'The King's Rose' reviews and comments

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'The King's Rose' Reviews & Comments

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Initial post 3 days ago by HMF supporting member

HubertG

I've sometimes wondered why the Austins never produced striped roses before. Considering there are enough striped examples amongst the old garden roses, it always seemed to me to be a natural direction for them to take. Perhaps it was just a matter of personal taste as not everyone likes striped roses. A striped Austin rose in their classic 'English' form would be wonderful in my opinion.	REPLY

Reply #1 of 11 posted 3 days ago by HMF supporting member

Lee H.

Hubert, that’s an idea with strong commercial potential, in my opinion. Food for thought.

There is “something” about striped roses. I recently hosted a rose garden party for my church, and while I was busy trying to point out the perfect form of ‘Frau Karl Druschki’, the delicate coloration of ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’, and the rich history of ‘The Apothecary Rose’, everybody was running over to meet the cute girl in the miniskirt: ‘Scentimental’.

Reply #2 of 11 posted 2 days ago by HMF supporting member

HubertG

Lee, yes, there's a reason why old stripey roses like 'Commandant Beaurepaire' and 'Honorine de Brabant' have remained in commerce so long ... it's because they're so appealing, and beautiful in my opinion. Both those roses are more cupped and closer to the 'English' form than this new 'The King's Rose', so perhaps we'll see more striped roses like that from Austin in the future.

I like striped varieties in general but they can be a bit hit and miss taste-wise. Some are beautiful and just really work; some are garish and just don't work, in my opinion. I guess a good analogy would be striped wallpaper - some kinds are well proportioned and tasteful and some are just hideous, but there are people who will still buy the hideous ones lol.

Reply #3 of 11 posted 2 days ago by Marlorena

I'm not speaking for them but it should be pointed out that this rose was produced in conjunction with the King's charity, the King's Foundation, which is ecologically based, so the rose needed to meet certain criteria, which means easy to grow with minimum feeding and watering, and stamens for pollinators. A big, many petalled rose with no visible stamens simply wouldn't meet this criteria, and needing so much watering and feeding to produce those blooms.
For every rose sold, a percentage is given to the King's Foundation.

Some of us here in UK have had the driest Spring since 1852. We are in drought where I am. Single and semi double roses are the way to go right now, unless the roses are well established. So this semi double appealed to me very much.

Incidentally, from what I gather, it seems the idea was to produce a repeat flowering rose of the Rosa mundi type, and it has been strongly hinted that 'Ferdinand Pichard' is in the lineage, and perhaps those other two roses mentioned, further back..
The growth habit has taken me by surprise in that it's similar to what you find in some Polyantha roses like Nathalie Nypels, as far as flowering shoots are concerned, where they emanate from nodes further down the stem, at the same time as the terminal cluster. I've always found pruning such roses a little problematic.

Reply #4 of 11 posted 2 days ago by HMF supporting member

HubertG

I did figure that they were aiming for the original Rosa Mundi type with this new rose. Thanks for your insight, Marlorena. I hope you get some rain soon. We've had too much of it lately in Sydney with flooding in some parts of NSW.	REPLY

Reply #5 of 11 posted 2 days ago by jac123

We have detailed reports of how Ralph Moore managed to get the striped gene out of Ferdinand Pichard. All the striped roses in commerce, besides sports of solid coloured varieties, come from it. We also know that the original cross Ralph Moore did was not that easy, with few seedlings being striped and most (if not all, I'm not sure) were once bloomers. On the contrary, striped are very easy to introduce in a breeding pool using modern, striped varieties, as it is a dominant gene.

If at Austin's they really went back to Ferdinand Pichard only to get a striped, pink semidouble they must really love unnecessary challenges - maybe they just meant that the colour is reminiscent of Ferdinand Pichard or that stripes originally come from it.

