I've heard that exact possibility discussed by breeders not long ago. The consensus seemed to be that some seedlings will quickly catch a dose of something, then either die, or go on to be healthy adults with an acquired resistance to whatever bit 'em. That meant it might make sense to give sick seedlings one spraying.

I didn't feel like the question had been resolved to my complete satisfaction, and am not in the habit of using any sprays -- even neem and insecticidal soap kills helpful predators along with the pests -- so I've watched most of my seedlings die of damp off or mildew without intervening. I can't swear I didn't lose any good ones, I may well have, but the few that I'm left with seem very robust, and have never exhibited symptoms of any illness.

This post was edited by ffff on Tue, Oct 14, 14 at 17:39

Mmmm, indeed, ffff. My one little attempt at hybridising came to a premature end....having raised a couple of dozen little seedlings, EVERY one of them looked appalling - I swear, there is no ambivalence about what to keep - disease shows itself early and indelibly on baby roses.....even blinded by love for my 'offspring', I could see they were going to be dire (course, if I hadn't used Zepherine Drouhin anywhere, I might have had better luck...)

I guess now's a good time for a thread re-railing.

"ffff and trospero -- do you think there's an inherent problem with the mixing
of European and Chinese OGRs that leads to greater disease problems? [.....]
if one was to breed Damasks with Chinas today, would there be an immediate
blackspot problem with ALL the offspring simply because the two lines have
'issues' when mixed? Or is it just that it wasn't something 'weeded out' among
resulting seedlings?"

I don't have an answer that I can back up with any unambiguous facts, so I'll just give you my gut feeling. I think that crossing with Rose Edouard is to blackspot, what crossing with a mossed Centifolia is to mildew. If you love that kind of rose, and your local pathogens won't do more than disfigure it, maybe you put up with it being sick. I don't think you can recreate Rose Edouard to fix that, Ivan Louette convinced me with his theory that it's a very old Indian cultivar, and not Parsons' Pink x Damask at all.

Chinensis is a big and diverse group, but I don't know of any which resemble rugged wild species roses. Even some of the earliest Chinas and Teas to arrive in Europe show genetic signs of probable inbreeding, and in my environment, most get so much mildew that I can't tell if they have blackspot. With the aid of its exceptional hybrid vigor, Gloire des Rosomanes stays spotless, but the vigor's not passed on to descendants, so (GdR's offspring) Geant des Batailles and General Jaqueminot stay sick like all the rest. After GdR, the oldest chinensis roses to do really well here are Polyanthas from the 1880s or later. I therefore have no suggestions about what rugged old China you could go back to for breeding stock.

Since most of the last 150 years of breeding has been an incessant stream of chinensis rebloomers, I feel like we've given the species a fair chance to prove what it can do. It made the sickly Floribundas of 1960, but it's also included in some roses that are quite healthy. Obviously, it is possible. My feeling is that it hurts the odds, but if you like the odds better than I do, go for it! Everybody else is. I just see no point in working with them when I live in an area where they do so badly.

"I know how people lament about how Bourbons are so prone to blackspot... but
I have a few that are barely affected."

I have no recollection of the cultivars you mention, but will look for them the next time I go to San Jose, and tell you how they hold up there. In the Bay Area, most Bourbons fall into two categories: blackspotted and ugly, or blackspotted and dead. Rose Edouard itself looks shabby from the end of first flush until the next spring. But hey, you never know.

Even if they do badly here, that doesn't mean I think that you shouldn't consider breeding them. Creating a rose that grows well everywhere is impossible. Twenty million people live pretty close to you, so any rose which does well in NJ shouldn't lack an audience, regardless of how it does around San Francisco. I also think it's important for amateurs to work with roses that they like, or they're probably not going to stay interested long enough to get any results. I still mess with Centifolias, even though they're sterile and mildew prone, because I love 'em. Every breeder has that right.

"Maybe a good idea is to think of 'release-able roses' as terminal F1s from
two different and individually consistent lines, kind of like creating hybrid
seed for crops or flowers."

I think that's a great idea, but very hard to implement in practice, since
only species plants breed true (produce reliably consistent offspring from the
same cross) without excessive inbreeding. In a diploid species, you can
maintain 300+ individuals through several generations and get to that
point, but higher ploidy plants conserve more genetic material, so it can take
them more generations to get there. Mortals are too impatient for projects
like that, so we're limited to crossing wild species roses together, or
crossing with hybrids that produce inconsistent offspring. But in a perfect
world, I think it might be exactly as you say, since hybrid vigor can be so helpful, and being able to buy a pack of garden rose seeds that reliably sprouted and grew into healthy and attractive plants would be wonderful.

Kordes probably came closest with R. kordesii, but repeatedly crossing an individual plant with itself isn't really the same thing.

"Oh, and one other thing, regarding 'R. moschata'..."

If you don't want to freeze pollen, you'll probably never have enough
available to hit more than a fraction of the blooms on your Musk, but with
that many rebloomers, it seems like you'd have reasonable odds of *some*
pollen. Just be forewarned, when I've hoped to do that in the past, my
reblooming Damasks had invariably been pollinated, set hips, and were not
going to rebloom much, if at all. Blooming at a time when relatives aren't in
bloom is a way speciation naturally occurs, and it seems to have been pretty
effective at preventing Musk crosses in the past. Freezing pollen is a pain
in the rear, but it does offer a way out of that dilemma.

Oh, and don't worry if the hips aren't red yet. On Musks, they often reach
maturity while only red on one side. Given a few more weeks, they'll probably be fine.

Thank you very much for your insight!

While I appreciate everyone candidly offering their experiences with various roses, I keep in mind where the posters are located. Where I am, blackspot is virtually inevitable. It's rare for a rose to be completely unaffected.

So, for someone like myself who doesn't use fungicides, it's more about grading the damage -- is it just an occasional spotty leaf? Or perhaps quite a few? Is there a noticeable loss of foliage? Does the rose go completely naked? If so, for how long, and how many naked cycles in a year?

I have grown roses for a few years (here and in a previous garden on Long Island), but even so, none I've chosen has outright died because of fungal disease. This is largely because of the roses I chose NOT to grow. Right now, I'm watching how things do unassisted, save for water and fertilizer and training. But keep in mind that I'm building layers of a garden, and while roses are the "bones", they're surrounded by other stuff. So even if something "goes naked" for a period, it's not really noticeable when the garden is viewed from the lawn. And so long as it continues to grow and bloom, I'll keep it in the garden. But I won't breed it.

Mildew here is really just a cold-Spring or cold-Autumn thing, and even then, only temporary. By and large, after a rose's first year, it just shakes it off on its own. If it looks like it needs help, a quick Cornell mixture gets rid of it with one application. And I've never seen rust.

The few Chinas and heavily-China-bred older roses I have ('Archduke Charles', 'Bermuda Spice', 'Clotilde Soupert', 'Eugene de Beauharnais', 'Louis Philippe', 'Marie Pavie', 'Mme Laurette Messimy', 'Napoleon', 'Perle d'Or', "Sophie's Perpetual") do well here, though they are more sensitive to Winter than the others. But even after this past horrid Winter (their first since coming as bands last year), they rebounded well, some growing three to four feet in just this year after being cut down to a few inches in Spring. The same goes for 'R. moschata' and 'Reverend Seidel'. None mentioned in this paragraph have gotten "ugly" from blackspot. Sure, there's a spotty leaf or two, but you REALLY have to look for them. More obvious would be sawfly damage than blackspot on those roses.

