Lol. I think you're right about it being very boring to see the same exact plant structure and especially the same flower form.

I also breed daylilies and I select for lavender colors. 90 percent of the results are just extremely basic muddled brownish "purple" lavender. Like, ugly shade #543. Only a few of them are a really clear and special tone. But then I also get dark blacks and blood reds and unexpected results that I end up keeping.

So that's part of the process with hybridizing any plant. You just sell the ones you don't use as $5 gallon perrenials. hehe.

I haven't seen hundreds of rugosa hybrids growing together but I have seen the pure species naturalize on the beach and it's a vicious briar with very basic single flowers. I can tell why people haven't done nearly as much work with them as the Hybrid Teas.

However, the wrinkled foliage is so charming and the fragrance is so nice, that it is very well worth the effort to cross tetraploid rugosas like Conrad Ferdinand Meyer back and forth with tet Kordesii lines and triploid types like Blanc Double de Coubert. That would shake up the plant form and flower shape, and hopefully get a good strong tet rugosa to start playing with.

Then the results of that get crossed with hybrid teas and hybrid perpetuals or portlands, mosses, etc, to coax the good traits into modern roses.

The results of those kinds of crosses will be exquisitely fragrant, without a doubt.

A lot of hybridizers spent 30 years to create one or two well known plants and a bunch of "crap". Lol. Griffith Buck made a ton of hybrids and only now, 30+ years later, people are discovering the unusual beauty of Distant Drums and some of his obscure things like Applejack. Carefree Beauty is a parent to a ton of very strong growing roses, including the famous Knockout.

So beauty is in the eye of the beholder.