Margaret... 'Charles de Mills'

Hi Margaret,

I was looking at your photo (here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] of 'Charles de Mill's growing wild on the side of a road. I was wondering how you determined what it was? I have an unknown gallica (here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] that looks amazingly like it. I was hoping to pick your brains about diagnostic features.

Ummm. Because it's known to be common in the Adelaide Hills (on the hotter plains it may not flower much at all), it's a rampant survivor in climates it likes, and it's one of the roses that are recognisable at sight. Like Lady Hillingdon. Diagnostic features? Very double, flat on top with a peripheral ring of petals at first - older blooms may be more convex on top, colours darker purple than Mme Isaac Pereire(and hard to reproduce well with a digital camera).

margaret you reckon its hard to reproduce digitally , you should try finding pollen to breed from almost impossible

Thanks Margaret. I wasn't being flippant. I have never seen it in the flesh. With any luck mine will flower this year and help determine its true identity.

Warren, talking to others about this rose it seems it is most successful as a seed parent.

from what i have done, i have come to the conclusion that old world types when crossing onto moderns, is best with pollen. have crossed gallicas, bourbons and mosses as seed parents with very low % of repeat bloom occuring. when crossing moderns with old world type pollen the % rate of repeat goes up quite a bit, i now in the state of mind that the repeat gene in dominate in the seed parent. i do all my crosses with old world types this way now with great success, just a thought what do you think??

Maybe... so much in rose breeding remains a mystery to me. I've done both and not noticed any real pattern yet other than it is not sex linked... only ones I've done a lot of, with once bloomers, however, are with species or near species and this pattern certainly doesn't hold true for them. In most my crosses where remontancy is absent in one parent I usually expect no repeaters unless full remontancy is present in the pedigree of each (is why I have repeaters now from Mr Moore's 0-47-19 about to flower at only a few weeks old... with Floradora as a parent it is carrying full remontancy and being diploid it comes out when selfed about 25% of the time). Last season was the first season I've used OGR varieties such as Tuscany (Gallica), Vivid (Bourbon), Honorine de Brabant (Bourbon), Henri Martin (Moss), and William Lobb (Moss) and they have just started germinating so will be more able to comment on this when they are older.