This area of the country is a bit of a conundrum. Our Summers are so hot and humid that by July, the best OGRs are the ones hailed for the South -- Chinas, Teas, Noisettes, Polyanthas, Poly-Teas, etc. But then comes this time of year, and they're still actively growing, while the others are getting ready to sleep for Winter. And every so often, we get a Winter like last year....ugh.

The once-blooming, non-China OGRs, on the other hand, are passing their peak just as the China-derived ones are coming into their own. And the Gallicas seem to "not be too happy" by August. That's when they already start "going to sleep" by stopping all new growth (my two Damasks, however, don't seem as unhappy in the heat, but they have two warm-weather species ancestors in addition to 'R. gallica').

So this is why I tried some of the intermediates -- Bourbons ('Honorine de Brabant ', 'Mlle Blanche Lafitte', 'Mme de Sevigne', 'Mme Dore', 'Souvenir de la Malmaison', and 'Souvenir de Victor Landeau') and HPs ('Ferdinand Pichard', 'Georg Arends', "Grandmother's Hat", 'Monsieur Boncenne', 'Paul Neyron', 'Pierre Notting', 'Reine des Violettes', 'Souvenir du Dr. Jamain', and 'Yolande d'Aragon'). Blackspot resistance varies from rose to rose, but overall, they make a good compromise for the climate. They don't go into shock from the heat the way the Gallicas do, but they're also more cold-hardy than the Chinas and Teas (i.e. very little dieback, comparitively). And of my Bourbons and HPs, you might be surprised at which ones were the cleanest -- 'HdB', 'MdS', 'SdlM' and 'SdVL' of the Bourbons, and 'Pierre Notting', 'RdV', 'SdDJ' and YdA' of the HPs.

Interestingly, my few Damask Perpetuals ('Blanc de Vibert', 'Indigo', 'Rose de Rescht', 'Rose du Roi -- original') seemed less "shocked" by the Summer heat than their Gallica relatives. Even now (with our first frost just a few weeks away) I'm still getting some blooms on the last two, and new growth on all four. Perhaps being in "rebloom-mode" just works better in the hot and humid -- even if actual blooming declines, these roses were also growing faster than the Gallicas which seemed to start "getting ready for bed" by late Summer.

And of my four, only 'Rose de Rescht' got hit by blackspot. I have read that this may be an early HP rather than a true Damask Perpetual. And here is where I think the problem lies -- a Gallica-like plant reblooming from China genes rather than Damask Perpetual genes. Of the HPs I've grown or seen locally, the ones that lean heavily toward Damask Perpetual OR Bourbon are the ones that seem healthier here. The "stuck in the middle" intermediates (like a Bourbon X Damask Perpetual) are the ones that go naked.

Perhaps this has to do with how the Gallicas and Chinas do here -- the former wants to go to sleep in the hot-and-humid, while the latter takes it like a cup of coffee in the morning. A dash of either seems fine on a base of the other, but 50-50 is a mess. 'Monsieur Boncenne' seems like such a rose, intermediate between a Bourbon and a Damask Perpetual-HP, and loses about a third of its leaves after its first flush, then refoliates and blooms again. Similarly, I'm having "issues" with HTs or HT-like roses without spraying -- 'Georg Arends' is a mess, and has two naked cycles per season, yet continues to grow and bloom. 'Lemon Spice', which is the only other HT I have here in the ground, doesn't go completely naked but is certainly struggling -- I'll pot it up next year, since that scent is worth the pampering. My pot-pet red HTs are similarly pampered with food and water, and so are growing vigorously, so they shake off spotty leaves and regrow new ones quickly enough that it's barely noticeable.

And yes, I agree about working with what works well WHERE YOU ARE. That's why I wanted to try out a range of different types in the garden. People keep saying "Bourbons are disease-prone", but if I have a few which stay relatively clean for me here in the Blackspot Belt without fungicide, why NOT try raising seed from them? I'd especially like to try them with Teas, considering how beautiful the Bourbon-Tea 'Souvenir de la Malmaison' is. As far as OGRs go, I am thinking that healthy Bourbon, China, Tea, Polyantha and 'R. moschata' might make interesting starter ingredients, based on how well most of them are doing for me here. If I'm wrong, well, at least I get to have fun making and raising the seedlings. And I have a few friends willing to "try something unique" in their gardens, since I'm basically out of room here....

:-)

~Christopher

This post was edited by AquaEyes on Wed, Oct 15, 14 at 3:04

Thinking about things again.....

1) I was re-reading some information I remembered about the first Bourbon being thought of as a Centifolia X China, and looking at pics on HMF and via Google, I do see a similarity in foliage and habit, and isn't there info about Centifolias sometimes repeating in hot climates?

2) If it was a Damask, it wasn't 'Quatre Saisons', however. I think that it was something more like "Pickering Four Seasons", i.e. a Damask Perpetual. The old references say "Red Tous le Mois" which was later merged with 'Quatre Saisons' as a synonym, but it really wasn't. Besides -- if people really were using a Damask and 'Old Blush' together for hedges, wouldn't it look weird with 'Quatre Saisons'? Wouldn't something shaped more like a Damask Perpetual be a better pairing with 'Old Blush'?

3) Perhaps all the blame can't be placed upon Chinensis. Perhaps it's more that Chinensis doesn't play well with Gallica, or anything with a lot of Gallica in it. Because this was the European species most highly developed on its own, it was the means of introducing the "pretty flowers" to the other hybrid OGR classes -- Albas, Damasks and Centifolias all have a good deal of Gallica in them. On the other hand, the Spinosissimas are based upon a different species, and the hybrids with China rebloom don't have nearly the same foliage issues. Perhaps this species makes a better "base" than Gallica for mixing with Chinensis.

Again, pardon the random stream-of-consciousness.......

:-)

~Christopher

Just a footnote or two:

It's not that 'Red Tous Mois' and 'Quatre Saisons' were merged into synonymy proper, but rather that two (or more!) different roses share 'Quatre Saisons' as a name (or part of a name). And 'Quatre Saisons' would also sometimes be used to refer to the whole group which I refer to as Damask Perpetuals (and which others like to call Portlands). Consequently, it's not always easy to tell what's intended when a writer uses the term 'Quatre Saisons'.

'Rose de Rescht' was mentioned earlier as a conjecture having been made that it was perhaps an early HP. Within the last year or so, I was surprised to learn that there are evidently two (or more! again) roses going around under this name, one which doesn't sucker or run, and one which does. The one which doesn't is, I believe, the correct one (it's the one I have, and to me looks and acts like a Damasky [rather than Gallica-y] Damask Perpetual); the one which does sucker or run is presumably the one suspected of being an early HP (I haven't seen it either in person or in a photo). A further complication is that I think that there may at times be confusion with 'Rose du Roi', which indeed more than once I've thought might have been, inadvertently, the first HP.

The fringes of the Damask family are a confounding bunch, aren't they?

Is Ispahan a Musk or a Noisette? And such a list of HP canddates! Rose de Rescht, the various alleged Roses du Roi and Mogadors, Duchesse de Rohan, etc. On most of them, you can't point to any actual chinensis traits, although you'll hear "This foliage looks a little funny" quite a lot. I usually take that as a euphemism for, "Aha, another HC." But sometimes I really don't know.

I'm slightly haunted by "the twice-bearing rose gardens of Paestum," though I realize it's like saying "the thrice-great Hermes." I've tried to push back the limits of our knowledge by exploring some of the few remaining places not covered in Mr. Dickerson's indispensable books. Fought with Latin and Dutch in archaic fonts, and read the journal of one of the first Europeans to visit India, things like that. I wanted to see how far back I could find clear evidence of rebloom.

