Thornless Roses

How many times have you heard, I like roses, but I wont grow them because of the thorns. I thought it would be a good challenge and breed thornless roses with out losing to many traites in the process. This is the first of a few which are in the stables at the moment.

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Lovely rose. a yellow. i had two red and one had a fragrance but i lost it the other is the red finished flower pictured on here. i love it

how old is your baby

Sonya,
Where is the red one pictured. It is such a shame that you lost the fragrant one.

Sonya it was germinated last year, around late May and planted in the grow out beds in August. The bloom here measures just over 5" and has a moderate perfume.

Thornless roses are great. There should be more of them.

One of the reasons I love Kathleen Harrop.

Hi Rosalie, few years back I was after mauve old world look, I crossed Duchesse de Montebello X Blue Moon, the flowers showed a bit of mauvey pink in the centre but after a while they fade white. What Iam interested in is it is short ,compact and the stems are smooth with not a thorn to be seen. This is one which will be crossed against other thornless this spring.

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Warren, what sort of height might it reach. I thought it would make a lovely hedge, heaps of flowers. If you are going to use it in future I guess it's health is good as well.

Roseman, it is well under 3ft, its health is pretty good as well, but at this stage I will only using it as a breeder. It only flowers once.

Thats a shame it only flowers once. The other option might be use it as a boarder in spring with roses behind which flower through out the season.

In the same year I crossed a Bourbon (Great Western) with Iceberg and Seduction, the iceberg cross was'nt to bad with the thorns but the Seduction cross, bloody hell, ever seen a cat extend its claws out , just like that. Those will definitely wont be used in the breeding programme.

love the description made me laugh

Sonya , every year I go and prune these 2 big rows of Seduction standards, they would have to be thorniest rose i prune, I wear gloves, but once the leather gets wet from dew , those damm thorns go straight through. But mind you a row of Seduction in full flower looks pretty impressive ( just take 2/3 of the thorns away)