Gigantea is Blooming.

Have three Gigantea blooms to date, one spent one fully out and another is still in bud with yellow petals showing.

When fully out there are five white petals on a very flat bloom.

It's a bit hard to believe Lorraine Lee is a first cross for two reasons, firstly the bloom shape and the fragrance.

Last night while it was very still I walked by Lorraine Lee Clg and just couldn't believe how great the fragrance was considering there was very little during the day.

Am looking forward breeding from it.

ADMIN. EDIT: Here are Bruce's Gigantea flowers:

If you take photos I'll post them here for you... would like to see them myself.

Simon , it's raining like anything and blowing very hard. Will take a pix tomorrow if the petals stop fluttering. Hope the new bud will stand up to this weather long enough for a pix.
Ozrose picture in her posts are exactly the same shaped blooms though my Gigantea stigma are not as yellow. Will be interesting to see how many hips develope from the 3 blooms.

The pix shows a spent bloom at the bottom, middle is a 2 day old bloom and the top is a bud just starting to open.

How exciting ! Have you done anything with these flowers or are you waiting to see if they set hips by themselves ?
That is an elegant & shapely bud in the background . Is it always so sparsely foliaged or is that the result of the weather ?
cheers. Rosalie

Rosalie, I originally budded 12 on Multiflora and kept 2. Both are showing buds with sparce foliage which I think is partial shutdown during winter.
It is covered with new shoots at the moment so am anxious to see it at the end of spring.

I intended to breed from some of it's first crosses done by Alister Clark rather than going right back to Gigantea but after looking at how quick good roses appear after few generations I am building interest in Species.

Rosa Davidii, Rosa Bracteata, Rosa Spinosissma, are interesting.
Simon was good enough to send me some very valuable seeds and a rooted sucker of Rosa Longicuspis.

Unfortunatly I have taken an interest in breeding too late in life to do a great deal though might get another 15 years hopefully.

My only claim to fame so far is a Mauve Iceberg seedling.

Simon wrote:

.... You will need LOTS of room for them though... not for suburban blocks (if you want to grow anything else, or move around your backyard ).

Mr Moore lived till he was 102 Bruce through roses... don't write yourself off too early

I hope you're right Simon . Might give me a bit more time too. The garden has had to survive with minimum input these last 5 years , everyone kept telling me "wait till they are all at school , you'll have so much more free time" , but I haven't noticed it yet . Now they're telling me "wait till they are all in highschool , you'll have so much more free time" but then I have also been told to wait till they all leave home .... so it could be a long wait for free time to play with breeding roses

There's room for a few house eaters here , if they are very prickly they could go along the front fence and replace the rusting barb wire

Where does L.L get her perfume from ?

cheers. Rosalie

Takes time to get a few worthwhile breeders that hopefully will make good foundation stock. Crossing a couple of current roses is OK for we have to start somewhere but hopefully in time I can can come up with the goods and refer back 5 generations.
Really like the idea of improvement over generations, then I would feel must be doing something right.

Have a look at Prairie Princess, see how fast it was developed from Species and used as seed and pollen parent on both the seed and pollen lines.

Simon I have 5 acres all arable, worthwhile house eaters welcome.

I've been wondering how they could be incorporated into hedging , rather like an Aussie version of the english hedgerow .
I have looked at [and repaired ] wire fences most of my life = boring hmmm. you fellas have given me some food for thought.

I know you pps say you want to breed Australian roses for Australian conditions , but I can't sort of visualise what form this plant is to take .
A bush form like a HT that produces stems for cutting or a floriferous shrub in the garden but the flowers are held on shortish stems.
I like my HT's ; I cut a lot of flowers to bring inside and to give away so they do me fine , but you also can't beat the glory of a shrub rose in flower too.
Health , yes important as well but health issues with roses can vary so much across the breadth of this country too.

I'm not putting this into words very well ; do you have a picture in your mind's eye , of what you want "your" bush[es] to look like ?
How do you tame a house eater's genes enough to fit in today's urban garden. Probably lots more questions will come to me about what the qualities in these different species roses are that you are hoping to be able to tap into.

I can see some more reading up coming up ; what the heck , I already get told I spend too much time on the 'puter



cheers. Rosalie

Bruce... you raise an interesting point regarding 'Prairie Peace'. I have noticed that some species seem to be more accomodating than others. Rosa carolina, Rosa virginiana, and Rosa wichurana seem to be examples. Have a look a 'Albéric Barbier', Albertine, 'Paul Noel', 'Paul Transon, to name just a few. These are all reputed to be F1 crosses with wichurana. There are lots of other examples of this species integration that I find quite amazing. This one is meant to be a multiflora (double version) x rugosa: http://maprc.blogspot.com/2010/08/rosa-multiflora-x-rugosa.html . This was bred by Tom Silvers. He has many examples of using species to good effect. Viru has had quite amazing success with gigantea. Mr Moore had good success with bracteata but it took him a really long time and hundreds of crosses to make a break through. I did crosses with 'Scabrosa', which is thought to be a form of rugosa 'rubra', that will, with a little luck flower this spring. There is little, if any hint of rugosa in these seedlings and when you think that they are diploid x tetraploids (making them triploids) this is understandeable; there is a greater modern rose influence than rugosa. I think my future work with species is going to revolve around fertile, healthy, diploids so I don't lose too much of the species influence too early.

All fun and games

Rosalie... my daughter is in yr8 in high school... time.... what time... it's a myth

lol Simon . I've got a bit of waiting to do yet then.
I've got a yr.4 , yr.2 and a PP .

cheers. Rosalie

HELP!!!! does anyone know which Gigantea Alister Clark used to breed his Gigantea hybrids from?

I'll check my book Bruce and get back to you tonight... I know the seeds I sent you are from the Manipur, India, variant and is not meant to be the one that was already here; that one was meant to come from China from memory... I'll go check now.

It doesn't say which gigantea he used. It just says that he obtained a plant of gigantea shortly after 1903 from Paul's Nursery in England.