In 1608, Thomas Hill noted that roses don't rebloom as well in England or other northerly countries as they do further south. Gerard's Herball (1597) says of roses in general, "These flower from the end of May to the ende of August, and divers times after, by reason the tops and superfluous branches are cut away in the end of their flowring; and then do they sometimes flower even untill the end of October and after." Also during this period, an early European chronicler in India noted that they had roses there all year round, and attended a religious ceremony which featured fresh roses, though he was only in that particular place from November to February.

Still, there's nothing earlier than Ferrari's 'Flora, seu, De floram cultura' (1632) which says that the roses you can get repeat out of are a subset of the Damasks, or which offers any description of them. If my minimal Latin skills are working, he says that the rebloomer, the All The Months rose, or Italian Perpetual, is like a summer Damask or Praenestine (an old white Centifolia) but is red, reblooming when deadheaded, and even thornier than the others. I posted the original Latin as a comment on HMF's page for Autumn Damask, should someone with better Latin want to try translating it all.

But before 1500, between the obscurity of sources and my lack of needed language skills, I've found very little to go on. Ayurvedic texts talk about a rose, satapatri (literally, "hundred petals") before 1500, and maybe before 500, but I'm no Sanskrit scholar, and Sanskrit texts available online are few and far between. (In modern times, satapatri is used to refer to both Damasks and Centifolias.) Herodotus said that on the home turf of Alexander the Great, there were sixty petaled roses of surpassing fragrance growing wild, but he gives them no name or blooming traits.

My best guess right now is that Damask showed up somewhere in the vicinity of Bactria, since there was once a prosperous and advanced civilization there, which interacted with Persia and the Indus valley civilization. They occupied a major trade route, and by the time Alexander the Great showed up, had been minting their own silver coinage for centuries, staring at about the same time as Babylon. Very posh and high tech for the time. More to the point, they were around Musk's suspected native area, and within fedtschenkoana's. If Musk x Gallica was going to be pollinated by fedtschenkoana anywhere, it couldn't have been far away.

But the next peek through the curtain of history is so much later! What happened between 500BC and 1500?

I suspect that reblooming Damasks were known in the ancient world (not that I have good evidence), since Gallica carries some lurking genes, and Musk and fedtschenkoana have them on display. Coupled with the drastic lengths people must have gone to to propagate it across the known world, it just seems to me the more likely guess. For a non-food plant, propagation efforts like that might be unique in human history.

In any case, by 1632 we have a red, thorny reblooming Damask discussed in Italy, which is being touted as the Rose of Italy, much like how the francofurtanae are labelled the Rose of Germany, Gallicas are declared French, etc. And it's also called the "all months rose."

Even if we assume that the roses at Paestum were once bloomers, there are a lot of other Italian connections to roses like that. When the Portland Rose, with its supposed Italian origins, has its first spike of popularity, Dupont sends off to Florence to get another Damask Perpetual, which he releases as Quatre Saisons d'Italie in 1815. Descemet, who named his roses in French as a rule, sells his own Damask Perpetual as Bifera Venusta. One could write it off as a marketing fad, were it not for the one's established origin.

Since Ferrari felt safe calling the all-the-months the national rose of his own country, I would think it was already long established there by 1632. The question in my mind is, how long? The less thorny Portland types that are well known in Florence but a novelty in Paris... how long?

So then when I'm looking at a rose like Ispahan or Rose de Rescht, I don't know what to think. Yes, it has funny foliage. But is it chinensis funny, or funny like some obscure rose that grew in Iran in 800 AD?

It's a puzzlement! I hope that some rosarians with knowledge of Latin, Greek, Farsi, Sanskrit or Arabic will get in on the fun, because only research in such languages, or extensive genetic testing, seem likely to ever resolve this.

This post was edited by ffff on Thu, Oct 16, 14 at 17:38

Very interesting thread. On the issue of rebloom... Rosa californica has nice rebloom in this area, as does Rosa minutifolia (which awakes from dormancy following rain, greens up and blooms). I have a couple roses that are supposed to be once-bloomers, that this year repeated. I've had both of them about 3 years, and no sign of rebloom until this year, which has been very hot and dry even for Southern California. The roses are R. borissovae (has had 3 flushes so far go figure!) and William's Double Yellow. WDY bloomed normally in the spring, then went fairly dormant (dropped most leaves during summer). Yet for the last several weeks or so it has had scattered flowers. Picture is from last night. Plant in the background is CA native Verbena lilacina.

Melissa

Another flower from William's Double Yellow last night. This one has what looks like a fully-formed bud inside the open flower.

Melissa

I remember reading something of Paestum. The "twice-blooming roses" of this area were likely not "peculiar roses" but a reference to a "peculiar climate" and "peculiar culture." It's somewhat like how some once-blooming roses are tricked into repeating in some parts of California. Paestum was also considered a wonder for agriculture in that many plants fruited and flowered virtually year-round, offering out-of-season produce somewhat like how Napa Valley does today. To portray its geographic and climatic marvel, saying "roses there bloom twice" would widen the eyes of those who never knew roses to do so back home.

Another thing to consider was HOW some old sources claimed to be able to get repeat from their roses -- by pruning them almost to the ground after the first bloom, or even burning them. It was quite a shock for the rose, and wasn't recommended to be done two years in a row. Such treatment being necessary doesn't really warrant a rose as being inherently "repeat-blooming" in my book, but when the emperor wants roses in September, people will figure out how to get them. So keep that in mind when reading references of out-of-season blooms.

Also keep in mind that often old writings are laden with hyperbole. A "hundred-petaled rose" would not necessarily have 100 petals for it to be given that moniker. It could simply be "fully double" by today's standards, but compared to roses in the past which perhaps maxed at 30 petals, even having 50 could lead an observer to claiming there are 100, if only to illustrate how full the blooms appear.

But even if there were 100 petals, does that mean the roses in question were of the same type as what we today class as Centifolias? Is it not possible for other fragrant roses to result with many, many petals after repeated selection for that trait? So we must be careful when we assume that a type of rose has a long history simply because the name does.

I think there are two other things to keep in mind. First is that it's very possible that reblooming Chinese roses may have made their way West earlier than the late 18th Century. There might not have been a direct route of trade between China and the Roman Empire, but it's very feasible for minor trade to trickle village by village, allowing for garden pass-alongs. The originals may have died out, but they could have left offspring along the way.

The second is the possibility that reblooming as a trait could have appeared as a spontaneous mutation in another species, or as a result of hybrids between early- and late-season bloomers. Don't we already see today that some American rose species have individuals which have longer bloom times? If somehow or another 'R. rugosa', for example, appeared in ancient Rome, would you expect them to be mentioned in the kind of detail which would make it clear to us today that they're something different (apart from the reblooming trait) from roses already known?

Roses have a tangled history with us, since people have been bringing together in gardens different species which wouldn't normally meet in the wild. Even before controlled breeding, if a seedling grew which was desirable, it would get passed along -- whether mentioned in surviving old/ancient texts or not. As peoples migrated around, opportunities for bringing "little pieces of home" followed. Considering the genus Rosa's reputation for promiscuity -- and its long association with our species -- it seems to me very likely that species were mingling in gardens far earlier than their supposed dates of introduction.

:-)

~Christopher

Tessiess -- I didn't see your posts as I was composing mine, so I apologize if it seems I'm mentioning a point of yours (California's reputation for tricking once-bloomers into blooming again) without referencing you. But thanks for bringing it up independently.

:-)

~Christopher

AquaEyes:

I avoided examples which point to practices such as you've mentioned. Like a 16th century English reference to a field of roses which would rebloom after the field was ploughed, or ancient statements about being able to have roses all year round by planting new cuttings at different times of year. I find those unclear enough that I don't attach any real significance to them. I only think about Paestum much, because I don't know how much of Italy's association with reblooming Damasks was real, and how much of it was due to 15-19th century rosarians' interpretation of Roman texts.

