I've been growing roses from seed for a few years now. My objective was not to create clones of given roses (taking cuttings or doing budding will accomplish that), but rather create one-of-a-kind roses. Modern hybrid tea and floribunda roses have been crossed and re-crossed so many times, they are good candidates for developing new and unique roses. I have taken the easy path and just let the parent plants undergo open pollination, which in the rose-world is probably going to be "self" pollination. In later posts, I will relate the reasons why I chose the particular parent roses that I have used for creating seedlings. For now, let's just show a picture of a seedling on its "birthday", which I will define to be the day that the seedling surfaces above the soil. Believe me, I watch the seedling pots like a hawk, and I never miss a day -- I KNOW the birthdays ! So, let's take a look at a seedling whose birthday was January 13, 2011. Its parent was a hybrid tea rose named 'Voodoo', photos of which can be seen by searching Google Images for "the Voodoo rose". Here's a photo of the seedling --
As you read through the above posts and pages, I want you to carry the following thought with you. It's true that all the major rose breeders and hybridizers must cull their annual seedling crops, eliminating thousands every year and retaining a very select few for commerce. The perceived wisdom is that we, the rose hobbyists, won't grow anything good if we grow roses from seed. In my garden, except for half a dozen seedlings that couldn't retain their foliage, I have held on to every seedling that didn't die, when small, of natural causes. So now my large rose bed and driveway are graced with a full complement of my own rose bushes. Although they have different degrees of vigor and growth habit, I wouldn't trade any of them for store-bought roses.
