Beyond Fortuniana

A dirt road, mosquitoes and alligators, right next to the Everglades, and, oh yes, a yen for roses, these were our starting points. The glen for our roses was a field periodically flooded by sheet rain and tropical hurricanes. Consulting rosarians advised everything had to be grafted onto fortuniana in order to survive. Our enthusiasm outran our facilitating ability to graft our choices onto this root stock. Many of the roses just got put into the ground on their own roots.

We were diligently reading the exploits of the rose rustlers in Texas, and following their examples found Louie Philippe on its own roots. The woman who grew it was 80….and she could trace it back to her mother’s garden. Pink Pet was another find. Brought to Pennie by one of her first grade students, having been plucked that morning out of his grandfather’s garden in Everglades City.

Our glen was turning into a torture chamber for roses, we knew if they could survive in our fields they would survive in other peoples gardens. Wading through water would so many times make us question our whole project. What was astounding was the roses didn’t always seem to mind. Quickly it was established that the earlier Teas and Chinas would take these conditions. It was the modern Hybrid teas and Floribundas which succumbed. Continued reading about roses brought into prospective that these earlier roses were not particularly successful in northern Europe. They froze ! So the more modern roses were not bred just for certain form and repeat flowering , but were bred to withstand colder temperatures.

Southern Floridians , mainly transplants northern states like us, brought their love of these roses with them. These roses, unfortunately, didn’t bring with them, a love for our climate.

Our glen with the roses that did survive took on aspects of a jungle. One particular rose, Climbing Cloutilde Soupert, a polyantha got huge. I decided to transplant it. I cut it back by 3/4s and was not too discriminate about how much root I got. The root system was surprisingly fine, more like a ficus than a rose. Three weeks later it was covered in blossom...interesting!

Meanwhile our grafting onto fortuniana became much more selective. Mrs. B.R.Cant was a wonder on fortunianna but you needed five acres it got so big. In smaller gardens it did fine on its own root and was much more proportionate. Fortunianna was slow to root in comparison to other root stock roses. Its roots quickly circled pots waiting to be sold. It was also hard to transplant once established.

Stinting had also captured our attention., that is the simultaneous grafting and rooting of a plant. Although it could be accomplished with fortuniana, the percentages of failure was very high.

With Climbing Clotilde Soupert stinting became a viable possibility. It was astounding to see how fast it rooted, more like coleus...and at the same time took a graft, usually in half the time it took foutuniana to root. The fine root system was much more tolerant in pots. In the ground it did equally as well as Fortunianna and had the added advantage of being much easier to move.