Hi Susan, I'm happy you have Purple Buttons, thank you! I'd given it to Ralph Moore years and years ago to take a look at. Imagine my surprise and delight when he called me one evening and asked what I wanted to do with it! I told him it would be lovely if someone wanted to offer it for sale and he said he'd be delighted. Wow!

I've only had Werner since last fall and he's still in a five gallon can, getting large enough to do battle with the danged squirrels and rabbits. At Eurodesert, where I've seen it twice, it is larger than Purple Buttons. There, it isn't quite two feet tall and can easily be nearly three feet in diameter. He grows almost like I would expect a small Hybrid Musk to, more of a smaller, spreading shrub than an upreight "bush", if that makes sense. Where PB branches earlier and at shorter intervals, WvB tends to develop longer canes which will spread and nearly arch before branching (at least here). He can be placed at the front of a border, if the border is deep enough and the companion plants tall enough.

As you can see from the attached photo of him on HMF at Eurodesert, he's as tall as the foliage part of the Lavender beside him. I know that Lavender. It gets cut back annually and explodes each time it gets hot. I hope that helps give some idea of where you'd be happier putting him. Please post photos of what you do with them. I'm sure there are many who will love seeing! Thank you. Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Werner at Cliff's

Thanks, Kim, I was hoping you would see my post. I got PB from Burling Leong (I think), and WvB from Cliff -- both this fall. (My keyboard is having a snit fit and the "enter" button won't work, so this all has to be one paragraph.) The place I am thinking to put one of these two roses is along the driveway. Smarty will be on one side of it, then Asta von Parpart; a fairly tall daylily will be on the other side by the gate. On the inside of the chainlink fence from those are Smoky, Anna Ford, and Stella D'Oro daylilies....then Colette Clemente, Norwich Castle....As you can see, I'm not into single pallets of color. I'll go out and see if I can get a picture...

See if you can make any sense of this picture.
(meanwhile I even fixed the enter button....hurrah)....

Susan

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:221243}}

That should be pretty Susan! Werner is very likely going to grow over your rock border though. If you have room, let him! It'll be gorgeous! Thanks. Kim

Thanks, Kim. Smarty already arches way out over the rock border, so I think it won't be a problem....at least not for me. (I do get complaints about Smarty, but my feeling about my roses would make a sign: "if the rose is in your way....move!!" :-))))

I will let you know when I figure out where Purple Buttons IS going. I'm trying not to let my pot collection get too big...

Susan

Spring will be gorgeous there! You'll probably enjoy a story shared at the Friends of Sequoia Nursery event from two weeks ago. Mr. Moore never liked anything trimmed or cut. His roses would grow out and block the path and everyone would have to move them to prevent getting poked in the eye. He'd bud along the canes in the path and they'd have to wait for him to leave town to clean the paths so they'd be safer. He'd come home and start complaining things were cut. We all laughed as we'd all experienced the congested paths and well remember his using his cane or some other stick to move the wands from our way as he led us all around on visits. Sound like your place? LOL! Kim

Ralph Moore produced my beloved Blue Mist. How could I not adore him ????

Should you decide to try your hand at rose pollen pimping, Blue Mist is considered one of the cleanest of all minis and should easily raise some healthy, very interesting babies. I grew it for many years but hadn't had it in some time. It was one of a handful of new plants I bought from Burlington recently to include in my efforts to raise healthy, vigorous, interesting (and HOPEFULLY, thornless!) roses. I love the honeysuckle fragrance and the tiny lavender to purple flowers! Kim

No, no, no, no, no, no NO !!!!! I am desperately trying to simplify. Do not tempt me.....(see, my enter key isn't working again which means tomorrow I have to take the keyboard apart again right before or after I take the dryer apart to figure out why it's not heating anymore). How oh how did I ever have time to work?????? Susan who is back to single paragraphs again....

