I want to cross this rose ‘Crépuscule’ with this rose, ‘Arethusa’ and plan to this summer, after checking on my rose seeds in the fridge today I know it’s gotta be done.

They are tea-noisette and china hybrids from the early 20th century, both introduced in a two year span between 1903 and 1904 and both are certainly representative of what was in fashion at the time. A lot of the roses from that era are really my style. Lots of yolky buffs, apricot, yellow and pink.

‘Crépuscule’ is the tea-noisette, something of a climber with apricot-buff colored flowers, while ‘Arethusa’ (named after the fountain and its namesake nymph) is a short, bushy buff-pink hybrid-china, starting off apricot and going through a color shift to more of a pastel pink as it ages. Most china roses come in shades of deep scarlet, medium reds and deep rose-pinks so ‘Arethusa’ is a bit atypical of its class due to it’s coloring, which no doubt was and still is its novelty.

Both plants due to their china and tea blood are not terribly cold hardy, but ‘Crépuscule’ is a very healthy plant with shiny peach-leaf like leaves that have a distinct droop, while ‘Arethusa’ while not as healthy foliar wise has compact size on its side and a bit more hardiness. Both are known to be very fertile,  ‘Crépuscule’ while it forms hips is said to be more useful as a pollen parent and I’ve been told by a professional rose-breeder to put its pollen on everything, as it often breeds good yellows and other apricot buffs like itself. ‘Arethusa’ is a good seed parent with good germination rates. I applied pollen from an electric (and I mean electric )  hot pink shrub rose ‘Lynnie’ onto ‘Arethusa’ which took and formed a hip in late summer, which I harvested. Checking on the seeds from that hip in the fridge today I saw I had good germination and just planted them up in a tray to sprout. That for me attested that ‘Arethusa’ is easy to work with.

The goal of the cross would be something of an in-between both plants; to tame ‘Crépuscule’s sprawling and rambling ways and have a more mounding smaller shrub as opposed to the porch swallowing mass it can become. Essentially put it’s coloring and foliage onto ‘Arethusa’ shrub size and habit and I’m good to go.