Mine grew only to 5 feet as it was too busy spreading all over the area. If happy, this rose will sucker and any half inch piece left in the soil will grow quickly into another Rose d'Amour. Never had any problems with disease. One of the more attractive of the species with a light fragrance.

Species roses are the origin roses, the earliest. You will see them referred to as "Rosa something", for example Rosa multiflora (also noted as R. multiflora) is a species rose. See the link below for a better description. Most of what we grow now are hybrids. Seeds will be from the variety that is grafted onto the rootstock. Suckers could be from the rootstock or from the variety. If the sucker comes from below the graft union, then it is a sucker from the rootstock. If the sucker comes from above the graft union, this is new growth of the grafted variety, we usually call these "basal breaks". Here is a link that might be useful: Old Garden Rose Primer by Steve Jones

Dealing in any other way than credit card, paypal and the like is prohibitively expensive unless we are talking about very large orders. To give an example, my bank is asking for a euro 50 fee for the transfer of amounts up to 500 euros or so...Three roses which is a reasonable amount will thus cost at the minimum 45+15+50 euros... I have had experience exchanging emails in english with Le Roseraie du Desert and they have been very helpful and easy to talk to (they are Americans if I understand correctly). They accept paypal I gather. I was about to order from them when I needed to be hospitalized last year. Last time I checked Bierkreek the only payment method available was bank transfer or cash which prohibited me from dealing with them. I don't know if this has changed but I doubt it. Additionally you had to email them your request, and they would come back with availability and the shipping costs quote. Not very efficient I think. I've had very bad experience with a couple of german nurseries which never responded to my emails. For one of them I left a bad review in HMF and discovered I was not the only one with such a bad experience. What I like to do is go online to an english language site, put a few roses in my shopping basket, check out, pay with my credit card both the rose price and the shipping cost, receive a confirmation email and be done with it. Anything more complicated than this is a hassle. Contact with the nursery should only be needed if one needs to clarify something or resolve a problem, not for a business as usual order. If contact is needed I expect this to be conducted promptly by email and in english, not because I happen to speak the language but because it is the de facto lingua franca for international commerce. I don't expect to have to use a translator nor jump through the machine translation hoops. So if anybody has any recommendations for such nurseries not in the UK with a good selection of OGR's and the like and which will ship across the EU, they are welcome. PS. Bierkreek seem to be preparing a proper e-commerce site. When they have it ready I will be pleased to try it. PS2. The Lens nursery was mentioned. Below the link to their terms and conditions. Please note, on top of the payment method problem and uknown (and possibly very steep shipping costs judging from their costs for shipping to nearby places like the UK and Germany), their disclaimers about shipping and state of plants on arrival. This is what I call bad business practices and I would never buy from them. Lens nursery (Belgium) terms & conditions

Cultivars are selections but do not necessarily breed true to type. If you grow seedlings from them the seedlings will be variable and not necessarily true to the parent. The genes can be variable. So in your example/question #1. The seedlings will not be 'osakasuki'. It is hard to say what you will get but say you got 100 seeds on your plant from that cross and grew them out....you would probably get all types. Maybe some red, some green, they would vary in leaf shape and growth rate etc. Lets say you grew all 100 seedlings to maturity but there was one in that 100 that really caught your eye. It had a good growth rate, nice shape, disease resistance, great color.......lets say it was exceptional and really stood out from the crowd. Perhaps that one would be worth giving a cultivar name. Perhaps you register is as Acer palmatum 'Heruga'. To keep those characteristics true, so other people could grow it, it would need to be propagated from cuttings/graftings. Some of the others in that same seedling group may be mediocre or even ugly and/or poor growers. Well that gets tricky. Most likely not. Species are species for a reason and don't go randomly mix. There may be a genetic incompatibility, or there may be a difference in flowering time, or flower structure or etc. etc. Obviously some closely related plants (Or animals) can cross, sometimes made easier with man's help, but species don't generally cross easily, and it is hard to predict what will and what won't except by trial and error. So it would be more likely to be able to cross a A. palmatum with perhaps a closely related maple, less likely (and probably not at all)with an A. rubrum, even less likely (impossible) with an oak tree or a rosebush or...... Got I?. Some (not all) closely related species can cross. Similar in the animal world. You can cross a donkey and a horse (or even a tiger and a lion). Such crosses would not happen in the wild (and in these animal examples the offspring are sterile.......which can (or not) happen with plant hybrids too). Some do cross. Oaks are notorious for crossing with closely related species and if you are identifying oaks in the wild you will often find trees with intermediate characteristics between two CLOSELY related species. However, ifspecies mixed too easily......there would be no species.....everything would be a blend of everything else. Similar to #1. Your 'Thunderhead' is a CULTIVAR, so your seedlings could be variable and different. I don't know how easily they cross but if she is a reputable nursery she is probably selling pure seedlings. If you raise seeds of pure species under normal conditions you normally will get pure seedlings (of the species). Note if you raise things like citrus or apples from seed you will get a LOT more variability in the seedlings as these manmade plants have fairly complex and variable parentage. The offspring will still be an apple or a citrus but perhaps otherwise very different than the parent plant.