Wildrose, the Becnel people may not have a website, and neither does James Mills of K&M. I have no idea if Becnel family has r. fortuniana MN, but James Mills had it at one time and did not get enough calls for it, and it is a matter of these smaller vendors with very small margin for profit, as most can attest to, that have to sell what i selling. I had thought if we could interest James Mills with enough calls for it, he might sell it again, but only two people that I know of have requested one. I did get two SDLM from him last year on r. fortuniana and they really are doing much better than my ownroot roses. I never ceased to be amazed with what works and what does not.

Thanks for that information, Patricia.

Do you have a contact address/phone/website for K&M?

E-mail.

millrose@netpathway.com

Very good!
Thanks!

The site for Johnny Becnel's Roses is johnnybecnelshowroses.org. You can either call Calvin at 337-394-5662, or e-mail him at Bcalvin508@aol.com. If you call him and get his voice mail, leave a message and he'll call you back.

I have ordered about 20 hybrid teas from him. All are the best I have ever gotten from anyone else. Excellent roses. His fortuniana is virus free.

S and W Greenhouse also has some roses on fortuniana. I haven't had any experience with them, as of yet, so I can't comment on them.

Sandy

allison, aren't there a couple of places who will graft something on request????

if you have no luck finding it on fort., you could get a large pot to bury in the ground couldn't you?

michelle

Sandy, Thank you for that contact information, I appreciate your response. I had managed to get a phone number, and Calvin did call me back. Right now, he has only hybrid teas, floribundas, and such, no OGRs at all, and is still recovering and rebuilding stock from the hurricanes. But he did say he hopes to do more with OGRs in the future...
What can you tell me about this S and W Greenhouse? I have not heard of them before...

Michelle, yes, Cool Roses will bud roses on request, but that takes 6 months to a year for them to be ready, per the lady at CR. If there were plants already for sale somewhere, that would be my preference.

I am wanting the fortuniana rootstock for added vigor, not for any nematode problem. For what I am hoping to achieve, burying a large pot in the ground won't help! (;^)

Allison

Allison, SW Greenhouse has a few on Fort.

Carla

S&W have a large series of greenhouses set up. In winter they buy bareroot roses from producers and sell bareroots early in the season, and pot up a lot of bareroots for resale when folks are looking to buy potted roses in leaf with blooms.

Last year, I too asked Cool Roses to bud a Marechal Niel on fortunia. They said they would, but i have not heard any thing from them. Apparently it will not be worthwhile contacting them again. (Another potential problem: access to virus free bud stock, as most Marechals are reportedly infected. Vintage supposedly has a virus free own root M.N. I ordered from them last fall, but they have written to say that their M.N. cuttings all perished. (I had a young plant started but it was lost in Katrina.) I have fortunia, and would bud it myself if i could only get my hands on a virus free Marechal Niel. There are other sources for Healthy Marechal N. listed in another thread and i guess i will try them next.

I was always VERY happy with the roses on fortuniana that I bought at Muncy's back when I lived in Florida. Here is their info, although the website is no longer in operation. I don't know if they have a new one or not.

Muncy's Rose Emporium
2401 Hwy 188 N
Cairo, GA 39827
(229) 378-8225 or (866) GRO-ROSE
FAX: (229) 377-0008
http://www.muncyrose.com
MuncyRose@muncyrose.com

Sorry, but there's the worst news possible about Muncey's.

Ken Muncy died over a year ago and his wife has moved back to the Tampa area, abandoning their dream of a nursery in Georgia.
A friend who knew them better than I told me last spring that there was no word of what happened to his stock.

I had tried to find out what happened to Ken Muncy's stock, but never was able to get anyone to respond back to me. If anyone comes across this info, please let us know and/or e-mail me. His roses were some of the best out there.

Allison, I haven't had any experience with S&W Greenhouse, but ordered a couple of bushes because Calvin doesn't bud them. They are due to arrive sometime in April. I personally feel that roses that have been container grown from the beginning, as Calvin's are, are superior. Calvin and I both feel when a rose is ripped out of the ground, as bare roots are, they are traumatized and they aren't quite the same again. Just our opinion, and it's an opinion for fortuniana only. I'm sure there are many of you who would dispute that, and I don't care to enter into any arguments. He and I just happen to notice a difference. That said, the roses are in most cases still very good quality if the grower is a good one, and if that is the only way to obtain a certain variety desired, then it's the only way.