I also agree about the creep of chinensis. With Ward Sebba'auy (proto-Rose Edouard) having been found in coastal areas of the Middle East and East Africa -- basically, anywhere an Indian merchant ship could go -- I don't really doubt that chinensis was there, and perhaps in Mediterranean ports as well, at an earlier date than 1750.

That said, I've also had a lot of "burnt hand learns best" moments, since I remember how there was no fedschenkoana in any garden rose until very recently, and how almost every author in the world called The Portland Rose a chinensis hybrid, when it doesn't look like one, smell like one, or have the genes of one. We now know that was just plain wrong, but for decades it was gospel.

I guess you could say that I'm now equally skeptical of the reblooming Damasks in Paestum, and of pronouncements that roses which show no clear chinensis traits, MUST BE chinensis, just because they rebloom. These days, I want more evidence than that.

This post was edited by ffff on Thu, Oct 16, 14 at 16:42

About the repeat-blooming roses in Italy, don't forget Montaigne's 1580 mention of the rose in Ferrara which was said to bloom every month of the year. As I have it in /The Old Rose Informant/ (p. 443), "On the 15th of November, in 1580, the French essayist Montaigne, traveling to Rome, arrived in Ferrara, Italy, where he saw 'several beautiful churches, gardens, and private mansions, and everything that could be called notable--among other things, at the Jesuits' [I should have written "Jesuates'", a religious order different from the Jesuits], a specimen of a rose which blooms every month of the year; and they indeed found one which they gave to Monsieur Montaigne'--the 'one' being presumably a flower rather than a potted plant."

Thanks! That's another good one. We focus so much on French roses, it's easy to forget how new they were to the whole thing, having only recently stolen the gig from the Dutch, and that without genetics percolating in through the Middle East, European garden roses might've been limited to Albas, Gallicas and francofurtanae. I'd assume the Dutch got the job because they were busily sending ships to every known corner of the world, so had a head start on foreign breeding stock.

But all roads lead to Rome, and Venice had long been one of the most active seaports in the world, Marco Polo's home town. (During Marco's voyage, Kublai Khan tried to invade a country called Shay-po, now in southern Thailand, the name of which is the Sanskrit name of R. chinensis as filtered through Chinese. A whole country named after a rose!) If foreign roses were to arrive in Europe before the Dutch were a maritime power, Italy impresses me as a perfectly reasonable place for that to happen.

Quoth Melissa,
"R. borissovae (has had 3 flushes so far go figure!)"

Fascinating! I've heard it compared to pomifera/villosa, which, judging from Duplex's occasional rebloom, might have lurking remontancy genes.

Wild R. californica isn't much of a rebloomer where I live, so I'm not sure whether to think others have an unusual californica or hybrid, when they say theirs reblooms, or if the difference in local conditions is responsible. I don't recall whether it hit 100 even once this year, where I am.

Seeing how Musks and banksias rebloom here, and given that report of Centifolia rebloom in the blazing heat of Pakistan, I wonder if lurking rebloom genes might not turn into very active rebloom genes, given a hot enough climate.

I'll take a look at that Latin, ffff. I'm not too far removed from my Classical Languages studies and still tutor Latin from time to time.

Jay

Thanks, Jay! Since it's the first known reference to a reblooming Damask, and has never before been translated out of Latin, I know some people who are going to be very excited to read your work!

I'll go ahead and repost the Latin here, hopefully any typos I made aren't too confusing.

------

From pp. 202-3, including some preliminary material included only to avoid "All-the-months, much like the above" sort of situations.

"Damascena multiplex

Odoratae pallidae que pleno flore Damascenae rosae, quam Plinii Coroneolam alii, alii spineolam interpretantur, e viridi purpurascentem caudicem, ramosaque inde sivula diffusas saturo colore virentes virgas obarmant spinae admodum infrequentes, breves, durae, rubidae, lata e basi recurvos in aculeos uncinatae.

Subrubens flore multiplici.

Vulgari sativae densis foliis leviter ex albo rubescenti, quam aut Plinianam Alabandicam, aut Trachiniam esse scriptores sane nobiles autumant, virgei rami breviores, graciliores, subvirides, minorum grandiorum que spinarum pro promiscue crebris, languido pallore lividis, intentisque mucronibus minaces.

Variegata flore pleno, R. Didon.ib. Italica flore pleno perpetua

Quae variae diluto foliosi floris rubore masculosa, praenestina dicitur, asperitate pariter aculeata inhorrescit. [The Praenestine referred to here is apparently an old white Centifolia.] Italica flore suaviter rubente perpetua, proxime superioribus duabus persimilis, densioribus saevit aculeis."

From page 364:

"Italicam superiori persimilem, nobiliorem tamen, ac diligentius colendam semper virentem, perpetuam, sive omnium mensium rosam appellant: quod ea saepius amputata primum fasciculi aspectu confertissimos calyces simul promit, quos deinde paluatim atque per partes ad alteram usque putationem floreum recludit in partum; ut ipsos fingulis mensibus una cum floribus inducere videatur. Isto autem densiore calycum numero, florumque prope continuato vere maxime distat haec a superiore, qua minus dives floridae purpurae rariores aperit virides alabastros. Ut igitur omnibus, aut certe plerisque mensibus perpetua vernet, saepe intra annum, ac bis minimum deputanda est. Exitu Octobris superficies omnis solo tenus angusta putatione succiditur, ut e duro repullulet: ita enim citati calyces numerosiores florea fertilitate perhiemant."

ffff,

Old garden rose fertility has been an interesting topic as has the study of ancient texts on roses. Thank you for posting it. Have you looked at the De Historia Plantarum of Theophrastus (c350-287 BC) as an information source? He did write about roses (Book 6). Also roses were not merely ornamental in ancient times. They were used medicinally. I believe they appear in the De Materia Medica of Dioscorides also.

Cath

"Have you looked at the De Historia Plantarum of Theophrastus (c350-287 BC) as an information source? He did write about roses (Book 6). Also roses were not merely ornamental in ancient times. They were used medicinally. I believe they appear in the De Materia Medica of Dioscorides also."

I've looked at almost every ancient author on the subject, if only indirectly, since most of the 16th-17th century herbals and gardening books are filled with with either quotes from them, or references to their work. When they look worth pursuing, like when Thomas Hill says,

"And to haue Roses euerie moneth, you must then (as Didimus writeth) new plant, dung and water them often every moneth. But to haue Roses monethly cannot be possible, neither in our countrie of England, nor in any other Countrie, lying under the North, so well as in the temperate and warm countries."

I then scurry off and find the Geoponica of Didymus Chalcenterus. Unfortunately, the most interesting things I've run into on rebloom haven't been from ancient authors, I suspect that they've been gone over thoroughly enough that the material's already pretty well known. (In this case, Didymus writeth about watering and fertilizing to get roses euery moneth, but nothing more, Hill's addition about climate is far more interesting.) A lot of the 16th-17th century herbals are also full of strange material that passed for medical or pharmaceutical advice at the time. (You know, back in the days when you could still become invisible by carrying a corpse's hand with a candle mounted on it, when toads had magical stones in their heads, and leopards were what happened when lions mated with panthers.)

Due to the everlasting glory of Mickey Mouse, who prevents us from having post-1922 works reach the public domain, the only non-Greek version of Dioscorides I'd be able to freely access and quote, would be Saraceno's Latin translation of 1598. It's an extremely rare book, not available online, and that would still leave me struggling with yet another gigantic tome in Latin. I could buy a more recent translation to read the page or two about roses, but would then be unable to post more than little snippets. It's a path I usually avoid, since there are so many easier options to explore.

