Here at the coast, where we have ZERO chill hours, our success rate OVER TIME is zero.

We have had Gallicas and Damasks grow here for perhaps 3 years. We generally got a year or so of reasonable bloom, followed by diminishing returns, much disease, and eventual death or removal.

And that includes Rosa Mundi and Belle Isis, both of which were removed before they finally dwindled into death.

Inland -- perhaps it's a different story.
I have seen Gallicas perform relatively well at the foot of the Sierra Madre mountains, at Descanso Gardens. But they do some funny stuff -- like blooming in January.

Jeri

Reporting from coastal Southern California (OC area):

'Duchesse d'Angouleme' (aka 'The Wax Rose') performs splendidly year after year (it's on its own roots, as are almost all of my roses). It may be a "once-bloomer," but its bloom season is very extended indeed.

'Camaieux' blooms every year. I'd like to try the 'Camaieux Reversion' as well, but it hasn't been offered for quite some time.

Turning to Centifolias:

This year, I had blossoms from 'Bullata' and 'Rosier des Dames' (alias 'Centifolia Minor', etc.).

However one might want to classify it, 'Double Plum' blooms dependably and profusely every year.

I'm by Disneyland. The only one left in my garden is Autumn Damask. Some have said it's a Damask hybrid. That is the only one I have left and the spring show and fall repeat gets better every year.

Sorry, I thought it was Damasks and Gallicas. All my Gallicas didn't persist here.

Um, this has perked my curiosity - although not a phenomenon I am aware of (we get plenty of winter chiiling in the UK), there are usually precise triggers to get a plant to do most things (germinate, flower, drop leaves and so on) - certain criteria must be followed and I am fairly sure that chill hours could also be quantified. Garlic, for example, will grow happily all winter but unless a certain number of hours of chilling with a specific temperature occur (need to look this up in a veggie book), it will not split into separate cloves. It would be an interesting piece of research to be able to quantify the chill period for persistent blooming and also, continual growth in rose classes..

Kitty -- Autumn Damask does reasonably well here. I suspect it would enjoy at least a few hours of winter chill, but it ain't gettin' 'em here, and it's coping.

My garden's specific micro-climate is perhaps a worst case. We're on a hillside, in view of the sea. What really cold air we get flows rapidly down the hill, and "pools" in the next property down. This means we can grow things like Chinas and Noisettes, and Brugmansias, and Plumeria ... But we are NOT a good location for Gallicas, Damasks, and Albas.

Bob Edberg did his best to tell us this, long ago -- but I am so stubborn, I wanted to try them anyway. So, I did. And now, I know. Been there, done that, bought that hair-shirt -- don't have to do it again.

Jeri
Coastal Ventura Co., SoCal

I've often wondered if it isn't so much temperature as it is temperature differential. Proximity to the ocean moderates temperatures; could it be that one of the "triggers" depends on achieving over the course of the year (or maybe in a particular season) a certain cumulative level arising from the degree of difference between the highs and lows experienced at some specific stage of development (or overall)? (Yes, that sounds like gibberish to me, too; but, really, it does mean something.)

Given how a lot of cold climate roses behave here, it isn't strictly temperature at all, but daylength gets involved somehow. We can have an extremely warm fall, but the roses that belong here still know winter is coming, and make preparations.

Thanks for everyone's views so far. I will continue with my trial and error investigation and keep my fingers crossed as I'm in love with Gallicas these days.

I love them,too, but in my hot, humid climate, I'm afraid to try them. I'd love to have Autumn Damask, too.

You sound just like me, in 1987:-) .

