I have a four year old rock rose in a planter, sunny location. It appears healthy and regularly gets new buds but the buds dry up before opening. I 'deadhead' them but the cycle continues. Any ideas as to why and what I can do?
The buds before the flowers and the fruits that follow look quite similar to one another. Is it possible you are missing the bloom somehow, and think the fruits are the unopened buds? Otherwise all I can suggest is that you are picking the flowers off before they open, which for some reason appear dried up but actually aren't.
I do get some large, healthy pink blossoms early summer, so I don't think I'm missing the flowers. The 'buds' I'm referring to turn brown and shrivelled - I don't think there's any bloom in there. I thought the flowering season would be longer. So you could be right; maybe the buds are actually the fruit.
Ding! The fruits have a different top to them than the buds, you could also check by opening a few of them up. Flower buds will have petals inside. While some kinds do seem to bloom a pretty long time no cistus is a May to October bloomer like a shrubby potentilla or even a July to October feature like a fuchsia. Most belong to that vast majority of garden plants that don't bloom much, if at all after July.
Thank you! That's the answer. I didn't realize the rock rose would bear 'fruit'. I opened several up and found hard 'nuts' inside. I guess it's a July bloomer.
Thanks Ron B, now I know why my rock rose only has a flowers in early July. I was looking at what I was doing wrong since my "regular" roses bloom from March to November (even beyond sometimes).
Rock roses (Cistus spp.) and roses (Rosa spp.) are not related, although as it happens there are some roses that bloom only during the first half of summer as well. In fact, this is the predominant behavior among wild rose species. Those comparatively few warm climate kinds that were used early in producing what eventually became the vast range of modern "everblooming" Hybrid Tea and Floribunda etc. roses were the ones that imparted the long flowering trait.