I will, however, post the bit from Theophrastus which touches on any of this. Most of it is related to Herodotus' story about 60-petaled roses growing in Macedonia, though mention is made of some (the same? different?) which are called 100-petaled.

"Among roses there are many differences, in the number of petals, in roughness, in beauty of color, and in sweetness of scent. Most have five petals, but some have twelve or twenty, and some a great many more than these; for there are some, they say, which are even called 'hundred petaled.' Most of such roses grow near Philippi; for the people of that place get them on Mount Pangaeus, where they are abundant, and plant them. However the inner petals are very small (the way in which they are produced being such that some are outside, some inside). Some kinds are not fragrant nor of large size. Among those which have large flowers those in which the part below the flower is rough are the more fragrant. In general, as has been said, good color and scent depend upon locality; for even bushes which are growing in the same soil shew some variation in the presence or absence of a sweet scent. Sweetest-scented of all are the roses of Cyrene, wherefore the perfume made from these is the sweetest." [Cyrene was a Greek colony on the coast of northeast Libya.]

Also, he talks about when different garden flowers bloom, but if he knows anything of Musks or rebloomers, he doesn't mention it.

"The rose comes last of these, and is the first of the spring flowers to come to an end, as it is the first to appear, for its time of blooming is short."

I thought his proposal that rose gardens be periodically burned down so that one doesn't have to prune, was not a good one, though other ancient authors repeat it often enough.

This post was edited by ffff on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 14:12

I had some Latin as well (high school and second-time-around college), and just glancing at what you retyped I was able to recognize a lot. I was thinking of cracking out my dictionary and text for some words and forms I didn't remember off the top of my head, and then I remembered Google Translate. It's not perfect -- and if you had any typos, or if the original text did, then some words will be skipped. But I think that you'll get a lot out of it by copying and pasting the Latin into the link below, and translating to English.

:-)

~Christopher

Here is a link that might be useful: Google Translate

Being later Latin, a lot of the grammar and vocabulary is modified from classical conventions, but I've done a little bit from this era before fortunately. Here's a quick take that adheres to the punctuation for the most part to try to make the Latin and English as followable as possible. There are definitely some ambiguous lines and words -particularly as I haven't dealt much in technical descriptions of plants in Latin- but I'm happy to explain alternatives once I look at it a bit more. I tried to fill in ambiguous subjects where they are understood in the Latin, but I may have slipped a bit. Everything in parentheses is mine:

"The Damask Class (Group)

And of the characteristically faint scented full flower of the Damask Rose, which some including Pliny called the Coroneola or Autumn Rose, and others explained as the Spineola or Littled Spined Rose, the trunk gradually turns darker (dark red or purple literally) from green, and within its multibranched thicket, the verily uncrowded spines arm the growing and extensive canes/stalks with a saturated color, (spines that are) short, hard, dark red, and hooked broadly from the base into bent back thorns/prickles.

The Class of Flowers Tinged with Red or Purple

Of the commonly sown (rose) that lightly turns red from white with dense leaves, which Pliny ascribed as the Alabandican, and other well noted writers called the Trachanian, the canes are shorter and suckering/branching, narrower, somewhat green, usually densely packed with smaller and larger prickles in a dull pale-slate color, and threatening with outstretched points.

The Varigated Double Flowered, The Italian Perpetual Double Flowered

The variety which is spotted with a faint red on its many petaled flower, said to be the Praenestine, is equally bristled with sharp thorns. The Italian variety which always pleasantly turns red, similar to the previous two varieties above, is ferocious with dense prickles.

p.364

They say that the Italic (rose) is similar to the previously mentioned rose, however that it is more famous, that it demands careful maintenance (because of? There could be a causal sense to this participle) always being green, that it is perpetual or the rose of all months: because that one, rather often being the first pruned, displays the most tightly packed buds of its flower bunch (inflorescence/spray) to look at all together, which (buds) the variety then opens gradually part by part until another continuous pruning of the flowers (usque is difficult to place in the English, but it gets across the idea that this entire process of deadheading and flowering is continuous); so that it seems they induce themselves with flowers together in each of the months. Moreover on this matter, the variety differs with a much higher number of buds, and especially by the continuousness of its flowers differs greatly from the previous one, which, less rich (i.e. it is stingy) of its purple bloom, opens more rarely with alabaster colored blooms. The result, therefore, is that the perpetual (variety) shows the signs of spring in all or at least most months, and often during the year it needs to be pruned at least twice. At the end of each October, the whole top (of the plant) is cut back to the ground with a straight cut, so that it might push back from harshness: for having been prepared thus, more numerous buds will over winter with flowery fertility."

As far as the Coroneola, the name indicates derivation from corona which refers to garlands. Quick research indicates ‘coroneola’ is a hapax legomenon from Pliny’s Natural History, 21.10, which is translated as ‘Autumn Rose’ in past English translations and older commentaries suggest a Canina, Canina laxa, or Eglantine as the true culprit.

Hope this is of some help!

Jay

This post was edited by ArbutusOmnedo on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 15:09

AquaEyes: Thanks! I can get some idea of what it is I'm looking at when I "read" Latin, at least enough to be able to pull some potentially interesting material out of however many pages (or volumes) I'm confronted with. Since the fonts are archaic, including forgotten characters like ß, with transpositions of s/f and u/v, etc., I have no choice but to type the interesting parts and fix the spelling as I go (OCR's not an option). I then ask Google Translate for a second opinion. I can't say that I'm very impressed with its treatment of Latin. I can get it to translate even the foulest of language in Hindi, but most Latin ends up as word salad, which is not much better than what I figure out on my own. Like...

"Subrubens flower variety.

Slightly thick leaves of the common cultivated white reddish than or Pliny Alabandicam, or Trachinia be very noble writers claim that the staff branches are shorter, thinner, greenish bugs and thorns for larger indiscriminately frequent, pale and livid, the attention of the blades of a threat."

Edit: Jay finished just as I was posting this. :-D

Jay, thank you so much!!! Do you plan on also posting it on HMF, or would you mind if I did so?

This post was edited by ffff on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 15:37

If you think it's fine as is, go ahead! If you want a bit more refined translation, I can post it on HMF below your original comment (My HMF account is DistantDrummer) once I go through it more precisely.

Jay

I'm quite happy with it as it is, but since you've got a HMF account, please do post it, in whatever form you're most comfortable with. As you can see from the thread there, people have been wondering about this for years, and I'd like to see you get unambiguous credit for finally liberating the information.

"'The Damask Class (Group)

And of the characteristically faint scented full flower of the Damask Rose, which some including Pliny called the Coroneola or Autumn Rose, and others explained as the Spineola or Littled Spined Rose, the trunk gradually turns darker (dark red or purple literally) from green, and within its multibranched thicket, the verily uncrowded spines arm the growing and extensive canes/stalks with a saturated color, (spines that are) short, hard, dark red, and hooked broadly from the base into bent back thorns/prickles.'

[........]

As far as the Coroneola, the name indicates derivation from corona which refers to garlands. Quick research indicates ‘coroneola’ is a hapax legomenon from Pliny’s Natural History, 21.10, which is translated as ‘Autumn Rose’ in past English translations and older commentaries suggest a Canina, Canina laxa, or Eglantine as the true culprit."

