning where it might be found on Help Me Find-Roses and Garden Web have, to date, resulted in no responses.

Hans at  Bierkreek Nursery in The Netherlands, has been searching for Pink Mystery for the past several years, with little luck. Through the generous efforts of a Help Me Find-Roses member who also lives in The Netherlands, Pink Mystery has been located in a public garden, and efforts are under way to obtain propagating material for it. Marvelous news, but difficult for us here in the United States due to the time, quarantine period and costs involved in importing rose material from there to here.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I'm hoping that someone may know of Pink Mystery's existence somewhere here in the United States or Canada. If it can be located in a garden here, cuttings or suckers could be obtained and the plant once again introduced into commerce here without the required paperwork, time and expense of importing it from overseas.