Thursday, February 11, 2010

I close my eyes and all I see is seeds and more seeds.

I've been spending several hours a day for two weeks now, cleaning and prepping seeds for sowing. I'm starting to dream about cleaning rose seeds!

I have a self-seedling from the Hybrid Rugosa 'Schneezwerg' that I have occasionally used in breeding. It is a compact shrubby plant that closely resembles R. rugosa alba, but more shapely and restrained in growth. 'Schneezwerg' is supposedly R. rugosa X R. beggeriana. The seeds pictured here are a cross of the 'Schneezwerg' F2 X Ralph Moore's "Magseed", and so R. rugosa is represented on both sides of the equation. The idea here is to generate a Rugosa-like shrub with large blooms in a red hue, hopefully with improved repeat and some fragrance.

As a side note, I sorted several seed lots of various crosses in which 'Schneezwerg' served as the seed parent, and curiously, the seed size varied considerably depending on what the other parent was!

1 comment:

  1. Beautiful picture of seeds- they look so big. Schneezwerg is certainly one of my faves. I should think it would be a worthy partner.

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