Jeri

Hi Diane, I've mentioned in another thread how happy I am with the performance of Jenny Duval, a gallica I've grown for around 20 years. She is really tough and determined besides being a consistent blooming powerhouse. Several years ago my gardener, when taking out the ivy around her base, also razed her to the ground. Being the suckering thing she is, she was soon sprouting up again all over the place. Last year, when I was adding so many new roses, I needed to reclaim some of her territory. So I would either hack off suckers with a trowel, or reach into the dirt with my gloved hand and rip off the travelling sucker. I don't quite have the heart to outright kill a rose, so I simply would shove each sucker into an empty 1 gallon pot, and maybe toss a handful of ordinary garden soil over the exposed roots and may or may not have gotten around to adding a trowel scoop or two of additional dirt. In other words I was far from gentle. This was also happening in the heat of summer and temps were in the 90s or 100s. Some of these were fairly big suckers. I placed them all in the shade and doused them with water. All wilted to a fair degree. However, all bounced back and survived. I didn't exactly need all those extra Jenny Duval's but not a single one died. But the front yard didn't have any more available space. So I planted a group of them in the backyard. Even several of these orphans flowered this spring--all have been growing well this summer. And the main plant is still happily suckering away. I put in a really pretty species rose with expansive tendencies of its own on the border of JD's territory, and I'm watching them duke it out for space.

Another gallica I've seen growing locally is the very beautiful Ipsilante. The mental image of its superb flowers comes to the fore whenever browsing gallicas in online catalogs. I ordered it for last spring from Pickering, but unfortunately they had a crop failure and I had to choose a substitute (the rugosa Wild Edric). They aren't offering it this year or I would have bought it.

I think you've mentioned in another thread that you have Aimable Rouge on order. Mine came from Pickering this spring and is growing well. I thought it was grafted onto laxa rootstock, but when I callled Pickering this week I happened to ask about which roses I'd purchased from them were on laxa versus multiflora, but was told they hadn't been grafting anything on laxa recently and that all my purhcases were on multiflora. Below is a photo of the Aimable Rouge that came from Pickering as a bareroot in March. The photo was taken on August 31, 2012. I was taking pics of Duc de Cambridge (which is just past AR in the flower bed) for another forum poster and happened to get a portion of AR. Thought you might like to see how it is doing. I like it.

Since the discussion touches on why gallicas do well in parts of California, I'm posting a link to the mediterranean climate areas of the world. Since R. gallica originates in this type of climate, it isn't a surprise that this class is flourishing in my garden.

Melissa

Here is a link that might be useful: The Five Mediterranean Climate Regions

Yes. But you get a certain amount of winter chill. Cliff Orent has done well with them, out in the desert, too -- but these roses are NOT well-suited to winter-less coastal microclimates.

Jeri

Are roses susceptible to day length changes? Not all plants are, and I had never heard that roses were (or were not, for that matter).

Paula

I don't know that they are -- tho they do certainly respond to the drawing in of twilight, don't they? Even some very double roses do their best to close up, when it starts to get dark.

Jeri

It's so hard, seeing the beautiful pictures. You go ahead and plant them anyway and never get the thing you dreamed of. All the best soil in the world will not make them bloom. Even at Descanso Gardens where they get a little more chill off the foothills, they are big sprawly plants and give off a meager amount of flowers once a year. I go every spring and see if things are improving but I never see more than monster sized bushes with a bloom here or there. I know they are trying to represent all the classes, but really, who wants to go to a rose garden in spring and just see leaves? I wish they would replant with something spectacular. Leave the Damasks, Gallicas and Centifolias to the cooloer climates.

I confess I have a hybrid that is thornless. He's right on the edge of being able to bloom. Once way back we got a cold january and that spring he had really pretty flowers. He's got no thorns so I let him hang out in back but he hasn't flowered AT ALL the last three years.

It IS disappointing.

I don't think I really understood how poorly they do here, until I saw them growing elsewhere.

In the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, they do moderately well, but here -- NOT.

I know a probable Hybrid China, a very old plant in San Juan Bautista, growing in a vacant lot where there was once a house. It blooms beautifully, there. I can root it, and have on multiple occasions, but after a couple of years here, it begins to grow backward. I don't try anymore.

I'd love to bring home 'The French Strumpet' from the Heritage, but I know what fate would await it, here.

Jeri

Melissa, thanks so much for your link. Nice that even though you are in SoCal you can grow Gallicas. I'm disappointed because I was going to order Conditorum from Pickering but they're already sold out of several Gallicas. I didn't realize they sell out so soon after they open ordering. Maybe I'll order Jenny Duval from them at some point but I need to slow down and see where I'm going to put all the roses. The San Jose Heritage Garden is having a sale at the end of the month and there are three Gallicas I'm hoping to get. Have to get there early.