But, you'll find once you start pushing pollen, time creates itself! "Unimportant" things simply fall by the wayside. You don't dead head because you either want to use the flower or the self set seed. Weeds become very umimportant...as Mr. Moore said when I teased him about the dense, healthy weed cover around the nursery and in his pots, "If YOU don't plant something, GOD will!" You'll find yourself far more willing to just let the roses do what THEY want to do instead of attempting (most often in vain) to bend them to YOUR will. You have to, or you won't know what to expect from their babies and whether this one or that one is worth using.

My rose growing became far more interesting and enjoyable once I started looking at them all as potential parents. It's eaaasssy if you'd like some simple instructions....hehehe Kim M.E. (merciless enabler)

Hmmmph and piffle. I'm sure it's "easy" for you, but you have no idea of the depths of my inability to follow through on plans and projects. My attention span is about that of a gnat. Small things (like seeds in pots) tend to get lost in the chasm between my enthusiasm and my energy supply.

Still....sigh....what are those "simple instructions". I guess I might as well know what it is that I'm so sure I can't/won't do, eh?

Susan

So, I thought, I'll just see what this is going to be all about, and I Googled around and read this:

http://www.marinrose.org/hybridizing.html

and realized somewhere around the chapter on stratification of the seeds and keeping them in the fridge for months on end that....it's just not me.

Kim, I appreciate that you think I'd enjoy it, but the truth is I'd just disappoint myself. You just keep on making beautiful roses. I'll buy 'em; I'll plant 'em; but I'm not cut out for the patiently waiting parts....:-)))))

Not a problem Susan. As with anything, you can make it easy or you can make it difficult. I prefer EASY, but I can completely understand being awared that patience and waiting aren't things you're desiring at the moment. As with anything else, it has to be something you WANT to do or it isn't fun! Kim

Good morning, Kim, and thanks for letting me off the hook. I admit that I spent a good part of last night thinking about my roses differently and looking at HMF differently, clicking on the lineage button and looking at where some of my roses have come from and gone on to. Perhaps when I have gotten closer to caught up on the backlog of roses that need to go into the ground or come out of the ground and go back into the ground in gopher baskets, etc..... I just might want to try my hand at matchmaking.

What is the timeframe for starting a project? I'm guessing I have a month or two before it's really prime gestation time. At the very least, this Spring I am going to look at all of my roses to see who does and who does not produce pollens etc. Even if I don't get to the actual propagation part of the project, my roses already are offering a whole new perspective: maybe Blue Mist would like a date with Sunshine or Charles Walker's Mignionette or Rouletti or ???? And then a tiny thought just crossed my mind: it's probably a lot harder to gather pollen from the tiny roses than from the big boss roses, huh? See, what you've done????!!!!! Sheesh.....

"He gives the kids free samples, because he knows full well, today's young, innocent faces will be tomorrow's clientele!" LOL! (Tom Lehrer, The Old Dope Peddler)

Hi Susan, even if you never pimp any pollen nor raise any seedlings, being able to see what made the good roses you grow gives you the potential for not growing bad ones. For instance, I know Playboy WILL rust in my climate. With very few exceptions, roses bred from Playboy will likely rust here, too. Paul Neyron is horrible here; so have all of the roses bred from him been. I also know Basye's Legacy is bullet proof here. So have all the roses bred from it been, including those bred from Legacy and Playboy together.

Studying what created the really good, pleasing roses you grow can help direct you to those you don't know and which may perform as well for you as those you already have. Studying what made your good ones can also help you get a handle on just what may make new good ones. It can help you develop ideas of which you grow, and which ones you may need to obtain to include in any breeding, should be tested to reduce disease, increase flower production, alter fragrance, color, etc.

As for timeframe for starting...It's generally felt that from pollination to viability of the seed is approximately a hundred calendar days. Generally, sewing the seed should be done a few months before any really warm weather should arrive. Here in the Los Angeles area, I try to plant the week of Thanksgiving. I chose that period because it was usually the end of my "normal" schedule and beginning of the intensely busy holiday period which lasted until the end of January. Seed can vary in germination time from just a few weeks to two years, with really anything in between. Last year, I had seedlings within three weeks of planting seed. This year, I have five seedlings in two months. There are many factors which cause the variability. You just learn to live with them.

