This is the first season for this one and I’m very happy with the results of this cross so far. It’srepeat blooming, has a nice red/orange color and it is disease free so far despite a rainy spring and hot/humid weather the last month. Not a spot of disease. Thought I might get a yellow from this cross but I’m not disappointed. Thank you Paul for the pollen parent!
Robm
I have found several of that cross are practically indestructible as far as disease goes, and you can bet they’ll be used as parents when I resume my work.
Kudos, that looks great!
Paul
Thank you Paul. I’m hoping this one will carry disease resistance forward in future generations. Look forward to seeing new roses of yours when you resume your work. Best regards.
Rob
Wait, did Paul just say “when I resume my work”. YIPPEE!
Joan,
I am trying to be optimistic in that regard, but right now I don’t really see it happening. To be blunt, I am tired of working with a genus that has such terrible disease issues; making progress is extremely difficult. I feel that on that level alone, its an almost lost cause.
I understand your frustration Paul. Disease issues are a real problem. As a way of working towards a solution, and since none of us are going to get rich breeding roses, I wonder if building a resistant plant base would be helpful. This could be accomplished by sharing resistant plant material early on with other breeders. For example, the plant I highlighted above has shown zero signs of any disease infection. Would it make sense to get plant material into other breeders hands? I don’t know if this makes any sense or is even practical but it’s something that I’ve wondered about.
I hope you will return to breeding at some point Paul…you’ve come up with some beautiful creations and I’m hopeful there will be more.
Rob
I am tired of working with a genus that has such terrible disease issues; making progress is extremely difficult.
All the more reason to persist.
Don
I would have to agree. Professional rose hybridizers of the late 19th and 20th centuries often times had their priorities mixed up. They valued bloom size, color, and form over disease-resistance, plant architecture, and overall health/hardiness of the rose. The ARS compounded this by advising the use of dangerous chemicals to combat the “problem” of the inferior roses being introduced. Some examples of what was introduced last century include Angel Face, Sterling Silver, and Grey Pearl. Not necessarily the bastion of stellar introductions. Mother Nature did what Mother Nature does best - adapt to these growing techniques by mutation.
Here we are some 50-100 years later, trying to pick up the pieces and set the pathway of health/hardiness/plant architecture of roses to where they should be. Much progress has been made in recent years by Radler, Lim, and others. But there is still much work to be done. I can remember asking a noted American hybridizer a couple of years ago if there were any new and/or different species coming down the pipeline. She told me all about Jim Sproul (amateur hybridizer) and his roses, but nothing coming from the professionals. The professional hybridizer’s mindset is to get new roses to market for the company to make money. Spending countless hours/months/years isn’t a profitable/worthwhile venture. They are going to produce what has worked for them in the past - more of the same type of roses. I for one don’t want any more of the same old/same old roses being introduced, and I ask myself, if the professionals won’t/can’t change the status quo, then who?
Andy
Paul, I know the feeling. I’m coming back to roses after almost 10 years of not making crosses. I’ll always breed plants, because it is my very favorite thing in the world, but I don’t always need to be breeding roses, nor will they ever be my main focus. They can be very frustrating.
The list of other plants out there to play with is endless and fascinating. I actually have the most fun breeding more obscure genera where little work has been done. With roses you have the weight of hundreds of years of (often misdirected) breeding to deal with. When I dive into obscure genera like Echium or Iliamna, I get to start from scratch, and the question of “What will it look like?” is all the bigger and more exciting.
Andy, the effects of what were done resemble what you describe, but villifying breeders for trying to make money is off base. In any corporate endeavor, everything is a profit center. If your R&D isn’t generating profit, it doesn’t pay for itself and won’t be funded. The companies only put out what the buying public was/is willing to PAY for.
Whether it was the fault of the ARS, fashion, stupidity, whatever, it has been the exhibition HT form which has held sway for a century and that primarily only comes on a HT plant, good, bad or indifferent. Can you honestly believe the Boerners, Swims, Nicholas’, Van Fleets, even Carruths, Zarys and Christensens of the industry didn’t care about improved plants and health? The same corporate and economic pressures which foster and stiffle every industry came into play in the rose industry. If the buying public (US) only PAYS for exhibition HT form, despite what kind of trash plant it is presented on, are they demons for providing them? They exist to satisfy demand and if we demand junk, haven’t we gotten what we PAID for?