Just glad we get enough chill here. Now someone needs to hybridize a low winter chill Gallica like the low chill lilacs so Jeri and kittymoonbeam can grow them.

Diane

There is something interesting about apples and chill hours. A couple of apple growers in CA got a bumper crop of apples on higher chill requirement trees after a really wet season. Then some backyard farmers tried to replicate the results using a garden hose to saturate the branches twice a day. They got results. The guess is that there is something on the bark or at the site of future buds that counts the chill and is being washed away. Who knows if it would be the same for roses. The Backyard apples were stripped of all leaves and repeatedly washed off. I know that removing leaves pushes apples in warm winters into dormancy. These trees had the leaves removed every year and the difference was the spraying off of the branches once or twice a day with a strong jet hose end.

But, remember Diane. Melissa is way inland.
It matters.

Jeri

I may be inland (probably around 40 or 50 miles) but Diane and Brent are in coastal locations. Yet both of them still have success growing gallicas (and Brent also named some of his centifolias performing well too). In addition, I don't think any of the 3 of us are in high winter chill areas, although I likely get the most. Claremont, for example, is not considered a good area to grow apples because there isn't enough winter chill. If you find any apple trees in the local nurseries they are of the low chill varieties. Be that as it may, I have been growing multiple once-blooming old European garden roses for decades. They bloom profusely, require very little care, and just generally look lovely.

Yes, there are others in Southern California who have great difficulty growing them at all, but I suspect the reason or reasons are much more complicated than just the amount of winter chill or coastal fog. IMHO it is a combination of factors and how they interact that makes the difference--air temperature, sunlight, shade, sun intensity, temperature differentials, humidity, water quality (including ph and salinity), soil texture/ph/lack of or excess of various nutrients, amount of annual rainfall, freezes, snow, invasive roots of neighboring plants, allelopathic plants nearby, too much/too little/ too frequent/infrequent fertilizer etc. In one area/location perhaps a rose needs or tolerates different levels of factors but in another change one of those factors and that rose may shift to different comfort levels of others. If they get enough of the things they like and not too many of the things they don't you may get a very happy rose. And what one rose or class of roses may like, others may hate.

Melissa

Very well put Melissa. Thank you.

What I have come to learn about roses is that it's a trial and error process to learn about which roses will thrive in a given garden and which will wither and fade away. I never really gave winter chill much thought when I first purchased Gallica Officinalis because I didn't really know it was something I needed to consider. As time went on I learned about it and even read Gregg Lowery's recommendation to strip leaves off the once blooming old roses in the late fall to promote dormancy but I found that Officinalis just did that on it's own and bloomed nicely year after year. After my success with that Gallica I've started to add others. Alain Blanchard was the next success and now I've thrown caution to the wind and am getting many more.

As to Centifolias, I had a Shailer's Provence that did well until a gopher had it for lunch. I've ordered another one and ordered Blanchfleur as well. Time will tell.

Diane

Diane, if you have trouble getting Jenny Duval, I have plenty to spare.;)

Have you considered President Dutailly? He is often considered a hybrid perpetual, but if you check the references on HMF, you can read that his breeder considered him to be a reblooming gallica. I must say that PD looks like a cross between an hp and a gallica--on steroids. He has the look and territorial expansion habit of a gallica but BIGGER and extra vigorous, plus with rebloom. Fragrance is heavenly. Produces dense, thick, quite thorny canes and a veritable forest of leaves. I got mine from Eurodesert. A super-tanker sized plant with an enormous root system. It was like wrestling with a field marshall to get him planted. Whew!

Melissa

Hi Melissa,

Would LOVE a sucker from Jenny. Pickering sold out in a flash. Please let me know what you'd like me to provide in terms of shipping cost etc. So nice of you to ask.

Am not familiar with President Dutailly. I'll do some research but am cautious as all my roses must be shade tolerant and not need a lot of heat.

Are you coming to the Sacramento conference?

Diane

Sure, will look into, probably next week when it is hopefully cooler! It was 104 here today.:( Anything shipped now might turn into steamed lettuce. Also, I will see about removing the soil, just in case it has something you don't! Maybe I can bareroot it as soon as temps dip????