Dodoens thought Pliny's Spineola was the Burnet Rose, to make things even more confusing. None of my roses quite fit that description, including Eglantine, canina or Burnet. If they really meant that the bark turned purple or dark red, and not merely that it darkened, then it would make me think of a cinnamon rose, but their thorns aren't usually broad based or very hooked, and their early bloom would be inconsistent with the Autumn label. If it only meant that the wood darkened, I wouldn't want to rule out some sort of Musk or hybrid thereof, which starts off with scant red thorns matching that description, before they turn red-brown, then fade to gray with time. That's consistent with the Autumn name, and Musks were often referred to as a sort of Damask in books of this period.

Then again, if the Autumn label amounts to a mistranslation or bad guess by past commentators, the cinnamon rose idea might not be so bad.

Anyone else interested in perusing the rose section of Ferrari's book should check pages 261-4 of this pdf: http://books.google.com/books/about/Flora_seu_De_florum_cultura_lib_IV.html?id=OSMOAAAAQAAJ

This post was edited by ffff on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 18:22

If I follow Ferrari correctly, it sounds as if he also finds Pliny's rose names to be problematic, as has most everyone since. It's even been suggested that Pliny had never seen most of the roses he was talking about, but was just repeating someone else's description, which certainly happened often enough. The Didymus I mentioned above got his nickname, "Bronze Guts," from his ability to turn out an endless torrent of books, all compiled from earlier works.

Some interesting things I stumbled across while looking... many have wondered about where the Rose of Paestum fit into Pliny's list. In The Gardener's Magazine, July 1839 edition, we get this:
"It is singular that Pliny has not mentioned the twice-blowing roses of Paestum, so often referred to by Roman poets. Is the Praenestine or the Campanian rose to be regarded as the Paestan rose, or a species of it? If so, is it not probable that Pliny would have noticed them more particularly? Of the Paestan rose, we unfortunately possess no detailed accounts. They appear to have been extremely beautiful and fragrant, and to have grown very abundantly at the place from which they took their name. Virgil, Martial, Ovid, and Propertius constantly allude to the Paestan roses, speaking at one time of their abundance, at another of their fragrance and colour.

But there is a rose which still blooms amid the ruins of Paestum; and it is thus noticed by Mr. Swinburne, in his Travels in the Two Sicilies: 'The Paestan rose, from its peculiar fragrance, and the singularity of its blowing twice a year, is often mentioned with predilection by the classic poets. The wild rose, which now shoots up among the ruins, is of the small single damask kind, with a very high perfume. As a farmer assured me on the spot, it flowers both in spring and autumn.' The Paestan rose, according to most authorities, appears to have been of a deep red colour: yet Pomponius Fortunatus, in his notes upon Columella, says it was almost white; he further observes that it flowered in May and September."

I'd read Swinburne, what he's talking about is at Vol. 3, p. 195. The "Pomponius Fortunatus" mentioned is another story. Julius Pomponius Fortunatus was a nom de plume of a historian, Peter of Calabria, who would have written that commentary on Book X of Columella in the 1460s. Being Calabrian, he would have had ample opportunity to see Paestum's roses for himself. I cannot get a copy of the Columella book to examine, the nearest I can find is in the Cambridge University library, so that second hand rehash is all there is to work with.

I never thought it worth discussing that Swinburne found a single Damask Perpetual at Paestum, since he was there in 1777, too late to mean very much. The earliest rebloomer listed on HMF is the Musk, in 1513. Whether Peter of Calabria's rose was a Musk, a pale Damask, or even something else, I find any account of European rebloomers before 1500 to be interesting.

Barring any new translations, I guess I'll let this thread re-revert to its original topic. :)

ffff, I'm sorry I missed your post about checking more alba semi-plena's hips.
I did so yesterday and the result is the following:
2 hips 3 seeds,
3 hips 2 seeds
ans 2 only 1 seed.

Bear in mind that this is the first year it flowered and set hips.

ffff, I have a question for you if you do not mind. From what I have read in this thread you appear to have your head around finding many good articles, so what are you like finding roses that maybe lost, any chance of finding where the true 'Francis Dubreuil' is planted and living.

Regards David.

What I do know about Francis Dubreuil, is that Mssrs Rupert and Dickerson would be much better people to ask than me.

I consider myself a competent researcher, in a generic sort of way, and am not bad at picking out species and class traits in roses, thanks in no small part to having fairly easy access to a few thousand specimens. But I don't think I'm expert at anything beyond perhaps three related Gallica hybrids originating in Angers during the 1830s and 1840s, and it took me three years of digging to feel good about those. I'm quite ignorant about Chinas or Teas, including their hybrids, i.e. almost everything bred since 1860.

Based on my readings of his HMF comments, Kim Rupert seems to think that Barcelona might've replaced Francis Dubreuil in US commerce, and that the plant grown as Francis Dubreuil in Australia has traits that make it seem truer to old descriptions. I have nothing to add to that, perhaps more knowledgeable readers of this thread will.

This post was edited by ffff on Sat, Oct 18, 14 at 18:45

true-blue:
"I did so yesterday and the result is the following:
2 hips 3 seeds,
3 hips 2 seeds
ans 2 only 1 seed. "

Thanks for doing that! If still a streaky performer, those numbers sound a bit better than California's.

More on hip counts. Last year R. Fedtschendkoana produced dozens and dozens of hips at least. I never counted but there were a ton of them. I collected some even though critters ate plenty. This year, although this rose bloomed just as abundantly, and repeatedly, only one hip. So I wonder how normal it is to have lots of hips one year and none to few the next. Is there a regular pattern, like every other year a bumper crop, or not? I also wonder about the number of seeds produced. More or less in specific years/under certain climatic/water/soil conditions? I just opened one of the 2013 crop that was in the refrigerator--this hip had 18 seeds.

What about roses that, from the performance in one's own garden, it wouldn't appear to be that fertile, yet somewhere else it sets abundant hips? For instance, I've never seen Mermaid set a hip in my garden, but I remember reading online somewhere that someone else's Mermaid regularly did. Do roses set more hips in conditions where the plant itself is happier/more likely to survive or is there not much of a correlation?

Melissa

Christopher, nah, I didn't think you were referring to me.;) But I have experienced the rebloom on cutback issue. When I acquired R. foetida 'Persiana' and R. alabukensis from Eurodesert in 2011, I cut both back a lot before they were dug up and I moved them to my garden. Both rebloomed later that summer, Persiana fairly heavily. I don't recall either doing so since, although I might have missed the stray flower or so.

But on R. borissovae and William's Double Yellow, the same didn't happen. R. borissovae came from Eurodesert also in 2011, but pruning back for moving did not get any rebloom that year. WDY is from Pickering and has never been pruned. R. borissovae has not been pruned since the 2011 move. So I am uncertain what got the 2 of them to rebloom this year. It was hotter and drier. Maybe that did it????

Ffff, regarding R. californica. My local botanic garden has mutliple selections from throughout the state (including a completely thornless one) and they vary considerably in amount of rebloom. My best rebloomer among my selections of this rose came from one of the botanic garden's annual plant sales. It is the selection 'First Dawn' which was raised by Suncrest Nurseries from wild collected seed. A friend of the nursery did the collecting and Suncrest raised a group of seedlings. First Dawn was the best of them, and thus it is the one they introduced. It produces great sprays of pale pink flowers, hundreds at a time, and it seems most flowers produce a hip. These hips are just about the best-tasting of all rose hips I've ever tasted. About the texture of dried apricots, and tangy too, but with a milder flavor. First Dawn blooms off and on all year, with the biggest flush in spring. It will shut down in the worst heat of summer temporarily, and also in the coldest part of our mild winter, also temporarily. Mine is only lightly fed. I don't know what would happen if it had regular feedings. My other R. californicas bloom signifcantly less. Los Berros for instance (introduced by Native Sons Nursery from a plant found growing on a road named Los Berros), has very large dark pink flowers, produced one at a time rather than in trusses. It blooms only in spring with a few scattered flowers later in the year.

