Learned something about climbers...

13 years ago

This forum and the Antique Rose Forum are fantastic - I am always learning new things. A new piece of information was posted inside of a thread on the Antique Rose forum lately that I think is important enough to repeat here.

There are frequently threads started here along the lines of "why isn't my climber climbing?", "how can I get my climber to climb?", "I must have gotten the bush form, not the climbing form of this rose, because it is not climbing.", etc. etc.

Well, what I learned, thanks to Anita passing on a comment from Anne Belovich, is that some climbing roses won't climb unless they are tied up to, or at least touching, some sort of support. If they can't perceive a support, they put out fatter, stronger, and shorter canes, to provide the support they need themselves. (Think of a picture of a large mounding rose in the middle of a flat meadow.) If they perceive a support, they put out longer, thiner climbing canes. This makes so much sense from the perspective of how climbing roses evolved in the wild - if you find a tree or bush, climb it to get more light. If no tree or bush is handy, make yourself higher by creating an internal structure.

Just wanted to pass this along on here in case folks hadn't seen it -

I can think of several examples where this was going on in my garden and I didn't realize it. One example - I planted a rooted cutting of Cl. American Beauty in a sunny spot about 3 feet away from our house about 7 years ago. It grew to about 2 1/2 feet tall, and stopped. Last year in frustration I took a new still growing cane that was just long enough to reach the house and tied it horizontally, so that maybe the final 6 inches were up against the house. Now that cane has gotten 3 feet longer, and two more long canes have emerged from the base of the plant, both of which I have tied up to the house.

Just another example of the great stuff folks learn on these forums - I have never seen this mentioned in books -

Jackie

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Comments (8)

zjw727
13 years ago
I love this forum, and I read every post- whether it relates to my garden or not. You never know when you're going to come across a real gem of useful information (like this post...I've never heard this theory before and it makes perfect sense)!
User
13 years ago
yep - it has a cool name too - thigmatropism. You can try it with passion flower tendrils which will start to twine within 20 seconds of touching the tendril with a finger.
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jacqueline9CA
Original Author
13 years ago
Thank you for the name! That is very cool - I will have to look it up when I have more time. I have noticed vines like clematis which have tendrils reacting to touching potential climbing supports, but had no idea roses do that too.

Jackie
TNY78
13 years ago
ooooh....I learned something new today too! Thanks for sharing! Now that I think about it, my young climbers that I have tied to my fence are doing much better than the ones that I'm kind of leaving to their own will..hmmm

Tammy
harborrose_pnw
13 years ago
I'm always wanting my climbers to be shrubs, so it makes sense then that keeping them away from a support will help. I missed that thread, Jackie, thanks.
nanadollZ7 SWIdaho
13 years ago
This is all very interesting. I've got a shrub rose, Blueberry Hill, that wants to be a climber. It grew so big last summer that one large cane started touching the house. That one cane began growing up the house quite quickly. Once the warm weather starts this spring in earnest, it will be interesting to see if it continues to climb. It looks pretty funny right now. Diane
mendocino_rose
13 years ago
Another interesting climber thing that I learned is that if you take a cutting from a lateral on a climber that rose might not climb.
bethnorcal9
13 years ago
Another thing about climbers that I've found is... Climbing sports of bush roses generally do not repeat bloom as well as the bush form. They apparently spend more time trying to climb, taking energy away from blooming. That's why I only use climbers that are just climbers.

And Campanula, it's funny you mentioned the thing about the passion flower vines. I used to have one, and everybody at my work wanted cuttings. I always remember one of the girls telling me how when she took it home, she had the cutting in a little plastic container of water on her dashboard. It was a fairly long piece of stem I gave her, and one of the tendrils had reached up and grabbed her passenger-side visor and was happily hanging on til she got home. I always thought that was so funny.