No, it is unlikely that I'll attend because my four-legged menagerie makes arrangements complicated. The day with the presentations is kind of pricey too, and I'm retired so cost is a consideration. I wonder if they could webcast it? Local colleges/universities are sometimes sources of webcast capabilities at very moderate costs (especially if it is part of a student project where they can earn credit for supporting an event) or even free (if you know who and how to ask). Many online webcasts that I view on horses are free (but an organization that doesn't have the budget to do that might be able to charge a small fee).

As to President Dutailly, his is the picture featured on the hybrid perpetual page at Vintage. Gorgeous!!!! I don't know about the heat requirement however, as I've only seen him in my garden and Eurodesert's. Maybe you could ask Gregg Lowery? But as to the shade, well I have 2 PD's (it's that suckering habit dontcha know!), and one gets early morning sun, then dappled shade/sun the rest of the day. It looks perfectly happy. Whether it would like that amount of shade in a cooler location I don't know.

Melissa

Most Gallicas don't do very well at the Heritage. Mel said Gallica Officinalis might as well be an annual. Gallica hybrids do much better. Red Runaround is quite happy. The French Strumpet is clearly a hybrid, and obviously loves San Jose's climate, so it may be happy in other mild winter areas.

Jill, I think I'd try it again. It MIGHT succeed here. These days, we're having slightly cooler winters, and far hotter summers.

STILL -- It's about Micro-Climate . . .

My friend Penni, in Long Beach, emailed yesterday to report that it was 103. It topped out there at 104 deg (only 3 deg cooler than inland Hemet).

Here in Camarillo, we hit 93. (And that was bad enough -- but it illustrates why Penni has air conditioning, and we do not.)
She gets colder in the winter, too.

But you don't know until you try -- and our climate really is changing.

Jeri

Melissa, I sent a message to Anita Clevenger (cemeteryrose on the forum) about dvds of the conference and will let you know what she says.

Here's my email to contact me about Jenny Duval:
diane at dianefenster.com

President Dutailly is a gorgeous rose. I looked it up. Thanks for letting me know about it.

Jill and Jeri, Officinalis is doing very well here. Maybe it would work in part shade for you both.

Diane

Thanks for checking Diane. It would be terrific if this event could be recorded! I've put your email in my address book.

Below is a picture of the leaves on my latest gallica Kraskoje Kawaskole, newly arrived from Heirloom during a respite of our oven-like heat! It looks nicely healthy, and appears it needed to be pruned back for shipping as it was too big. Rambler Nymphe Tepla looks as if she needed a haircut as well to make the trip. Both arrived last Friday with their buddy Siwa (who also looks lovely) and already they are sending out new shoots. Woohoo!

Melissa

I was in Long Beach on that 103 day! It was 94 at 3pm when I got on the 405 in Long Beach, and when I got to Anaheim 30 min later, it was 106! Those are Palm Springs temps. as far as I'm concerned. Every bloom was fried except PJPII and a few Memorial Days.

I can't believe the heat you folks in southern CA are getting. It's been a mild summer here and today there's a cold snap on the coast and it really feels like fall. My Gallicas are beginning to get their autumn colors as a prelude to dormancy. Just received a GIGANTIC 1 gal Narcisse de Salvandy which was on sale at Rogue Valley Roses. Can't wait til next year's bloom.

Diane

Diane, only one rose has ever gone dormant here. R. arkansana. I thought it was dead, because we never see that. In fact, the only other time I've ever seen dormant roses was on a visit to Syl Arena, up in Santa Maria, years ago.

We brought roses home from Syl's place. They looked like dead things -- but, within a couple of days, they were starting to leaf out.

In our climate, even our NORMAL climate, there's no such thing as dormancy. In fact, winter -- the only time we really get rain -- is the season when our Teas and Chinas are at their very best, and their blooms are loveliest, with colors most-intense.

And we set a record yesterday. 90 deg -- breaking a record which had held for more than a century. Thank the lord of gardens and flowers, today is a normally warm day.

There's a reason why the first of the Anglo settlers here called this little area "Pleasant Valley."

Jeri