You, the other members of this forum and I see flaws in the status quo and want to attempt to rectify them. Don’t you think the rose breeders have, too? When your paycheck depends upon sales of your creations, you MUST give the market what it demands, and try to slip in as much improvement as possible along the way.
As I posted elsewhere this morning, it’s the same thing we have in most other industries. We HAD American automobiles which delivered 30+ mpg more than half a century ago and they carried five and six passengers. WE let them die in favor of more horse power, bigger tail fins, more “sex appeal”. Economy of operation was valued by such a small segment of our population, those demanding the ability to spin their rear tires at every stoplight, never mind the inefficiency, made efficiency a dead issue and rewarded the inefficient. Speed was SEXY!
The “pretty face” is what has always sold here. Now we can’t afford that and have to face the realities there must be VALUE outside of perceived affluence, status, prosperity, we’re seeing healthier rose type varieties which generally don’t appeal to rose lovers, but are bought by the landscaping industry, made profitable by the landscaping segment of the market. Not the traditional “rose industry” which has failed and died for many reasons, some of which were the fault of the corporate models they followed, some not.
Read the other rose forums and notice how many posts there are for the truly awful rose plants and how to make them perform. Read of the push for the cut flower novelties, the hysteria over who has them now as garden plants and the “happy, happy rose dances” over finding the current incarnations of Leonidas to put up with in a garden. If WE didn’t reward substandard varieties and products, they wouldn’t exist. What IS good and what does perform in many markets is damned because it is common, uninspired, “boring”, but they are what is selling because the “rose public” isn’t the market being depended upon for its support. We hunt for the better clone of Angel Farts and put up with having to spray the daylights out of it because of the pretty face. Continuing to breed with these hemophiliacs only promotes the status quo of inferior types.
In more than one way, the death of the corporate breeding departments is a blessing. Not to those involved in the upheaval, but in the potential for new, actually improved versions of roses to come to market. Backyard breeders have the edge in this model. WE don’t have salaries and benefits being paid as fixed expenses, requiring continual sales of what’s worked before in a fickle market with a fickle buying public. A patent is expensive, but if there are no sales of the product, a patent expense is much cheaper than salaries and benefits.
But, damning the breeders for misdirected efforts is off base. If WE didn’t pay for it, THEY wouldn’t have provided it. We have gotten exactly what we demanded with our money. Pernet sought his Grail. Ralph Moore did, too. Pernet’s happened to be more in line with what the public sought. Ralph had to attempt to educate people to see with his eyes. He was fortunate to be able to afford to do it that way. What commercial breeder of the last century had that luxury? Kim
Kim,
“Can you honestly believe the Boerners, Swims, Nicholas’, Van Fleets, even Carruths, Zarys and Christensens of the industry didn’t care about improved plants and health?”
I believe that most of these 20th century breeders (VanFleet’s work centered around hardiness and disease-resistance) really did care about “improved plants” and “health.” But, I think that many of their viewpoints to which their roses were tested were often skewed by (as you have so eloquently pointed out) the almighty dollar and by what would have been deemed “acceptable growing procedures” in use at the time. These “acceptable growing procedures” would have come from the scientists of the day, government research and development, the ARS, and yes, the breeders as well. Many of whom profited from the sale of pesticides for use on their roses.
Grey Pearl was introduced in 1945. The world was at war with itself. Supplies were scarce everywhere. It has been noted that at times the Annual even had to wait its turn to have enough paper secured to be published. Within the Annual there are 27 ads. Of the 27 ads, seven (25%) are for pesticides or mention pesticides in their wording. The other ads are for a soil tester (4%), peat moss/fertilizer (4%), five book-related (19%), and thirteen rose suppliers (48%). If you subtract the rose suppliers, more than half of the “supplies” for growing roses (51%) are for pesticides.
