Has David or anybody else done ploidy measurements on Baby Love (SCRivluv)?
Hi George,
FWIW, it sure behaves like a tetraploid.
Jim Sproul
I see
Hi George and Jim,
I did count it and it is tetraploid. It may behave a little different in its meiosis perhaps. A friend let me include some of her seedlings in that pollen diameter and ploidy study and there were two triploid seedlings that were crosses of Baby Love as the female and one had the tetraploid Morden Sunrise as the male and the other one had a seedling from a cross of two tetraploids (Folksinger x John Davis) as the male parent. There were a number of seedlings among all the seedlings I counted that were 3x from crosses of two 4x parents (there were much more 4x offspring from such crosses as expected). With all the diversity in the background of our modern roses, I suspect there are challenges with chromosome pairing and lone chromosomes that are lost, etc. and at times aneuploid gametes or monoploid gamates that can lead to less than expected chromosome numbered offspring. Maybe the source of these lower ploidy gametes is Baby Love. Maybe with it used as a female it can show up more?? Just some thoughts. What has your experiences been with it George? I have had challenges easily getting offspring from it, but just assumed it was that I was mating it with parents it didn’t like. It seems like a better male than a female from what I tried to cross it with. THere are some op hips on it and those seedlings have looked a lot like BL, but when I cross onto it, seldom has a hip developed for me. What have your experiences been Jim as a female and male?
Take Care,
David
Hi David.
I have no experience with BL as a breeder, as I can’t get it here. The reason I posted this question was because I was looking at the lineage of BL for fun, and saw the species ‘Rosa davidii var. elongata Rehder & E.H.Wilson’ features in it’s pollen side…it made me wonder how that species played out chromosome-wise when mixed with the other unnamed roses in BL’s pollen parentage (and hence ultimately BL itself).
So, your observations are very interesting. Thanks for sharing them.
Could some of these triploids be the result of pollen contamination from nearby diploid plants?
Also, there are some F1 Baby Love derivatives available on the market here, which I suppose could possibly help inject some disease resistance, even though it is not the equivalent to using Baby Love itself.
I have had a fair bit of mildew problems here in several of the new seedling batches, of various different OP seeds this, my first season…I am surprised, as some earlier discussions about mildew this time last year, had me believe that PM is less prevalent in my sort of climate…not so I am afraid…it is too bad, and I would like to “fix it” as much as I can.
Pretty lady is the same in that it LOVES to set OP hips but doesnt cooperate well when crosses are done deliberately while using it as a female parent. Also, like Baby Love, it produces tons of readily viable pollen. Personally, Pretty Lady passes on the kind of foliage I like better than Baby Love does.
It is a rather odd phenomenon, at least to me as a relative beginner in all of this…maybe the act/injury caused by emasculation inhibts seed/hip set on some of these roses??
I gave up on guessing why.
Fair enough…this F1 out of Baby Love I am considering to use, apparently sets copious OP hips, so it might be tetraploid…who knows.
It will be interesting to see if it can also set hips after human hand pollination, or it could be one of these weird obstinant types…lol
David, I used ‘Baby Love’ as a seed parent for a couple of years, but noted that there were very few seeds per hip and germination was low. After that I only used it as a pollen parent for a couple of years. As you noted, it produces abundant pollen, so works best that way. For the last 6 years, I have only used ‘Baby Love’ derivatives.
George, ‘Baby Love’ has been most useful for cleaning up the seedlings of powdery mildew. It has done an excellent job. Since most of my derivatives are as good at conveying powdery mildew resistance to their seedlings as ‘Baby Love’, I suspect that the ‘Baby Love’ derivatives that you have available would do the same.
Jim Sproul
Yep, that makes sense, thanks Jim for all your guidance on this topic, it is wonderful to know about!
Since I posted this, I have also read from various sources / breeders that occasional of their Baby Love F1 do get powdery mildew. I suppose that has to do with the other parent’s genes in such F1??
Can such PM-prone F1 out of Baby Love still pass on the Baby Love type PM resistance in their progeny, despite their own PM propensity??
George, several years ago Jim shared an F1 of Gemini x Baby Love with me. (I think it was at Ralph Moore’s Hundredth. B-day event.)
It was prone to PM. I used it anyway as it was obvious Jim thought it had potential, and I didn’t own Baby Love itself any longer at that point.
I liked the fact it was seed/pollen fertile and a full size seedling. I only used it one season.
Out of that F1 I got several descendants. It produced interesting colors that were mildew prone with ‘Country Dancer’. I got a number of mildew resistant descendants with other parents but I suspect mildew resistance wasn’t conveyed by the F1.
At any rate I’m still carrying some of them forward.
It displays a high amount of mildew resistant seedlings but there are a lot of dogs, too, especially in the ones with hyper-elongated internode spaces. Also, you cannot expect grace out of trash.
New Year x Baby Love produced carrot orange seedlings but they mildewed. Livin Easy x Baby Love produced deep orange seedlings sand mildew. New Year has a growth type that is really fleshy, much in the same way Europeana is really fleshy when it produces new shoots. I do not think it is accidental that Europeana and New Year are both highly vigorous, grow readily from any growth point, and are hihgly mildew prone. So even though Baby Love is beyond most minis in mildew resistance, its not a silver bullet. One has to consider other traits that may interfere.
I wish I could get the danged thing, or at least some OP out of BL, to select a good one out!!
(At least one of the very few F1 out of BL that are avaialble here gets PM in my cliamte).
George… sit tight a season on the BL thing. My OP ‘Baby Love’ seedling, ‘Test Tube Baby Love’, is powering along now pumped full of Fongarid to kill off the downy mildew and is flowering its head off. It will be big enough to make cuttings from in a short time. I’ll keep a plant aside for you. It doesn’t get mildew at all for me and is semi-double-to-double already. It’s pollen fertile as several crosses with it have worked already. I haven’t tried it as a seed parent, obviously, but I’m guessing it could be made to work when mature too. I’ve left a few spent flowers to see if it sets OP hips.
I’ve just made pollinations with ‘Brindabella Bouquet’, on Michael’s recommendation, and it seems to produce copious amounts of pollen. The three flowers that were sent to me by a friend in Sydney produced an enormous amount of pollen (and in my typical heavy handed, stupid manner, I was pollinating some flowers yesterday evening and decided I was going to dead-head some spent flowers from ‘Temple Bells’ and in the process snipped off two flowers I’d pollinated with BB pollen at the same time ). You might want to give ‘Brindalla Gem’ a try too though I am dubious of it for Australian conditions as it is part ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ which shuts down as soon as it starts getting hot. 'Wild Rover’s pollen parent was also R in B and whilst it doesn’t shut down as badly it definately shows signs of slowing down and leaf drop when it gets hot as it is now. In any case, both these plants are on my ‘to get list’ for this coming winter. Can’t hurt to give them a try.
Robert, ‘Country Dancer’ seedlings mildew very badly for me here even when not water stressed.