Usually, rose seed germinate from very low temperatures (sometimes around freezing) all the way to around seventy degrees F. Much of it will slow and even stop as the weather remains in the 70 and above range, so planting when they seed will have the longest period under soil before the heat hits should give you good results. Again, there are MANY variables and there is "no, one, true religion", thankfully! If you read articles about rose breeding, you'll find they range from sounding like brain surgery and rocket science all the way to just tossing them on the ground and letting them do their thing. My "theology" leans more toward the latter, because if it isn't FUN, I am NOT doing it. This is a hobby, an escape, NOT a requirement.

You've probably found seedlings which have sprouted in your garden all by themselves. Many large gardens have volunteers spring up all the time. The San Jose Heritage Rose Garden has given birth to many, several of which have been propagated, named and listed on HMF.

Yes, it is usually a bit more difficult to extract pollen from smaller flowers; emasculating the smaller flowers (removing the stamen and pollen to use that flower as a seed parent, "mother") and even harvesting seed. If you want to practice first, what I've found to be the best advice to share is to watch what you already grow. See what makes hips easily all by itself. Roses are related to apples and often the rose hips sort of resemble apples when they ripen. Some will be red, orange, yellow, even black and many will remain green. You already know that they're eventually going to fall off by themselves. That joint where the spent flowers and resulting hips fall off is where you can easily when a hip is probably ready. You can actually see the abscission membrane begin to form, cutting off circulation to the hip before it falls off. I frequently put a finger tip at that joint and gently bend the hip against it to test if it's loosened and nearly ready to fall off. Fortunately, none of it has to be exact. A few days or even weeks, on one side or the other is unlikely to cause failure. Many articles will urge precision for best results. Do it if you want, but like growing the roses you already successfully grow, it usually isn't necessary to be precise. Relax and enjoy yourself.

If you harvest and clean the seed from the hips your roses make all by themselves, you have a free, endless supply of seed to practice germinating before risking seed you've actually worked to create. It doesn't really hurt to make mistakes with seedlings you aren't that vested in. When you've planned a cross and successfully created seed, it is NOT the time to learn how to raise them. Practice the different facets first but keep it light and fun. Use them as learning experiences to satisfy the "what if" questions you already have. Pick up the knowledge from each of the smaller facets you use to hone your skills and add them together as you find you have time and desire to keep it an adventure rather than a "project" or chore. Once it becomes work, you've lost. Growing your roses is great fun, until they become an obligation. Hitting that wall quickly removes all the joy from it and makes it WORK.

And, yes, Blue Mist crossed with other roses will very probably make some very interesting roses! Being able to see what created Blue Mist will help give you ideas what may make the best choices of partners for it. Seeing what created the other potential choices will help you decide what not to use, too. As with any breeding, your greatest vigor and potential health will come from lines unrelated to one another. You can safely cross a rose back to itself or a close relative to help retrieve a characteristic you desire, but you don't want to make a practice of it.

Charles Walker's Mignonette is very likely a multiflora hybrid. Blue Mist is strongly multiflora based. Crossing the two could well give you roses much closer to the multiflora species instead of the results you hoped for. Rouletti is strongly China, unrelated to multiflora, so perhaps that cross would provide you with interesting offspring more closely resembling your goals.

Here's a "what if" for you...can you imagine what Blue Mist might create using Smoky pollen with it? Sometimes mixing rose genes is just like mixing paint. What you get looks very much like what you thought it might look like. Very often, though, what results looks NOTHING like anything you imagined! Sometimes that is good, others it just is. Other breeder friends and I often tease one another about this. One will write of a cross he's just made and ask what the others think could result. Being the smart aleck of the group, my response is often, "pink, single, no fragrance" as that is pretty much the "default" in roses. Most species are pink, five petals with not very strong scents. Usually, the most vigorous, healthy seedlings ARE single and pink. Many of the healthier roses on the market are, too. Why? That's what is the most successful in Nature, what pollinators have evolved with. Nature doesn't waste good genes on roses (or other plants) which won't succeed on their own. She's a good steward of her resources. That's why it's so difficult to get strong, healthy plants of odd colors, even yellows. There aren't nearly as many yellow species as there are pink and getting that color into healthy, vigorous modern roses has taken well over a century to accomplish.