Melissa

Here is what the second flower I posted above of William's Double Yellow looked like after the petals dropped and the second bud was exposed. Looks very strange with stamens on the outside of a bud. Gives a whole new meaning to double flowers!

Melissa

"So I wonder how normal it is to have lots of hips one year and none to few the next. Is there a regular pattern, like every other year a bumper crop, or not? I also wonder about the number of seeds produced. More or less in specific years/under certain climatic/water/soil conditions? I just opened one of the 2013 crop that was in the refrigerator--this hip had 18 seeds."

Breeders have noticed that their chances of getting difficult crosses to work, are often considerably better when bloom comes during an exceptionally hot spell. I've also observed that plants which are underwatered or underfed have a greater tendency to abort than to produce hips, though trying to feed them while they're in the process of making hips often backfires. I don't doubt that there are other variables that I'm unaware of.

One comment on those hips in the fridge: hips contain chemicals that prevent seeds from sprouting. They are unlikely to do more than age, unless you remove the seeds and clean off any residue, before putting them back into the fridge.

And now one question, just to explicitly clarify...

That was 18 seeds, from a fedtschenkoana hip? From Kim Rupert's and Paul Barden's accounts, I had very low hopes for it as a seed parent, and was even starting to wonder whether it wasn't the primary cause of the relative infertility of Damasks. Your growing conditions are probably pretty similar to Mr. Rupert's, so I don't know what to make of that. Differences in weather? Some especially agreeable pollen? I see that one breeder managed to use a seedling of it to produce the floribunda Floranje, but that seems to be the sole known example of fedtschenkoana's abilities as a seed parent.

Whatever the cause, I'd encourage you to get the seeds out of those hips, and see what happens then, since it seems that fedtschenkoana seedlings are a very rare thing.

Melissa: "Mine is only lightly fed. I don't know what would happen if it had regular feedings."

Most of my species roses, like pendulina and glauca, respond to fertilizer by aborting some hips and dropping all of their foliage, followed immediately by growing new stems and leaves. Since giving a plant nitrogen will also increase its water needs, I avoid fertilizing my roses when it's not cold and damp.

It's hardly foolproof, though. Last year I kept waiting and waiting for the rains to come, but there was hardly a sprinkle until March, by which time I figured it was too late. With the help of big water bills, none of them died, but most of the potted hybrids ended up looking pretty chlorotic.

Re, R. Fedtschenkoana. Yes, that was 18 from one hip, which is about normal for that rose's hips here. Climate in my garden is similar to Kim's but my care is different. I'm not nearly as nice to my roses in general.;) I water less, and feed differently I think. No chemical fertilizers at all. Only infrequent feeding. How often is that? Well, around twice a year, some years I don't get around to feeding at all. Usually fish emulsion at 1/2 the recommended dose on the bottle. Four to six plants get the contents of a 2 gallon watering can. I figure that with many of my species roses, they don't get fed in their natural habitat so I should try to give them as close to what they are adapted to as possible (now maybe some have natural nitrogen-fixers in their plant communities, but I haven't looked into that very much for roses that have come from across the globe--or even the California native roses, yet).

Regarding agreeable pollen, yes the thought occurred to me in choosing Fedtschenkoana's neighbors. I thought what about close relatives or what had a part in creating autumn damasks? Nearby I added Pickering Four Seasons and the gallica Aimable Rouge. I was really curious as to whether the native range of R. primula overlapped with that of R. fedtschenkoana, so these 2 are close enough to touch. Also nearby are R. spinosissima, Stanwell Perpetual, R. glabrifolia, then to R. borissovae and R. xanthina (about 15 feet away).

R. primula arrived in December 2011, I think it was, as a bareroot from Pickering. The plant produced a small number of flowers near its base in January or February 2012, but Fedtschenkoana wasn't blooming at the time. In 2013 it was a different story. Massive bloom for Primula and Fedtschenkoana at the same time. Bees went back and forth between them. I don't know that they cross-pollinated the flowers but the fruit set on both was high. Every one of Primula's was eaten quickly by wild creatures. Xanthina didn't flower much in 2013 (lots in 2014 in comparison). The other near neighbors bloomed, but nothing like the quantity of Fedtschenkoana and Primula. This year, come to think of it, we had some really weird 100+ degree weather at odd times in the spring. That might account for so many of Fedtschekoana's hips aborting--they simply got fried at the wrong time.

The hips I collected from R. fedschenkoana in 2013 were put in baggies into the refrigerator. I took one out last fall, I think in November, removed the seeds and planted them in small pots in a flat. I'd heard of washing/cleaning seeds off in advance on the rose hybridizers site but didn't get around to doing so. Just stuck them in potting soil. Didn't think anything would germinate. However I had some beginner's luck. Three seeds germinated. All three seedlings looked really nice and healthy. Two got eaten by garden critters but one has survived. It is now in a 2 or 3 gallon pot and growing well. Foliage is very clean and looks like moms. No flowers yet. I'm expecting white, but who knows? I haven't checked the foliage for scent.

Melissa

Ffff, from your October 16th post where you wrote this:

"But there is a rose which still blooms amid the ruins of Paestum; and it is thus noticed by Mr. Swinburne, in his Travels in the Two Sicilies: 'The Paestan rose, from its peculiar fragrance, and the singularity of its blowing twice a year, is often mentioned with predilection by the classic poets. The wild rose, which now shoots up among the ruins, is of the small single damask kind, with a very high perfume. As a farmer assured me on the spot, it flowers both in spring and autumn.' The Paestan rose, according to most authorities, appears to have been of a deep red colour: yet Pomponius Fortunatus, in his notes upon Columella, says it was almost white; he further observes that it flowered in May and September." "

What do you think is meant by "peculiar fragrance"?

Melissa

To deal with the quick part first,

"What do you think is meant by 'peculiar fragrance'?"

A few hundred years ago, the term didn't imply oddness or disapproval so much as it does now. I think he just meant that it was distinctively fragrant.

"Re, R. Fedtschenkoana. Yes, that was 18 from one hip, which is about normal for that rose's hips here... Nearby I added Pickering Four Seasons and the gallica Aimable Rouge. I was really curious as to whether the native range of R. primula overlapped with that of R. fedtschenkoana, so these 2 are close enough to touch. Also nearby are R. spinosissima, Stanwell Perpetual, R. glabrifolia, then to R. borissovae and R. xanthina (about 15 feet away).

[.....]

...one has survived. It is now in a 2 or 3 gallon pot and growing well. Foliage is very clean and looks like moms. No flowers yet. I'm expecting white, but who knows? I haven't checked the foliage for scent."

Thanks for all that info! If you planted all of the seeds from dozens of hips at 18 seeds/hip, I guess I shouldn't get too excited about germination rate, but if I can get it to make hundreds of seeds for me like that, I will definitely feel no regrets about having some on order. I'm not sure how primula, xanthina or glabrifolia (being diploid) will do as pollen parent with a tetraploid seed parent, I'm under the impression that using the tetraploid rose as the pollen parent might tend towards more vigorous offspring, but stranger things have happened, and those diploids probably make loads of pollen between them. I love your choices of tetraploids, and would be delighted to hear about hybrids with any of those. I'll root for it to be anything but a selfing, and hope to hear of flowers next year!

I was a bit busy this weekend, but I'll try to get the translation up on HMF in the next day or so, ffff.

Jay

ffff, while I was at it, I cut some of the 100+ hips on my R. glauca. There were systematically 6-7 seeds. This is on 5-6 year old plant.

Every spring I have to weed some of it's seedlings.

