Fun With "Basye's Thornless" Seedlings

Though I've had "Basye's Thornless" for many years, I had used it only briefly in 2001 in a few crosses, and since nothing exciting came out of those few crosses, I moved on to other rose hybridizing projects.  In 2012, however, thinking that the lower petal count, relative cleanliness, and thornlessness of "Basye's Thornless" might be something good to combine with the Hulthemias, I made a large number of crosses using it both as a pollen parent and as a seed parent.  In fact, altogether, I planted more than 5,300 seeds with "Basye's Thornless" as a seed or pollen parent.  While most of the crosses where made with the Hulthemias, I used several other non-Hulthemia seed parents too.  The two new 2014 seedlings that I am highlighting in this post are the result of open pollinations of two seedlings from the 2012 crosses that I made.  So far they are both thornless.

The first one shown below is the result of an open pollination of the seedling discussed in a previous post (see Moving Toward Cleaner Minis).  The notation for the cross is as follows: ('Pearl Sanford' X "Basye's Thornless") X ('Pearl Sanford' X "Basye's Thornless").  It seems to be quite compact for a seedling having "Basye's Thornless" in its heritage, and has more petals than it's seed parent (in the above referenced post, it is shown in the first photo).

The second seedling likewise resulted from an open pollination.  It's seed parent is also shown in a previous post, it is the 5th photo down in 2013 "Basye's Thornless" Seedlings).  Though the seed parent was the result of a Hulthemia cross, it didn't have a blotch and neither does this seedling shown below.  This seedling has more petals than most seedlings having "Basye's Thornless" in their heritage and has blooms that are somewhat larger.  It is vigorous and seems to bloom very freely.

Both of these seedlings seem as good as, but possibly better than, their seed parents.  They resulted from open pollinated seeds that were planted for the purpose of evaluating possible new seed parents.  Both seed parents (referenced in the links above) set hips very well as brand new seedlings in 2013, and since their germination rates were so good, I began using them in crosses this year.  I am most interested in what seedlings might result next year from crosses that I made onto the seed parent of the red mini shown in the first photo above.