The seeds they are a-sproutin!

Its that time of year; the seeds are germinating and I am starting to pot them up this week. Unfortunately mice are a serious problem where I am and so rose seeds must be sown in flats that are kept in a wire mesh "cage". Otherwise, the mice would sniff out the seeds, dig them up and eat them all. Yes, I've seen it happen. Thats why I do it the way I do now!

At left is a photo of some of the first seedlings that came up about four weeks ago. The cross is 'Rosy Purple', a Louis Lens Hybrid Musk X 'Vineyard Song', a Ralph Moore shrub that is very Musk-like in character. In my garden, both of these are almost completely disease free (the former is 100% Blackspot free, the later nearly so) and so I hope I might obtain some compact, highly scented, disease free shrubs that bloom in big clusters. 'Rosy Purple' often produces panicles of over 100 blooms all over the shrub. I don't know why this isn't a more popular rose; it is nearly an ideal garden shrub, especially since it is so disease free.

You can see in the photo that there appear to be two albino seedlings; pinkish, showing no evidence of chlorophyll. This happens with some crosses. Some of them will eventually produce chlorophyll and grow normally, and some never do and therefore they die. I potted up these seedlings yesterday and the pale seedling at the top center of the photo did produce chlorophyll, whereas the bottom center one did not, and so that one died from an inability to produce its own food. (These albinos survive only as long as the food stores in the cotyledons lasts)

Curious, eh wot?