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'Chapeau de Napoléon' rose Reviews & Comments
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Anyone know if this rose ever sets hips in a 'normal' year? I know there is at least one decendant listed that has Chapeau de Napoleon as the seed parent, but I cannot find anywhere that list hips ever being produced, or any images.
The reason I ask is because I visited the public gardens that are my 'second rose garden' today, and I found that their bush had (in the time since I last visited) obviously had as many as 8 or so hips that had set, but all bar one were past their best and badly rotten. However, after I asked the gardener very nicely, she allowed me to bring home the one remaining ripe hip. I'm afraid it was already mushy enough that it was destroyed in our hands as soon as we touched it, and therfore I couldn't take a picture of it to upload (I would have done had that been possible) but that shows how close it was to that one being lost too. However, I can tell you that it was much more reminiscent of a Canina style of hip than say a Damask or Gallica type, but it was still somehow different from any I'd seen before, maybe slighty more 'Damasky'. It was a bright orangey-red.
When I investigated the remains of the hip when I got home, I found that there were many, many more seeds than I had expected. I was also expecting them mostly to be infertile, if not all of them, but that was not the case. After testing them for fertility, I found that all 16 seeds were fertile! I was pretty astonished to be honest. I have sown them into four pots, one in each corner, and I await to see what happens.
Has anyone else ever found this to happen before? Could it maybe due to the abnormal weather experienced this year - I know that Centifolias have been known under strange circumstances to set hips before on very rare occaisions. Has anyone got any pictures of any Centifolia hips to share so I can compare them?
P.S. I'm 99.9% sure it wasn't a sucker that had set seed or anything like that!
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Ralph Moore used 'Chapeau de Napoleon' as part of a crested range of miniature roses.
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I've just gone back through the lineage, and I doubled checked more thoroughly: there are 4 varieties that stem from Chapeau de Napoleon as mother, but none of those are the Ralph Moore ones - as far as I know, they were all developed from it's use as pollen parent rather than from seed. But the fact remains that those 4 others were from seed - but how rare a thing is it? And do they/can they self, or does it have to be fertilised by something else? I don't recall seeing it with hips any time before in the four years I've been going to the garden. It will be interesting to see the results.
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It doesn't normally, It could be luck, or possibly a fertile sport. Roses occasionally sport to more fertile forms.
The Ralph Moore crosses were created with just such an aberration.
You should have collected seed from all the hips. Rotten hips often contain fertile seed.
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Really? I did get two other hips but they looked way beyond the point of all usefulness. I will go and fish them out the bin and have a look! I'll get back to you in due course!
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Yes, rotten hips are often fine in terms of seed quality.
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Right, I found the hips. When I checked the seed there were all 21 fertile in one and 10 out of 15 fertile in the other, so thank you for pointing that one out to me. I will have to check them out in future, rotten or not.
I took a picture of these ones before I broke (or rather 'mashed'!) my way into them. I know they don't show much, but here they are for what it's worth. I must admit, I am now a bit worried that they were from the rootstock, but I'm pretty sure they weren't.
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When you say you checked them for fertility, does that mean they sank in water, or were you using a more sophisticated test? I ask out of ignorance.
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Yes, just the water test - who could improve on such a simple and clear-cut method! I still can't believe so many sank; it was a higher percentage than most I've done before.
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Reply
#9 of 9 posted
2 JAN 20 by
 Plazbo
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I have hip set on the one I got middle of last year. I did go crazy with pollinating (often 3 times a day for around 5 days using pollen from various older types and it's child Helga Brauer). Not a lot of hips, the bigger ones are very similar to Alain Blanchards larger hips which look more like slightly fuzzy Gallica shaped hips to me but that's a fairly different shape to the image uploaded in the photo section. Alain Blanchard can have around 20 seeds per hip, but around 8 seems more usual from what I harvested today.
The smaller hips on Chapeau de Napoleon vary in size a lot, I wouldn't be surprised if they are empty. All it's hips are still very green though so unwilling to check for seed yet, given many others are colouring (or coloured) up I assume it won't be too much longer.
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