Presuming the Smarty you have is the shrub, it has a healthy dose of multiflora in it through Ballerina and Yesterday. It also has some China and Tea in it from the pollen side of the family. What if you increased the China portion through using Sunshine with it? There is multiflora behind Sunshine, but it demonstrates more of the China traits. Imagine a clean, healthy, vigorous shrub similar to Smarty, but with more of the coloring and flower shape of Sunshine.

Anna Ford has a lot of R. Foetida influence on both sides of her family. There is also multiflora and some China behind her. Imagine raising a cross between her and Werner? Anna has the potential for intensifying all the pigments in her offspring. That's one thing the Foetida genes help to do. What would Werner look like with intensified purple flowers? Or, perhaps, one more resembling Anna but with mauve flowers? Both are possible, no matter how likely. Of course, you will find a number of them five petaled and pink! LOL! But, some of them could easily be very nice, healthy, heavily flowering plants which could very easily become some of your favorite breeders because they make good babies. Ralph Moore admonished, "Make a GOOD plant first. It's always easy to hang a pretty flower on it later." I believe that's where we went wrong in breeding. So much attention has been given to the "pretty face" flower, substandard plants have too often been sent out because of the pretty flower. Rose plants which are really good where they need to be don't always have great flowers on them. That's where selection comes in. Exhibition flowers were selected for the flower with any plant consideration taking the back seat or even less. Landscape plants are selected for ease of growth; health; vigor; continuity of color, etc. Being an enthusiastic amateur, YOU have the time and luxury of breeding toward both a great plant AND a pretty flower with no board of directors or stock holders breathing down your neck for success.

Don't let it overwhelm you. Just some ideas to help you direct your thoughts and "what if"s. Of course, you can take it in any direction you want to go. Wonderful, isn't it? I would urge you to eventually start reading the Rose Hybridizers Association Forum. There is a newsletter you may subscribe too. You may read and participate in the forum to your heart's content. There are some amazing things discussed there and there is no charge for lurking and interacting. Lots of very nice, creative, supportive and imaginative folks there. There are also many articles concerning all aspects of rose breeding. You can read to your heart's content, too, and see how involved or how simple you can make it. Sound like fun? Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: RHA forum

Oh my.
A quick perusal of my roses (160+) reminds me that I still have lots of hips that haven't been removed. Would any of these still have viable seeds? Should I at least test them and see if I can grow them on? I was going to go and look at City Girl because her hips are soooooooo big, but on the way I noticed that Louis XIV still has hips; so does Norwich Castle....I'm sure the list is very long....

And, if not, well I'll just have to start doing more reading and research for next season.

Absolutely! You have MANY viable seeds right there in your garden in the hips you're about to cut off and discard. One method would be to list them and check on HMF to see what has made babies you like the looks of, then cut the seeds from the hips and plant them. Another would be to take the ones which impress you, for whatever reason and plant them. You may select the roses which are the healthiest and best bloomers or the ones which just "touch" you.

You don't need any special soil, or the self sewn volunteers wouldn't arise so profusely in gardens, or even just in the wild. You want something which retains moisture but drains well. And, you probably want to cover the seed with about a quarter inch of whatever remains loose enough for the seedlings to spring up through without compacting too hard for them to push out of. If you have rabbits, squirrels, slugs or snails, you'll want to protect against them.

Cleaning the seed is actually easy. If you have a large quantity of the same variety, just liquefy them in your blender until all pulp is gone so you can pour them into a kitchen wire strainer and rinse the pulp through. If you have smaller quantities, you can cut the hips with a knife and pry the seeds from it. The only warning I'd give is the fibers in the hips are as awful as fiberglass and will make you itch like all get out should you get them on you, so don't scratch your nose with them on your hand (or anywhere else for that matter) and don't get them on your arm, etc. or you'll need to wash thoroughly to prevent the itching.