Thanks, Jay! It's a thought provoking piece of text, which I'm still barely done thinking through myself. Like about the "coroneola." Pliny tells us little about it...

"There is the rose of autumn, too, known as the 'coroniola,' which is of a middle size, between the varieties just mentioned. [He had just listed every rose he'd ever heard of, so this statement is not too helpful.] All of these kinds, however, are destitute of smell, with the exception of the coroniola, and the one which grows on the bramble..."

It's been suggested that Coroneola was Rosa sempervirens, since that's pliable enough to shape nicely, and readily available in Italy, where it has a long blooming season. According to some, the single, white blooms are fragrant, though most descriptions don't mention scent. As we discussed earlier, canina, Eglantine and Burnet roses have also been suggested as the true Coroneola. And HMF tells me that someone named Parkinson named a hybrid Musk that in 1629. But what do we see when we look at (recently uncovered) Roman art?

The pic is from Sicily, ca 315 AD, and is of preparations for the Rosalia festival. Their wreaths have what appear to be double, pink blooms, which look like they belong on garden roses. If that's Coroneola, what is it? It looks nothing like any of the guesses, and we're out of clues!

I'll conclude with a Deep Thought from Jack Handy.

"We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me."

(Okay, so not their beliefs so much as their fact checking and descriptive efforts.)

This post was edited by ffff on Tue, Oct 21, 14 at 2:29

"Peculiar" can just mean "characteristic and all its own" rather than implying the judgmental "weird."

While waiting on a few more hips, I thought I'd post Persoon's 1805 description of R. damascena bifera, for those who can decipher it. (I gather it was quite hard to find until recently.) From "Synopsis plantarum,seu Enchiridium botanicum, complectens enumerationem systematicam specierum hucusque cognitarum," p. 48.

Melissa wrote: "Climate in my garden is similar to Kim's but my care is different. I'm not nearly as nice to my roses in general.;) I water less, and feed differently I think. No chemical fertilizers at all."

I think your "winter cold" is deeper than mine. (9b v. 10a, Sunset Zones probably between 18 and 19 for you, 20 to 21 for me) It seems your soil is quite a bit different in origin from what I've seen on line, being more of a deeper alluvium. Mine is the white shale layer of the Santa Monica Mountain formations. I water enough to keep plants alive, but not "thriving", particularly during the worst of the heat. I don't fertilize with anything other than prunings I shred and throw back on the soil surface as "mulch". I don't amend using anything, period. I avoid "organic" fertilizers due to the legions of moles, gophers, skunks, opossums, raccoons, coyotes, rabbits, rats, etc., all of which are either attracted by the organics themselves or to those which they attract. I don't need, nor wish to encounter any more "wildlife" that close to the house. Sometimes, it's a "witch" living this close to the "urban wilderness". I don't fertilize those in the ground with inorganic fertilizers, either. The soil is quite 'salty', as is the irrigation water. There has been no rain to flush the accumulated salts from the soil. Adding inorganics would only serve to intensify the "salts". I do use light, infrequent applications of inorganic fertilizer (always water soluble) to newly propagated, potted plants to replace the nitrogen they lose to watering. Being in an "extreme heat, extreme fire danger" area, I am allotted a relatively high level of "Tier 1" water use. I use, and have been using a quarter of that allotment, both to conserve the resource itself as well as to conserve the ever increasing cost of it. The areas I would normally irrigate show the reduced water consumption. I recently removed sixty feet of forty-plus year old escalonia hedge which had begun dying at one end and continued crisping and browning by the foot from the southern toward the northern end. Increasing the water to it had little positive effect, so eliminating the need, as I have done with all other plantings proving themselves "too needy", helps reduce the danger of combustion as well as need to increase the water bill.

You might find this seedling of interest. Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Puzzlement

Interesting thread.

I can only add that my Alba 'Semi-plena', first year bareroot, had 3 flowers and set 3 hips. I gathered and opened them yesterday. They held 5,6 and 7 seeds.

Enjoying seeing this thread continue.

SCG

First seedlings out of the gate:
Autumn Damask at about 10% germination (so far)
Saint Nicholas at about 5% germination (so far)

You know, I thought of something that might relate to the differing rates of fedtschenkoana hip set you two get. Melissa grows R. californica and a number of other cinnamomeae. Fedtschenkoana is a cinnamon rose, and not genetically far removed from californica. I haven't heard of anyone trying fedtschenkoana crosses with other cinnamon roses before, but maybe some familiar pollen is all fedtschenkoana needs.

I'm definitely going to try such crosses, when my fedtschenkoana finally arrives (14 months left on the waiting list).

I sent you a message regarding 'R. fedtschenkoana'.

:-)

~Christopher

:-D

Hopefully coming up this summer, fedtschenkoana crosses with as many of the following as there's flowers for:
R. californica 'First Dawn,' R. carolina, R. palustris, R. pomifera, R. majalis plena, R. pendulina, Alika, Empress Josephine, Commander Gillette, Prairie Fire, Adelaide Hoodless, and Lynnie, unless Mr. Rupert wants dibs on that one.

(I had loaded up on carolinae and their hybrids to tinker with RRD resistant possibilities, so as long as I'm all geared up for cinnamon rose compatibility, I might as well use it.)

Damask rebloomers without thorns, or with resistance to rose rosette? There are all kinds of possibilities, especially if one likes plants that sucker a lot.

This post was edited by ffff on Mon, Nov 17, 14 at 20:25

Glad to see this thread with updates. Yesterday I planted a bunch of seeds into pots and removed seeds from lots of hips. All the pots were labelled with numbers of seeds and source rose although I haven't gotten around to making a separate record listing everything yet. All seeds/hips had been stratified in the refrigerator, although some were loose seeds, while others were still in their hips. Direct from hip to potting soil may not generate the best results, but who knows. I will clean the other seeds off before they get planted. It will be interesting to see how much difference this makes in germination.

What got planted yesterday was R. fedtschenkoana (lots of them), R. borissovae (3 seeds from 1 hip), R. primula (lots of them....), Stanwell Perpetual (not many), R. glabrifolia (1 small hip had 5 seeds, the others all had over 20--packed inside very efficiently, oval shaped seeds like the outside shape of the hips), Compactilla (1 hip only, had 1 seed), and President Dutailly (forget how many seeds). That's probably about all that got done.

Melissa

No, thank you for thinking of me. I have PLENTY of my own seeds/seedlings to raise heading in the direction of my interests. I'm always interested and eager to see where others take things, but I don't necessarily need to own them. I haven't the room for what I have! Kim

Melissa: "Direct from hip to potting soil may not generate the best results, but who knows."

I started out stratifying seeds in damp paper towels. It worked, but not well. I also ran into problems after sprouting, when I put the seedlings into new soil, which would often respond to being kept damp by starting up growth of molds and mildews that would kill the sprouts.

What I've done this year, with surprising success so far, is to take the seeds directly out of the still fresh hip, and put them into damp worm castings inside a paper towel. The worm castings prevent mildew problems, eat up any bits of hip stuck to the achenes, and give the seeds whatever "nutrients available!" signal they may be waiting for. When they sprout, I move them into a tiny pot of the exact same worm castings, so there's no shock at all. I thought it might be too nutrient rich and kill them, but that's been no problem so far, and mildew's no longer giving me dampoff casualties.

That's why I already have seedlings of things I only pollinated in May and June. If you never dry the seeds, they will germinate after brief stratification, or might without any cold at all. Unless keeping them in refrigerated hips messes with the process, you should have some germinations in a few months. (Assuming none are stubborn ones like R. canina, a few kinds just *demand* lengthy stratification.)

Those Stanwell Perpetual hips are rare, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed!