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ARTICLE ARCHIVES
New Zealand Loses a Great Rosarian
New Zealand Loses a Great Rosarian President Emeritus of the National Rose Society of New Zealand, Mr Allan Scott, M.B.E., A.H.R.1.H.(N.Z.), S.M.A., N.Z.R.A., died on March 20, 2000, at his home, Scott Road, Morrinsville, aged 97.
Mr
Scott pioneered the formation of District Rose Societies throughout New
Zealand in 1945.
He was President of the National Rose Society of New Zealand from
1964 - 1966 and a Life Member of both the Waikato and National Rose
Societies.
He was chairman of the highly successful First World Rose
Convention, held in Hamilton in 1971, out of which sprang the World
Federation of Rose Societies. Mr Allan Scott was awarded the Frank Penn Memorial Award in 1968 and in 1974 the T. A. Stewart Memorial Award (an award of great merit for services in Australia and New Zealand). The first New Zealand Rose Awards were given in 1974, one to Allan. His outstanding efforts were recognised by his being made a Fellow of the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture and a Life Member of the Morrinsville Horticulture Society. In 1966 at the American Rose Society's Festival and Convention held in Portland he received the most significant honour of the Festival - "Knight of Rosaria". Photo
by Sandra Hunter, East Waikato Country, Matamata
Raising
roses from seed can be interesting and can also be fun When dead heading your favourite roses during summer, often one or more hips will have escaped you and by the autumn these can be fully developed and may even be colouring up. The world's hybridises have already done all the initial crossing and you will be getting the benefits or a re-run of their work. From your efforts of raising a plant from seed you may get something that you really like. Toward
the end of April and into May, when the hips have fully coloured, they may
be picked. Cut them open by
making several cuts around the hip and remove the seed.
Drop the seeds into a tumbler of water.
Those that sink are the fertile ones that you will want to retain.
Those that float are seldom good, so these can be discarded.
The number of seeds per hip, from one rose to the next can vary
from only two or three, to up to 50 per hip.
Likewise, germination success rate can also vary.
Occasionally you will get a nil result, but mostly you can expect a
take from between 5% to 75%. The
floribunda and minis (and some HT's) seem to perform better. Plant
your seed in a medium of half potting mix and half fine river sand or fine
pumice. Note, never use
seaside sand. They can be
planted closely - half
an inch or 12 mm
apart. Just cover with a very
fine layer of this planting medium. Finally add a 12 mm or 1/2inch layer
of straight pumice on top. This
helps with aeration and also the retaining of moisture. Place
your container or containers, suitably labelled indicating the parent
plant, on the coolest side of the house or shed where they will get little
or no sun. Put some wire
netting over the top to keep cats and other animals from scratching in the
soil. This will also give
rain and frost etc access. This
is good as it helps condition the seeds for germination. Toward
the end of July or in early August, shift your containers to a warmer
position where they will now get part of the day’s sun.
About this time your first seedlings will start appearing.
When they have developed their second set of leaves, they can then
be transferred into straight potting mix.
You can plant three, four or five seedlings into 150 mm or six inch
pots. Use the handle part of
an old tablespoon to dig them out. It
makes a good shovel. Again
make sure to label their origin. Make
sure that they remain damp and don't let them dry out.
By November you should be getting your first flowers and you will
soon know whether you have a good seedling or one that you will discard. At this stage they can be four to six inches high and will be
a true replica, but usually a smaller version, of what you can expect the
mature bush look will look like. Spray
regularly as young seedlings are susceptible to mildew.
After spraying shift them out of the hot sun for 24 - 48 hours to
stop burning as they are still babies. As
they increase in size you may like to progressively transfer them into
bigger pots. The following
winter they can be planted out in the garden.
As the bushes mature, the blooms will often develop more petals
thus increasing in size. Good
luck and lets hope you produce many good seedlings. George
Sherwood - (breeder of Nancy Steen, Kate Sheppard, Taranaki Dawn) One
of the often little appreciated signs of autumn is the mass of orange or
red rose hips against a background of slowly yellowing foliage. Yet
breeders and growers of roses alike seek roses that flower for as long as
possible and are disease resistant. There
is a strong, urge to reproduce the colour and scent qualities of
old-fashioned shrub roses, which flower only once in summer, with the
reliability and repeat-flowering potential of modern hybrids.
The range of English shrub roses produced by David Austin is a
result of this quest. But the best hips do not grow on profusely flowering scented shrub roses. The Hybrid Teas and floribunda roses with the constant pruning has effectively killed the production of fruit. Instead the best show of hips is produced on species shrubs and rambling, roses.
Species
roses will continue producing flowers and hips with limited pruning perhaps
every two years - best done in the spring.
Rosa rugosa, with its hybrids, are exceptions.
They are the only group of naturally repeat flowering, roses which
also have impressive hips. These
often ripen at the same time as the second flush of flowers. The hips are distinctly rounded and ripen from green to a
rich, almost translucent red, giving the appearance of small ripe
tomatoes. Frau Dagmir
Hastrup is an example. Should
one visit Peter Beales' nursery in Attleborough, Norfolk, one might find a
display of foliage and hips on the early flowering species roses which
form an informal hedge flanking the lawn of the Beales' display garden.
Peter Beales has the national collection of species roses, which
tend to flower early in the season, but early autumn is a concert of
foliage and hips. The golds
and crimsons of autumn contrasted with foliage still green - species
roses rarely get mildew or blackspot - and the red, orange, mahogany brown
and black hips, which come in a huge variety of button, flask and bead
shapes. One
of the favourite hip producing roses s the R. moyesii (back cover),
whose slender arching-stems form an open spray shape and have single
crimson flowers. The lemon
ripening to orange red hips are like small carafes standing out against
the thin background. I am taken with its whiskery stubble hip like
delicate sandpaper. Many roses will begin producing hips in February and such
as R R Hansa (photograph) often keep these hips into early winter.
They have an added attraction of the bright red hips being off set
by a background of foliage, which is steadily turning, from green to
shades of orange red and corn colour. Peter
Beales notes in his book roses that produce a good crop of hips are
usually healthy plants. They
are the richest in vitamin C and are used in making rose-hip syrup and
jelly. A small Kiwi contingent attended Roseweek '99 in Melbourne early in November. We and the Eagles were the only representatives from Christchurch. Sally from Rangiora spoke on her climbers. We
were small in numbers and Australia seemed to Jean and I so large.
The 1881 Royal Exhibition centre was vast and magnificent.
It was so big all events; opening, rose show; trade exhibitions,
lectures and closing banquet were held there in largely separate areas. The distances we travelled on the pre-show rose garden tour were immense.
After visiting Treloar's rose nursery south of Adelaide on our
return leg we were still left with 340 km to travel to reach Mount
Gambier. Treloar's nursery,
by the way stretched for 2 km - roses all the way. On the way to Adelaide we stopped overnight at Mildura then Renmark.
At Renmark we visited David Rushton's rose nursery, just 50,000
rose bushes and 4000 varieties. David
at the dinner with our touring party (a small 20) mentioned that their
local rose society probably covered an area about the size of Europe. At the show, Roseweek '99, back in Melbourne, one trade exhibition
consisted of perhaps a 100 or more vases of roses on pedestals.
This commercial grower has 500,000 bushes and produces millions of
cut roses each year. They
also provided the thousands of roses that decorated the banquet area and
entry to it. 103,000 : that
was the official number at the Melbourne Cup which 3 bus-loads of
rosarians attended on November 2nd. Trying
to push through that number to our very good seats opposite the finish
post was quite a battle. Tommy
Cairns can pick more winners than roses! 2000 : another big number. The millennium; that was the theme of the wonderful display
from New Zealand, in the states and countries displays. The theme was simple: an enormous sun flower made up of
yellow roses (Yellow Bunny perhaps) with yellow streamers flowing out of
it onto the floor. On the
blue ground behind just three large gold rosettes: lst, Millennium, N.Z.
A great effort by the Waikato contingent. 100 :
not so big but an important number as this event was the Centennial
of the Rose Society of Victoria. Their
society had come up with the same idea as ours for the Millennium with a
display of rose introductions over a hundred years.
With the backing of David's 50,000 rose bushes they did have some
advantage over us. For each
year the magnificent displays had somewhere near 100 roses-or so.
Now if you are still keeping up with the mathematics: 100 years X
100 roses = 10,000 roses -or so. I
didn't count them. Things are big in Australia and this also goes for their hospitality.
Jim and Jean Dykes |