You can plant them in pots or in the ground. As I plant larger quantities and have to protect from varmints, I made boxes of fir fencing with the bottoms reinforced and covered with hardware cloth and window screen to keep the soil in, water flowing through and critters out of. They sit on saw horses so I can easily check them and work with them. There are framed lids also enclosed with hardware cloth to expose them to all they need and protect from critters eating the seedlings. Anything you create which protects them from whatever types of varmints you have to deal with is sufficient. I know of people who just use pots of soil and sometimes put small pieces of vinyl window screen over them, tied around the pots with wire or string to keep squirrels out of them. You may or may not need to.

When determining which seeds you want to plant, remember that your chances of raising once flowering roses are much greater from OGRs than from modern roses. Your chances of raising monster plants are greater from full sized roses than from minis. Nothing is wrong with either unless those aren't what you want.

Some people do "float tests" to try to determine which may contain embryos. I guess if you have thousands of seeds, you can. I don't. I've had some pretty small, insignificant seeds sprout and if they're from a difficult or really weird cross, I want every possibility I can to raise something from it.

You'll probably want to tag which group of planted seeds are which so you can keep track of how each one germinates. One may seem to have gorgeous fruit with many seeds, but it may or may not germinate well and it may or may not create vigorous babies. Basye's Legacy is very fertile and produces very healthy offspring, but using it as the seed parent generally is less desirable than for pollen. Seedlings raised from its seed tend to be small and not very vigorous at first, requiring some time to develop vigor as they mature. Knowing later on when you are planning what to cross will help you make things MUCH easier and successful for yourself. Or, as some very experienced, rather successful breeders have done, just plant the seed and select which seedlings please you with no records being kept. One breeder stated he could raise seedlings or keep records. He preferred to raise seedlings. It's YOUR fun time and YOUR choice. Personally, I want to know what made what so I can potentially improve my chances of getting what I want from the effort. I guaranty you, once you raise a good rose, there will be many who will ask you what is behind it. It's a lot more fun to be able to state what the lineage is.

After fixing the drier and keyboard, finishing dinner and the clean up, and while settling down for the evening's down time, you can process what you discovered for the day and then start researching for next season. Making lists of what seems beneficial to use next allows you to work out the details in your head. I promise you, the lists will change as you research. It's a learning process. It will mature and develop just as your taste in roses (and everything else for that matter!) has. It will help you begin to develop goals for your breeding efforts.

Here's a "what if" that intrigues me right now. Iceberg, probably the most maligned, ubiquitous and taken for granted rose ever created, as well as probably THE most successful in terms of sheer numbers sold and planted, was created by putting the pollen from the white hybrid tea, Virgo, on the poly Robin Hood. Iceberg has many sterling virtues as well as a few Achilles' Heels. What if a more dwarf offspring of Robin Hood was used as the seed parent, such as Bashful or Happy, or even Doc, using pollen from a healthier white HT or shrub, such as Buck's Paloma Blanca?

Might that result in a more controlled plant? Might it still have as great shade tolerance as the original? Might there be better mildew resistance than Iceberg possesses? Might it even be more arctic hardy? Would it be as lightly prickled as Iceberg bushes are? Would there even be any white seedlings or would there be more in the pink to red ranges? In this climate, Iceberg is about as perfect a continuous flowering landscape shrub there is. Would modifying what created it slightly result in products anywhere near as successful? What if....

Iceberg, LOL. One of the first roses I ever planted, and one of only two that I still have that are not on their own roots. I had no idea what I was doing, and I turned it into a two-trunked standard....not by design, mind you, but simply by mis-pruning it. Just this week I chopped both trunks to the ground. Come on sprouts !!!!! It is planted on the other side of the chainlink fence from Blue Mist and it may very well look quite nice when the two are poking through each other rather than Iceberg being an umbrella over BM...

