This is a selection for the 2003 crop which impresses me more and more with each bloom cycle. This bloom is displayed on a plant that was budded onto seedling R. multiflora last fall. It was derived from a cross of the ever-useful ‘Rise ‘N’ Shine’ X ‘Its Showtime’. The pollen parent is a curious rose that came from ‘Joycie’ X ‘Bon Silene’. ‘Its Showtime’ consistently produces soft (but lasting) peaches and buff yellow and oranges with excellent petal substance and lasting quality on mannerly plants. I will continue to pursue it as a pollen parent, as it is highly fertile with its pollen. (It produces seed quite readily also.)
I suspect that ‘Its Showtime’ is either a spontaneous tetraploid (likely) or a highly fertile triploid (less likely). It must be assumed that ‘Bone Silene’ is a diploid and 'Joycie is almost certainly a tetraploid. This is likely an example of breeding that produces a percentage of “normalized” ploidy offspring even though the parents ploidy does not match. Our modern HT’s were the result of selecting for polyploidy in the offspring.
Not always, no. It tends to allow the seed parent’s bloom form to come through, leaning towards a very full HT form usually. This seedling is a bit of an anomaly. 2003 was only the second year I used ‘Its Showtime’ in breeding, 2002 I only sampled it on a few things here and there, so I don’t have a full view of its abilities yet. 2003 I did a fuller sampling of crosses I tried in small numbers the previous year, mostly crosses with Miniatures. This year I have worked ‘Its Showtime’ on full-sized roses, including the “workhorse” Austins to see how well the OGR look comes through. Since the seedling depicted here shows excellent OGR form using ‘Rise ‘N’ Shine’ as the seed setter, I have a hunch the results with Austins will have promise.