Growing roses from seeds

Murphybear

Hi everyone, ‘tis me again

i have seen on eBay rose seeds for sale.  The cynical side of me is wondering how genuine this is.  Some of the colours are very unusual for roses such as emerald green or all the colours of the rainbow on one rose.

I am assuming “rose seeds”  are what you get inside the hips.  I am wondering if anyone has successfully grown roses like this.  

The information provided on their site is that they take a long time to germinate and have a fairly high failure rate. I am seriously thinking about having a go, just to see if I can do it  . They are fairly cheap to buy so it wouldn’t matter if the project failed

On a 2nd look there’s actually many sellers doing this

Thoughts please

Thanks

MB

ArbitraryRandom

I can't help with most of this, but I do know the rainbow roses are fake. 

The 'real' roses like that are made by splitting the stem of a rose (normally a white one) and putting it in multiple cups of dye; like children colouring carnations. 

Farway

I have tried growing roses from seeds, never came to anything and all failed to germinate despite following all the "rules" freeze, warm etc

Agree with AR, the E bay ones are fake, try using Photoshop for similar results

theoretica

I watched a wild rose come up and grow from a seedling.  Took years to flower, by which time your ebay complaint time will be long out...  And yes - photoshop or dye are how to get those colours.

twopenny

Do you have time space and patience? 
sounds like a lot of bs to me.

How about practicing on cuttings? More rewarding.
I was going to post about that because

 I've never been sucessful though i know people who just shove them in soil and get roots.
We could have a competition.
Sorry about the formatting, seems to have a mind of it's own........

Dustyevsky

I have successfully grown roses from seed; specifically species, like Rosa glauca, which means I know exactly what I'll get.

The first thing to realise is it might not work at all, and you'll need to overwinter the pot outdoors to get germination.

I planted about 20 Rosa glauca seeds last autumn. I had one germinate and it's now about 5cm tall! The previous winter I planted some Rosa rugosa and got around 10-15 plants, now large enough to plant out when the hedgerow soil is more damp.

Murphybear

Thanks everyone.  You’ve confirmed everything I thought, growing multicoloured roses is not real  . I’ve never taken rose cuttings before so it will be exciting to have a go.  There’s lot of help on the David Austin and the RHS site.  

ArbitraryRandom

If you really fancied the multicoloured route you could also consider grafting. 

I can't remember where it was, but there was a stately home we visited a few years back with an Alice in Wonderland theme - and they had red and white roses. I think it took some careful pruning but it looked good. 

Slinky

A friend of mine only yesterday said she'd been able to take cuttings successfully from some roses. Stripped the leaves off, stuck them in some compost and now new leaves are showing.

How hardy would these sorts of roses be do you think, given that a lot of roses are grafted onto wild root stock?

Murphybear

ArbitraryRandom said:

If you really fancied the multicoloured route you could also consider grafting. 

I can't remember where it was, but there was a stately home we visited a few years back with an Alice in Wonderland theme - and they had red and white roses. I think it took some careful pruning but it looked good. 

I take it the roses weren’t painted.   . Alice was my favourite book as a child and I loved the bit where the cards painted the white roses red as they had planted the wrong ones!

twopenny

Not sure if it's relevant but i visited an open garden where some central slim trees had passed away and the owner had trimmed and painted white.
It looked great! 
Had me puzzled for a while