Meanwhile, I broke down and called a repair company for the dryer, fixed the keyboard, fed the dogs, and now I'm going to drink wine, and think about the roses whose pods I will collect tomorrow....:-)))) And I thought I had dodged this bullet....Ha ha ha....

Congratulations on getting your broken machines taken care of. Ain't that just a pain in the rear? LOL!

I had an idea...what if you crossed Blue Mist with Iceberg? Imagine what a charming shrub you could raise with those genes behind it! With the darker red mother's genes in Iceberg and the mauve tones of Blue Mist, it may even be possible to raise purples from it. Austin has used Iceberg in some of his roses, too. The results should have some very good shade tolerance as both have that tolerance to a very high degree here. You might even be able to put some fragrance into the seedlings from Blue Mist's honeysuckle scent. I think I'd use Iceberg pollen on Blue Mist for seed. A real eye strainer to be sure, but an interesting idea!

Kim, that will be my very first project to try. I will let you know as soon as I have blooms so you can help me to proceed.

I've been over at the RHA site reading, and it occurred to me -- not for the first time -- how very little I have ever known about all of the roses I have bought and loved. Although I live within miles of the old Vintage Garden retail site, and although I even worked for Gregg and Gita for a couple of seasons while they were still there, I still never thought back past what a bloom in a band looked like. It never crossed my tiny little mind all of the information about how the rose got to be the rose it is and why that history should matter to me. I just saw roses, bought roses, planted roses, and figured that the rest of it was my problem. Well it is, but now I see that a lot of the "issues" aren't because of my lapses (at least entirely), but because of the heritage of the rose itself. Eureka.

Chickens genetics are so much simpler. Cross your Black with your Blue and you get Splash....easy peasy....

What tiny little mind? Remember, "Faith comes by hearing..." Don't convince yourself your mind is anything other than miraculous! You've repaired your keyboard. You've worked on your dryer. Do you know how many people would find either of those achievements overwhelming?

How neat you worked at Vintage! You've touched some really wonderful roses! I'll look forward to your venture into rose breeding. I can't wait to see what that cross can create. There are SO many on my "what if" list, even with all the time in the world, I'll never get to them all. New ones pop up every day!

I'll bet chicken genetics are much simpler. Human genetics appear to be, also.

City Girl seeds are in the fridge...
Wheeeee.....
Thanks for the encouragement, Kim.

Susan

Neat! I just looked her up on HMF. Armada is the father and it has made some very healthy offspring. I love Harkness roses. They have a feel to them that has always grabbed me. You're welcome!

Kim and Susan,
Lovely thread: thanks!
Melissa

Kim, thanks for sharing your treasure of knowledge and enthusiasm with us. Blue Mist with Iceberg ... hmmm. Susan, thanks so much for the thread. Gean

Oh boy, I got wound up after all of this and spent hours reading through old threads over at the RHA website that Kim referred me to. Stayed up way past my (very early) bedtime !!! and discovered that I have a few more roses whose breedings might be interesting and fun. Making crosses won't happen for a while, but I am going to go out today and harvest some more hips for seeds and seeing which I can even get to germinate.

Question for Kim: if I harvest a hip off of a rose that is out in the garden, is the seed considered OP? I'm guessing that to be considered a self that the pollination would have had to have been controlled to be sure that it hadn't been pollinated (by a bee for example) from a nearby or not so nearby other rose....???? For example, even though I picked the hips off of City Girl, those hips might have been fertilized by Buff Beauty or by Galleria or any of the other roses in the vicinity, right??? If I get seedlings from City Girl's seeds, her offspring would be just called seedlings, not "selfs"....right?

