And, pray tell ProfessorRoush, what have we here? Which of these many seeds is the next KnockOut, the rose that will take the world by storm? Which will become a favorite fragrant friend, pink and demure and beautiful like no other rose? Which will become simply a thorny thicket, barely worthy of being called Rose? White, yellow, red, or pink; will the color be drab or vibrant, pure or muted? Will there be fragrance and later hips, or will each underwhelming blossom fade away to brown paper? Disease-free and hardy, or mildewed, black-spotted, and dying? Rugose, matte, or glossy? Such promise in a pile of seeds, such anticipation for that first pair of leaves.
ProfessorRoush is trying again, this time with Science instead of blind faith. Every year for a number of years I've collected rose hips, like these, waited until spring, and planted them, hoping to grow a rose of my very own, with the result of failure, mostly, over and over. I've kept the hips in the garage, in the barn, and refrigerated but always left the seeds in the hips over winter, growing one or two roses of my own through the years, with those that survived the damp and fungus being less than inspiring when they actually made it to bloom. I've nursed a non-remonant pink rose that finally succumbed to Rose Rosette, and I have another in the garden right now, a two-year old, whose blooms appear sporadically and resemble 'Heritage', but whose bush struggles.
But, this year, I put about 50 hips, from 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', 'Morden Sunrise', 'Snow Pavement', 'Heritage', 'Therese Bugnet', and many other shrubs into the refrigerator, Rugosa-Hybrids and Canadian roses, and Old Garden roses all into one bag. This weekend, caught up from other work over the past six weeks, I found time to consult Dr. Internet and looked up what I should really be doing with them. I learned about stratification in the "proper" manner, and vermiculite, and proper moisture, and, finally, what to watch for to know when to plant them. I learned about how to transplant the seedlings, how to fight mildew and rot, and how to introduce light in the proper way.
In about 3 months, when the first seed germinates, I'll begin again; first downstairs in a lighted window with extra grow lights, and then, as spring arrives, transplanted outside. I have hope, you see, hope that the honey bees and bumble bees have selected genes far better than I ever could, and hope that "internet experts" actually know what they talking about. Hope that somewhere in this pile of seeds is a rugosa that will rule the world. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blest" said
Alexander Pope in
An Essay on Man. Who am I to disagree?
(Bonus points for those who can put the title together with the last sentence and name the group and song starting with those lyrics!)
(And, oh yes, the words "do not discard" are for Mrs. ProfessorRoush's attention. One season's hips mysteriously disappeared from the refrigerator a few years back.)
