Again, please forgive me for the highlighted rose names not being all in red. Blogger is fighting allowing that. Some come out red, most don't, but if you click on them, you should be taken to Help Me Find-Roses to see more about those specific roses.
Here are some you probably haven't seen yet. This first one is a cross using Florence Bowers Pink Tea as the seed parent. Unfortunately the tag is missing so I'm not positive what the pollen parent was. I used Paul Barden's 42-03-02, Purezza and Tom Thumb extensively and this could have resulted from any of them. It has rather nice form, color and scent and the foliage appears it may be good. It's definitely from Florence Bowers Pink Tea as it was in the middle of a cluster of pots of her seedlings.
This should be quite interesting. Nessie [(R. Brunonii X R. Gigantea) X Mlle Cecile Brunner] X Tom Thumb! It should be a polyantha type plant. It has some scent and it repeats regularly.
This is from the same cross as the above, but tremendously smaller in ever detail.
Nessie X Annie Laurie McDowell created some monster climbers as well as several odd little things. This one is about four years old. It repeats and grows in a three gallon can. Not a lot of scent. Not much growth, lots of flowers and fairly decent foliage. No prickles, either.
Seedlings are flowering! More will come as they push their flowers through the weeds! Thank you for reading!
It's been fun watching this vase of blooms mature over the past few days. I make sure the vase is full of water each evening so they don't go dry (they DO drink a LOT of water, particularly over night). We'll start with Day Three, then move into Day Four and the afternoon of Day Four...
And, the Fourth Day...
Evening of the Fourth Day...
Will Tillotson described Lavender Pinocchio in a Roses of Yesterday and Today catalog decades ago as having sophisticated coloring of an old Persian carpet. This is where Lavender Pinocchio inherited that sophistication.
I've been remiss in adding new content and with all the new (and old) roses flowering in back, I should get on the stick and put some new photos up. I apologize and I hope you enjoy!
I apologize also for the highlighted rose names which are linked to their pages on Help Me Find-Roses and other sources which will show you more about them. I prefer to highlight them in red, but this site is fighting me about changing the color, so many of them appear gray, like Grey Pearl, the first word in the next paragraph. So, please watch for them and feel free to click on them to see more about that rose.
Grey Pearl is a rose you have to exercise control over. Allow it to flower all it wants and it will grow backwards until it flowers itself to death. Once you've "encouraged" it to produce the plant you need, you can allow it some blooms. These are ones I missed pinching off, so the two plants pushed them out in the windy heat.
This shot is illuminated by the LED under counter lights in the kitchen.
And these are all with flash.
Then, the second day, look how they matured!
Opening them indoors has also shown me they do have some scent. While not "extremely fragrant", they do have "fragrance".
And, now for something completely new and different! I have been breeding for "Tea-like" plants and blooms and now have some results to show for the efforts. Nessie is a monster climber I created quite a few years ago. It's taken me eighteen years to finally put her to work, but she has finally produced some remarkable babies.
Nessie is a product of (Montecito X Mlle Cecile Brunner). Montecito was R. Brunonii X R. Gigantea. This first group of seedlings resulted from using pollen from Faith Whittlesey, a "Tea" created by Viru and Girija Viraraghavan. Faith was produced from [Reve d'Or X ((Echo X R. Gigantea) X Marie Van Houtte)], so these seedlings have quite an involved pedigree.
All three are repeat flowering with decent foliage and very good scent. They are in their second year and growing in two gallon cans.
As you enjoy them, remember they contain these ancestors...
[(R. Brunonii X R. Gigantea) X Mlle Cecile Brunner] X [Reve d'Or X ((Echo X R. Gigantea) X Marie Van Houtte)]
This is the double, pink seedling.
This is the white seedling. It is more upright and should be a taller plant than the pink one.
The third sibling, the semi double, blush pink.
It may, or may not, produce more petals with maturity. It will be fun watching it to see.
Sometimes it's worth raising self set seed to see the "what if?" behind the plant. Mme Antoine Mari is a marvelous Tea which has been used for breeding by others. I wanted to see what it may do if left to its own devices. This is one of the results. The foliage is very serrated with lovely new growth coloring and some pretty outrageous sepals.
I have also spread quite a bit of Lamarque and Secret Garden Musk Climber pollen around. Oddly, the very double Lamarque has made quite a few single to semi single seedlings while the single Secret Garden has produced more double ones. This is Irish Hope X Secret Garden Musk Climber.
To wrap up this post, I will offer an unusual seedling. I had originally crossed Secret's Out, the white sport of Secret, with my April Mooncrest, in hopes of producing a crested Hybrid Tea. It almost worked. The result needs more cresting, but it has decent foliage and good scent with a pretty bloom. Last year, I decided to hit it with a floribunda seedling I created from (First Impression X April Mooncrest) X Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau was bred from the very odd old Hybrid Perpetual, Roger Lambelin. I keep hoping to raise something along the lines of Ronnie Rawlins' Lightning Strike or his new Bonkers.
This inherited good scent from the scented parents. It didn't inherit any crested sepals. It did inherit the Art Nouveau "petal defect" and a red petal base "blotch" from First Impression through the First Impression X April Mooncrest seedling, which also expresses it. This one has a "star" as its petal base blotch. Definitely one to watch as it matures!
This is the red fade to the petal bases of First Impression X April Mooncrest. It is where this seedling inherited what has become its red "star".
It's going to be fun seeing what this odd pattern might be able to be developed into!