I've also noticed from photos taken at Chelsea that its foliage is folded towards the center as in some other Austin varieties, such as the Ancient Mariner. I wonder if they come from the same blood line

Reply #6 of 11 posted yesterday by HMF supporting member

HubertG

Austin's website says it was twelve years in the making so I wonder if that's enough time to start from scratch with 'Ferdinand Pichard'. Maybe, maybe not. Austin relates a conversation with Prince Charles back in the 90s when Prince Charles told him that Ferdinand Pichard was the first rose he ever grew, so the idea of this new rose can be traced back to that meeting in a way.

It looks quite pretty, the bud clusters almost like a Hybrid Musk. I notice in a video on the Austin website that they say it has "some fragrance". Without smelling it, it's hard to say exactly what that means but it suggests to me it might not be strong.

I see it won a gold medal from the Royal Horticultural Society at Chelsea this year.

Reply #7 of 11 posted yesterday by Marlorena

I've just seen the flooding in NSW Hubert. The climate has gone berserk.

Just to add, the rose didn't win any gold medal, that went to the DA display stand, which it does every year without fail, it's a given, but the rose didn't even make it into the final 16, roses rarely do as shortlisted plants need to be uniquely different to what's out there, and there are plenty of striped roses. The top prize that got 43% of the votes from around 130 judges, went to a pink Philadelphus, and lovely that is too, I'd like one.

Reply #8 of 11 posted yesterday by Marlorena

I've just uploaded a couple of photos of the foliage, referencing an earlier comment.	REPLY

Reply #9 of 11 posted yesterday by HMF supporting member

HubertG

Marlorena, my mistake. I saw a photo online that made it look like the rose had won a medal but I didn't read the tiny print on the certificate.

Thanks for the foliage photos. I have to say that the foliage of 'The King's Rose' does have similarities to 'Ferdinand Pichard' from some of the photos here, so perhaps Austin did work with it. One the other hand 'Stars 'n' Stripes' is only two generations from 'Ferdinand Pichard', so who knows where the stripes came from.

Reply #10 of 11 posted yesterday by Marlorena

Hubert.. yes I thought that too, that the foliage does have an 'FP' look about it. One failing for the Austin brand for me is that they never release breeding information these days. They used to, didn't they?.. now it's all top secret and whilst it's understandable, I don't like it.
Incidentally, the rose is 'sold out' already, I can't recall when one has gone so quickly after just a few days. We have to wait until autumn now for the bare root if anybody wants one.

Reply #11 of 11 posted today by jac123

It is possible that they went back to Ferdinand Pichard, but I do not think that 12 years would be enough to do so. To make a marketable modern rose from Ferdinand Pichard you would need to breed in bloom power, disease resistance, and some modern refinement. 12 years is the standard time Austin takes these days to assess a variety I believe (from cross-pollination to market).

Once more, I'm not saying there's no way they did it - just that it seems like extremely unnecessary from a breeding point of view. Especially so if the end goal was a pink striped semidouble with a weak scent, suggesting that they really did not need anything else from FP than its stripes. And the exact genes that make FP striped have already been bred into modern roses. It would be like travelling to a library to read a book you have available on google.

Using a good striped modern - say Alfred Sisley, you easily get more than 50% striped seedlings. With a reasonable amount of seedlings and a couple generations you could get stripes in all kind of shapes and with a strong scent.

Regarding not sharing breeding information I suspect that specifically at Austin's they do not share it because it's more modern that most customers like to think. Probably most of their varieties really are seedling x seedling, but I find it really hard to believe that out of the dozens of varieties they released in the last 20 years (when they stopped sharing information) not a single one of them derived from a named seedling. Maybe it is true - but I find it very unlikely.
Regardless, I do not believe that sharing their "proprietary information" would in any way help others replicate their success. First of all, it would take competitors at least 10 years since when the patent is published to get their first results. Besides, most major breeders in Europe have their own breeding strategies and competitive advantage, and are probably not that interested in creating replicas of Austin roses (which they could still easily do by crossing two English roses, if they wanted).
On the contrary, the whole vintage aura around the King's rose would fade if you found out it was a (striped x knock out) x pink floribunda seedling (just an example)