Also included in the Annual, is an article by Gale Robinson which indicates spraying roses every ten days. A black and white picture of leaf spot is shown for better visualization of the disease for one or more of the articles. O. James Faloon writes about Insecticides which include pytrthrum, rotenone, and nicotine. P.W. Miller writes of “proper cultural practices” used in growing roses for exhibition - sulfur dust mixture compound (Fermate, dusting sulfur, talc, and diatomic earth), nicotine sulfate with soap and hydrated lime, and lead arsenate. (There are probably more, but I stopped looking). These are not just isolated people growing roses haphazardly in 1945, but are the authors/teachers of the time, writing to the members of the ARS and rose growers worldwide. They are teaching/writing about the “correct” way to grow roses. These are the conditions to which ‘Grey Pearl’ and 19 other new roses were introduced. They are also the conditions to which these twenty roses were tested before introduction. Also, included in the Annual there is an article by Eugene Boerner specifically about the Grey Pearl. In it, he explains the controversy arising around its unique color and reasons for and against its introduction. The editor asks “Will it be another Soliel d’Or?” Mr. W. I. Johnston of McGredy (Grey Pearl’s introducer) was “a little skeptical of the rose having any commercial value, and questioned the propriety of offering such a color.” I believe this article illustrates how the breeders (or more correctly the companies they worked for) didn’t necessarily do what they thought would be best for the rose-growing community, but looked past their observations to make money. And yes, supply the rose-growing public with what they “want.” Not necessarily what would have been the “best” for the rose-growing community.
Also to be noted in one of the ads from the Annual was an ad for a small nursery in Little Compton, Rhode Island, run by the Brownell family. The Brownell family was actively introducing roses yearly during this timeframe. The Brownell “Sub Zero” line of roses was at the time (and to a large degree now) noted for its greater winter hardiness and better overall resistance to disease. At the Brownell nursery, there was a different mindset/testing standard being used. ALL of the same “acceptable growing procedures” would have been available to use. But, as many on this forum have pointed out, many of Brownell’s roses have withstood the test of time, and are still being used by RHA members in their hybridizing efforts, to create their new roses.
Andy
Correct. I plan on using Lafter next year.
But, Andy, the established “acceptable growing procedures” permitted these roses to be grown. After the War, anything new was greedily, eagerly gobbled up. Cars weren’t “new”, just updated as quickly and as cheaply as possible. There was wealth out there in middle America, pent up wealth burning holes in peoples’ pockets. Particularly at that time, they had to give people what they wanted, not what would have been “good for them”.
We’d come through The Depression, then the World War. Everyone did without so many things for so long. Now, there was prosperity and money to spend, increasing amounts of money to spend. Had anyone tried to force feed the Public what was “good for them” instead of what they wanted, they would have failed miserably.
The Brownells created some interesting roses, and some which are what northern growers really needed. Why did their nursery end? Surely had they been making what was “good for us” and we were ready to take our medicine, someone else would have stepped up and either taken the reigns or bought them out and continued their work?
We have never wanted what was good for us. We still don’t. Until we can’t have what we want, we will never settle for what’s good for us.
I forgot to mention, on Rec.Garden Roses a few years ago, Mel Hulse led a conversation about Grey Pearl, raving how much he admired it for its unique beauty. Sam McGredy read it and added his uncle Walter Bentley called it, “the rose of lavatorial color”. Hysterical stuff!
Sam went on to say only J&P made money on “The Mouse”, his family made nothing on it. Kim
Kim,
I do not know exactly the reasons why the Brownell nursery does not exist anymore, and probably will never know. By the time they were ready to go out of business, Walter and Josephine we no longer running the business. It had passed to the next generation. I do know from my own experiences by running a small, family-run, printing business that things can get very complicated. My grandfather died when my father was in his 20’s. My father was able to implement his vision on the company without any outside pressures from his father interfering. Transitioning from my dad to me is quite different, however. I am in my 40’s and he is in his 70’s. He frequently tries to impose his vision to the business, for better or worse, and I try to impose my vision on the business, for better or worse. Fights happen often. Everything is a compromise. Nothing I ever envision comes out the way I want, and nothing he envisions comes out the way he wants. The situation becomes a battle of wills with the company suffering every step along the way. This situation is not unique. Thousands of small, family-run businesses suffer through similar situations worldwide.