Sandy

Oh my goodness, that's terrible about Ken. Was he ill or killed in an accident? How tragic, either way.

Yes, his roses were amazing. Most that I ordered arrived with several blooms on them. When Belinda's Dream arrived the fragrance was leaking through the box into the air. :D

I heard he had become very ill, but I don't know the exact details. I had plans on going up to his nursery a few months after the holidays that year, because I was going to select several more David Austins on fortuniana. Then I heard he had passed away. Goes to show that we should never put things off (unless it's dreary housework)! I was so looking forward to meeting him and his wife.

I had heard about Mr. Muncy, and was sad to hear about it also. I had never purchased from them, as I was still busy collecting the cultivars available to me closer to home at that point. You are right, we should Never put off the things that are of interest and importance to us, things have a way of happening that we cannot prevent...

Newtie, if you come across another source for MN, please follow up with me? I am very very interested. You mentioned you would try to bud it yourself if you had a clean clone to use. As far as I know, the Chamblee's clones have never been identified as having virus, and many people are quite happy with their plants. Mine certainly is not of that "interesting varegated leaf pattern". It's just a runt. If you are interested in experiementing with budding or grafting with some cuttings from my plants, I would be happy to send you some material. But of course, first chice to me would still be a plant for sale that was already growing a bit. Let me know if you are interested in the MN material from my plants.

I am looking for bareroot fotuniana plants or seeds to start grafting on my own. I live in Hawaii so the shipping is sometimes difficult but if anyone knows who sells it i would be very gratefull. my email is petalzbuglove@yahoo.com

Petalz, 'Fortuniana' normally does not make seeds, and even if it did, they'd likely not grow true-to-type, since it is not a true species. It also resents being bare-rooted and normally dies afterward. I know that we sent virus-free 'Fortuniana' to members of the Honolulu Rose Society, a decade or more ago. Do you know any of those folks? They may be able to supply cuttings within the state.

Back to 'Marechal Niel' -- It has been suggested that much of it has a virus (likely NOT rose mosaic) which makes it difficult to grow. As far as I know, no one has ever proven that. But in any case, it does seem that some selections do better than others. We got ours from the plant Greg Grant and others found in Texas -- a very vigorous and carefree form. We then heat-treated it just in case. On 'Fortuniana', it is the most vigorous rose I've ever grown. We've distributed many of those plants, mainly at HRF meetings (Lakeland in 1991, Lakeland 2001, and El Cerrito 2002). ARE also has this form of the plant. So they're out there. Vintage also seems to have quite a good form of MN, but from a different (California) source.

Malcolm, ARE hasn't sold MN for years and years. They said it's too hard to get it to strike to waste the man-hours on it. And they don't graft or bud at all- strictly own-root. They have a beautiful specimen plant on the premises to tease us with, however! :^)

Malcolm, is ARE the Antique Rose Emporium? I don't see MN offered on their web site.

Yes, ARE is the Antique Rose Emporium.

MN has been very hard for me to grow--much more than my oncebloomers! When Rozanna comes to Texas I plan on going to Chamblees again. There, I'll get several just in case. I sent a specimen of MN to Jinks in England (I think Henry Kuska). I haven't heard how it faired.

The Central Florida Rose Society website has K & M's product list & their order form. Below is the link. Also, Nelson's Florida Roses offers roses on fort. Haven't seen MN on their site though.

Here is a link that might be useful: K&M Product List

Sorry folks, I did not intend to imply that ARE is currently selling MN; I meant that they have and grow it on site. Mike Shoup has told me that it doesn't propagate well and he doesn't have good luck with it own-root, even though the original, Texan source plant was own-root and vigorous.

It is not on fortuniana but Pickering had Marechal Niel grafted on multiflora. It is a very vigorous and productive rose in my yard: in a bit more than a year it has grown to over 12 feet and blooms constantly. Strangely enough while a lot of so-called hardy roses suffered freeze burn during the Easter cold front, Marechal Niel was untouched and kept blooming.

I have no idea if multiflora works in your location and I do not know if Pickering's stock plant(s) of Marechal Niel survived the move of the company but it is a source worth exploring.