Raindrops on Roses

Last Friday and Saturday we had an amazing amount of rain where it poured both nights for several hours and we even had quite a lot of thunder and lightning (reminiscent of my college days in Tulsa).  The fresh air following the rain was wonderful and the roses seemed to enjoy it too.  Here are a few newer seedlings opening up to take advantage of a break in the weather.

The first seedling is of a cross of L56-1 by a pink fragrant rugosa bred by Mr. Ralph Moore.  He gave me cuttings of the rugosa pollen parent several years ago.  L56-1 is a red single mini and was bred from 'Thrive!'.  The seedling shown below is a very vigorous mini and has clean rugosa type foliage.

The next seedling is second generation from "Basye's Thornless" and has a smaller Hulthemia blotch.  Another grandparent is 'Knock Out'.  It is low on thorns, but not thornless and clean, but gets hints of blackspot.  The coloring is more pronounced in the fall when the petals have darker edging.

The last photo is of a seedling that resulted from a cross between two of my Hulthemia seedlings. It opens white, but as the bloom ages, the white becomes pink.

Working with Clean Genes

For the last few years, I have been putting a lot of effort into cleaning up the Hulthemia hybrids.  I have made crosses between the Hulthemias and 'Darlow's Enigma', "Basye's Thornless" and the Knock Out family of roses.  I'm not sure why it is, but the Hulthemia blotch seems to be less visible in seedlings when resulting from crosses with these cleaner roses.  Nevertheless, I keep trying.  

This is the first time that I am seeing the 2015 seedling shown below blooming outside.  'Knock Out' is a grandparent.

Though not as pretty, the brand new seedling shown below, is a 2016 seedling blooming for the first time inside the greenhouse.  It is a first generation 'Knock Out' seedling and has the best blotch that I have seen in direct first generations descendants.  As it matures, I expect the blotch to get bigger and more defined.