There were many hybridizers who took advantage of Brownell’s introductions. Golden Glow introduced by Brownell in 1937 has many descendants. Kordes, Moore, Tantau, and Boerner all successfully used it in their first-generation crosses, with Kordes and Moore being the most prolific. Help-Me-Find lists ten generations of hybrids with Golden Glow in its ancestry.
We could both sit here and debate who, did what, when, and how, in the rose industry, during the last 100+ years. The fact is probably that ALL of the factors were involved in one form or another, with 50 or more additional factors that haven’t been cited. We are where we are in the industry in 2011, and it doesn’t matter how we got there. We are here now. We have to live with what was presented to us, and use it however we see fit. The finer points of who’s at fault are moot.
I, for one, enjoy the intellectual stimulation that the RHA and this forum provides. There was a time, that roses were just something I planted to make my wife happy. Whether the rose was red, or white, or pink didn’t matter. One year, I sponsored a class in our local rose show for roses hybridized by the exhibitor. Since I didn’t know anything out hybrids or hybridization, I researched the topic. This has led me here to the Rose Hybridizers Association and all of the fine people in it. I have since learned more on this forum and the RHA newsletter than the other four societies I belong to combined. I see good points and bad points in nearly every rose I have seen. I also see a need to re-regionalize rose growing in America. Trying to create a “one size fits all” rose is a major undertaking. Creating regional roses that have characteristics that our local region demands makes more sense to me.
Andy
Regional roses, though not the profit potential of a “one size fits all”, ARE what’s needed and have been called for in ARS articles for the past 80+ years. Thankfully, there are some pieces of the infrastructure in place to supply them. There hasn’t been the selection of really disease resistant, cold-hardy roses like those from Lim since some of Dr. Buck’s and the Brownells.
I just wish there were more breeding roses for those of us in the “land of endless summer”. It gets lonely out here! LOL! Kim
PS. Good luck with your battles in the business, Andy. I completely agree with you about learning more here than in any other rose group. I stopped belonging to rose societies because of that issue…no new knowledge other than how to make Mr. Lincoln produce ten inch flowers. I don’t envy your struggles with your dad. Already had those. I just wish it hadn’t taken him passing to end them. Kim
Thank you, Kim. Sorry, you weren’t able to work things out with your dad before it was too late. I’ve tried to reach out to my dad, but to no avail. I often feel as though he and I are from two different planets. It seems as though our relationship is destined to be the same as so many other fathers/sons.
I wish I could help you out with more breeding roses for your climate, but my selection of roses pales in comparison to what you already have. You are always welcome to anything I have. All you need to do is ask.
Andy
Thanks Andy. Good luck with your situation. Thanks, also, for the generous offer. I will shortly (like this weekend) reduce my “collection” by a considerable number. I’ve weeded through seedlings which spoke to me, but more often than not, in languages I didn’t understand. They’re now out of here. I’ve found a loving home for many of the larger shrubs I just can’t maintain on the slope, so won’t drag down to plant. There are over thirty different Fedtschenkoana hybrids out there in cans. Only a very few will remain. As Ralph was so fond of saying, 'ya just can’t keep’em all!" Kim
Paul, you’re living in the wrong state. Come to Colorado where we occasionally have mildew but (knocks on dog’s head in lieu of wood) nothing else bothers us.
But Fara, isn’t it true that you are mostly growing once-bloomers? I have no disease problems (aside from a bit of Mildew) on this section of the genus. The Gallicanae are truly effortless plants, even in my climate where Blackspot often decimates collections; they are exemplary plants.
On the other hand, I have yet to encounter a Hybrid Tea/Floribunda in a residential setting in town that didn’t fall into one of two categories: 1) looks great but sprayed and fed to do so, or 2) no care other than supplemental watering and looked like hell (bare canes, straggly plant = truly ugly addition to the garden setting)
The Chinensis-derived HT section of the family is tragically unsuitable for a climate like mine, as regards disease issues. But then the HTs are tragically unsuitable for mid-continent climates as well because of their inability to hold onto live wood in anything colder than zone 7. And we wonder why the rose has a reputation for being the garden Prima Donna?!