Being that this comes from a tet crossed to a dip, this rose is highly likely to be a triploid. Does it set hips well? I'm sure the pollen is slightly fertile on tets and maybe moreso on dips.
I really need to grow all the rugosas. They are just so beautiful and tough. I love their fragrance, too.
Long ago I had an ambition to plant a maze of rugosas, for the reasons you mention. Then I visited the Red House in the UK, one of William Morris's homes, which at that time had a planting of about an acre of rugosas. And that was boring. I suppose it was because almost all had the same flower form and the same foliage. That wouldn't be a problem if you scattered your breeding plants among others, I guess.
Lol. I think you're right about it being very boring to see the same exact plant structure and especially the same flower form.
I also breed daylilies and I select for lavender colors. 90 percent of the results are just extremely basic muddled brownish "purple" lavender. Like, ugly shade #543. Only a few of them are a really clear and special tone. But then I also get dark blacks and blood reds and unexpected results that I end up keeping.
So that's part of the process with hybridizing any plant. You just sell the ones you don't use as $5 gallon perrenials. hehe.
I haven't seen hundreds of rugosa hybrids growing together but I have seen the pure species naturalize on the beach and it's a vicious briar with very basic single flowers. I can tell why people haven't done nearly as much work with them as the Hybrid Teas.
However, the wrinkled foliage is so charming and the fragrance is so nice, that it is very well worth the effort to cross tetraploid rugosas like Conrad Ferdinand Meyer back and forth with tet Kordesii lines and triploid types like Blanc Double de Coubert. That would shake up the plant form and flower shape, and hopefully get a good strong tet rugosa to start playing with.
Then the results of that get crossed with hybrid teas and hybrid perpetuals or portlands, mosses, etc, to coax the good traits into modern roses.
The results of those kinds of crosses will be exquisitely fragrant, without a doubt.
A lot of hybridizers spent 30 years to create one or two well known plants and a bunch of "crap". Lol. Griffith Buck made a ton of hybrids and only now, 30+ years later, people are discovering the unusual beauty of Distant Drums and some of his obscure things like Applejack. Carefree Beauty is a parent to a ton of very strong growing roses, including the famous Knockout.
Isn't it amazing? They LOVE pure sand. I mean, practically concrete. Rocks, sand, and just a little soil or bark to add something nutritive to the soil. But yeah, they're like fulva daylilies. Unkillable with anything except Roundup.
Contrary to popular belief, rugosas are not innately immune to blackspot. They are mechanically resistant to many fungal diseases, but if they are not in good health, they can show it. Offspring, even more so, since these disease barriers are often bred out by proxy of other desired traits.
R. x kordesii, however, is. Not to all, but many diseases. Easily lost in breeding, however.
I planted some bareroot Hunter roses a few months ago. They grew rather well and started to bloom this week. A few days back, they started to have yellow leaves. My other roses sometimes have blackspot and leaves turn yellow. But the yellow leaves on Hunter roses look very different. The yellow leaves have green spots on them and are mostly on the bottom of the bush.
