Basye's Amphidiploid seedling available

I have propagated one of my F2 Basye's Amphidiploid seedlings with the intention of distributing it to other hybridizers who might like to do work with it. I will have plants ready to ship in another few weeks. Let me know (in comments or private email) if you would like to acquire this cultivar for breeding purposes. This is the one I am speaking of:

F2 Amphidiploid

It sets seed readily with a wide range of pollens, propagates easily and is immune to Blackspot and Mildew. It does not repeat but has the genes for remontancy in it.

45-03-08: a Wichurana shrub.

Something I really like about some of my R. wichurana hybrids: generally they are very easy to propagate from cuttings. On August 7th I struck about 35 cuttings of the above hybrid and today they are fully rooted and ready to pot up. Thats just shy of 13 days. I just inspected these a few moments ago and I'm guessing that these could have been ready for potting up two or three days ago, so rooting may have happened in 10 days. What could be better than that?!

This is a small shrub about 2.5 X 2.5 feet, almost constantly in flower with clusters of 2" old fashioned blooms that open peachy and age to cream/white. Blooms have the typical Wichurana "apple" scent. Disease resistance is excellent, although it will get some Blackspot when disease pressure is extreme. I know little about its Winter hardiness since my climate doesn't really allow me to test for that. Parentage is 0-47-19 X 'Crepuscule'. It is a sister seedling to the Wichurana Ramber 'Mel's Heritage'.

Little Scallywag

This little fellow is a seedling I have long ignored, planted out in the long beds of Ralph Moore hybrids. Bred in 2002, its a cross of 'Oakington Ruby' and 'Little Chief'. I made this cross just as an experiment, really, to see what good ol' 'Oakington Ruby' might have up its proverbial sleeve.

This seedling is very dwarf, about 5" tall but spreading to 14" wide. It produces masses of blooms, with up to 80 flowers on a single basal panicle. Each bloom is about dime-sized. I never noticed this before, but it sets seed. I should leave the seeds where they are, but knowing me......

Rosy Purple, by Lens

Last year I made one final attempt with Lens's 'Rosy Purple' (exceptionally good rose, disease free without chemical intervention) and crossed it with 'Vineyard Song' and 'Violette'. Both crosses yielded some fine seedlings, but the 'Violette' cross did better. This is one of the nicest ones. I can only guess whether this will become a climber or remain a shrubby Polyantha type shrub. I rather hope it is the former. It has a pleasant Musk fragrance, no sweetness to it, but rather "herbal".

R. bracteata offers up a surprise.

R. bracteata has been a difficult species to work with, and I think part of the problem lies in the fact that the first hybrids made with it, like Moore's 'Muriel', were created using tetraploids. I have a feeling that mating it with a diploid instead might prove useful for furthering a breeding line of this kind. With that in mind, I pollinated my R. bracteata a few weeks ago with the well-known miniature breeder 'Magic Wand', also a diploid. I expected this cross to fail, but much to my surprise, I now have about a dozen fat hips forming on my R. bracteata, with 'Magic Wand' as the pollen parent. Now to see if there are actual viable seeds formed in the months ahead. We shall see.

Inheriting doubleness.

Looking at the AgCan breeder L83 you would never guess it would be capable of producing double offspring. And yet, it frequently does. Many of my selections from three crosses made in '07 are at least semi-double (15 petals or more) and some are intensely double. Take this seedling 77-07-03 for example; double in the style of many of the Old Garden Roses displaying "quartered" blooms, packed full of petals arranged in a swirl. This seedling also happens to be a pretty good repeater (compared to its somewhat reluctant siblings), grows with abandon and yet is maintaining a shapely, restrained architecture. So far it has shown complete immunity to all diseases. If that continues to be the case, then this selection may have a future in commerce. If it has Winter hardiness, as many L83 seedlings do, then even better!

FYI, as the tedium of my routine settles in, what with all the weeding and watering and dull chores to do, I am posting less and less often these days. I need a vacation, to be honest, and yet I have to maintain things. So, don't expect a lot of detailed blog posts in the next month or so; I'm just not enthused about adding yet another task to my to-do list at the moment!