How neat our musings have entertained and intrigued more than just us! Thank you! Addictive, isn't it? LOL! Until the Internet, I had to read all the Modern Roses and GOOD rose books I could find/afford to glean the kind of information now so readily and enjoyably available from Help Me Find. You can quickly and easily see threads of health and vigor revealing itself before your eyes and it is EXCITING! I recently added Pink Petticoat to my breeding. Not because I needed (OR wanted) another pink mini, but because it gives healthy babies. Looking behind it gives a few clues. Sheri Anne is a cute mini, very fertile and has given some nice offspring, but when you dig further into her, nothing indicates increased disease resistance. Neu Revue was Color Wonder X Seedling, and it is indicated as very disease resistant. Unfortunately, it isn't readily available anymore, though it would be fun to grow it and see for myself. Hmmm... I wonder what that seedling was? Whatever created it, Pink Petticoat is a good mini and has created some very good stock. Now to mix it with some of the others I have which are highly disease resistant...

Open pollinated....well, if you want to be precise, a "self" probably would only be one resulting from your deliberately pollinating the hip with its own pollen. Opinions vary greatly about whether self set hips are bee induced or self pollinated (just as with every other question concerning anything). I spoke at length with Ralph Moore about it and have found most of what he offered to be pretty spot on. Yes, it is possible for an insect or the wind to transfer pollen from one flower to the next. However, he stated on numerous occasions that in his many decades of raising seed (from about 1928 to 2008), he never found anything to lead him to believe seed resulting from hips which formed by themselves to be anything other than self pollinations. If you look at open flowers about to fall, you'll very often see the stamen folding over the stigma. This very often occurs at the time the anthers are releasing their pollen, very often resulting in self pollination. In roses where the stamen are too short to reach the ends of the stigma, most often no hips are formed. And, in the many blooms I've emasculated and not pollinated, I've never had a hip form. Insects aren't usually attracted to the emasculated (those from which the stamen and anthers have been removed) blooms, so no insect pollinations would occur. Lord knows it IS windy here in SoCal, yet no foreign pollen has ever "blown in" to take care of the pollination for me. Try it. Take flowers on your most prolific hip setter and, before the buds begin to unfurl, and presuming it isn't a variety which releases its pollen very early (and there are many), gently pull off the petals and remove the stamen and anthers. Then, sit back and watch to see if it forms a hip or not. Watch, also, to see if any insects are attracted to it or them, if you do multiples. In the twenty plus years I've played with pollinating roses, I have yet to observe either situation. Doesn't mean it CAN'T happen, I've just never SEEN it happen.

So, observing that the good hip/seed setters tend to be those whose stamen/anthers fold over their stigmas and release their own pollen about the same time, I feel the chances of them being "selfed" are very good. You can account for the cross in several ways. If the characteristics of the seedling closely follow those of the seed parent and you're comfortable that they should be self set, list it as City Girl X City Girl. Many such crosses have been documented this way by many different breeders. If you want to be as precise as possible, list it as City Girl X unknown, or "open pollinated seed from City Girl". It is completely up to you and what you feel most accurate and comfortable with. Just as what to classify the seedling as is totally up to you. Ralph Moore created two Hybrid Perpetuals from minis X Paul Neyron. He originally classified them as Hybrid Perpetuals. The ARS changed their classifications to "Shrub". HMF lists them as both. They are Moore's Pink Perpetual and Moore's Classic Perpetual. What we traditionally buy as Hybrid Musks are more accurately Hybrid Multifloras. Whatever musk is so far removed from what you grow as to be virtually not there, but the multiflora genes are far more in evidence. Only Louis Lens had the accuracy (?) to classify them as Hybrids of Multiflora. Dumbing it down even further, they'd all pretty much be classified as "Shrubs" or even "Climbers" now. Just as the Pernetiana class was absorbed into the Hybrid Tea group decades ago.

Should we classify something based upon the genes behind it, or by what it looks like and how it performs? Makes your head hurt, huh? LOL!

Okay, got it. I am safe to assume that probably the hips from City Girl (even though she resides cheek to cheek with Buff Beauty and Galleria) will be self-pollinated. Whew. One less variable to be fretting about.

Kim, are you familiar at all with Queen Mother? I just planted her (for the umpteenth time; I've been moving her about a LOT), and then went and looked at her lineage which seems to be quite recently Wichuriana (sp?). She doesn't seem to have any descendents listed, and I'm wondering why?? Regardless, I am hoping she will finally find a home in her new digs where her nearest neighbors are Rouletti, Kent and Escapade.

If you're meaning the Kordes 1991 ground cover, it's new enough to have babies in the pipeline but not introduced yet. Interesting the patent mentions a modified gene... We could be looking at one of the initial modified plants they can trace patented genes from to claim royalties from the offspring. I have to read more about this one and watch it. It seems a nice enough rose, though they kind of lost me when they said it is like a larger flowered version of The Fairy. The two roses I absolutely HATE the prickles of are The Fairy and Ballerina. They BITE hard and stick in your flesh. I would crawl through fire to avoid those prickles!

Hmmmm....prickles. It really never occurred to me that roses were possible without prickles, so....I've mostly got 'em. My forearms are always bloody, unless of course it's raining too hard for me to be outside at all.

Still, I didn't notice that QM was particularly prickly; but I will try to keep the prickles issue in mind as she develops and as I consider various roses for breeding. Less prickles would be nice....

Fewer to NO prickles is glorious! Annie Laurie McDowell doesn't even have prickles on the leaf mid ribs. I LOVE pruning and cleaning that rose! My Grandmother's Hat doesn't have any, either. Lynnie can be very smooth and Indian Love Call is totally prickle free. Cl. Yellow Sweetheart is as smooth as a baby's...you know! LOL! I LOVE not having to bleed to enjoy my roses!

So, when should I take those City Girl seeds out of the fridge? I am thinking they went in pretty late by Mother Nature's standards, but I'm not sure if that means I should leave them in for as long or take them out soon? Do I wait until I see sprouting in the fridge, or will that happen after I bring them out?

Well, as we've discussed before, there are MANY ways to success. Last year, I didn't use any refrigeration with my seeds and they came up like grass seed. This year, I had to harvest earlier than I usually would have to beat out the vermin. They are pushing up one here, another there, slowly but slowly. So, if you want to plant them now, do it. If you want to wait until later, for whatever reason, do that. Personally, I'd want them under soil now. God only knows how much more colder, wetter weather we can count on this winter. Germination is safer and easier during that kind of weather than it is hot, windy and dry. Kim

Oh good. Tomorrow I will put them into soil. I just needed a little reminder that "anything goes". Thanks.

Susan

Susan,

I'm not nearly as experienced as Kim--this is only my 3rd year of trying to grow from seed. To show you how "anything goes"--I roll up my seeds like burritos in damp paper towels and toss them in the fridge in a ziploc. Since there aren't that many seeds, they get individually potted up as they sprout. I've got seeds that were harvested in 2009 that are still sprouting, so it can take a while! Others generally take a couple months or more in the fridge to show signs of a root. Checking the seeds for signs of sprouting is a fun thing to piddle with in the evening while watching the news.

The main thing to do is have fun with it--it's really entertaining to watch these little guys. It also gives you a real appreciation for what it takes to develop a marketable rose.

BTW--one of the OP Blue Mist seeds has sprouted!

Okay, Lucretia, that is good to know. So once they are in the fridge, they will actually go ahead and sprout there. I wasn't sure if I had to bring them out and let them start to warm a bit to get the sprouting started. I guess I should have known better; the Morning Glory seeds I did last year all sprouted while still in the fridge. So, maybe I'll wait; maybe I'll plant; hmmmmm....

Yeah for Blue Mist.

Susan

Or try some each way, and see what works best!

enablers
enablers
enablers

:-)))))))

The thing to remember is when that seed is ready to germinate, it is going to whether it's in the fridge or under soil. I want them under soil so they can get some root under them before the bellows of Hades hits, which we all know will be much sooner than later (at least on the Best Coast). It is difficult to germinate and maintain rose seeds/seedlings in 90+ degree heat. It's a piece of cake in the 60s and 70s. I personally have had much worse luck transplanting a newly sprouted seedling from the toweling than just letting the danged thing germinate and grow in soil. But, again, it all depends upon what and how YOU want to do it and what you find works best for YOU. Kim