Thanks Adam, I will be more patient with it opening.
My comment on ‘Marechal Niel’ was mistaken. I do have an idea of what’s happening. Apparently the carotene-cleaving enzyme is inactive at high temperatures. So, when MN is grown under glass, the color deepens. I’m guessing the fragrance declines. But in a more moderate climate, the color is a soft yellow and the fragrance is ravishing. Eugster & Marki-Fisher give more details on how the carotene synthesis pathway leads to more complex versions when MN is grown in heat.
‘Diamond Jubilee’ seems to behave the same way. When I checked out the roses at the Lexington Arboretum last summer, to see what was blooming during the HOT period, I found ‘Diamond Jubilee’ blooming happily, light yellow, and with an unpleasant scent. I’ll have to be sure to sniff it next time I catch it in its pink phase to learn whether the scent is better then.
Karl
@Kathy, I seem to remember that ‘Peace’ and ‘Sterling Silver’ are related somehow, wish I remembered where I saw that. In any case, you’ve got a very lovely rose there! Mazel Tov!
@Moe, is there any way to get a larger copy of addon.jpg? When I click on it, Firefox just hangs and Chrome gives me a “fatal error.”
Peace, from HMF:
Parentage:
Seedling × Peace (hybrid tea, Meilland 1935)
Notes:
The plant patent states: “The male parent was the variety Peace and an unnamed seedling as the female parent - the latter coming from a strain similar to Morning Mist.” Therefore, the seed parent is NOT Morning Mist, but a related seedling.
Morning Mist was;
Seedling × Self
Notes:
The patent states “this variety resulted from a self pollinated seedling from one of my own unnamed seedlings developed in our greenhouses in Woburn, Mass. This variety is essentially a greenhouse rose but it can also be grown out of doors satisfactorily. It is a prolific producer of flowers and although not a robust grower is adequately strong to produce good bushes. It is not quite so hardy as the really strong growers.”
I wonder whether a back-cross of ‘Sterling Silver’ to ‘Peace’ would give any improvement on vigor while also retaining the color.
Le Grice (1968) read a paper on Unusual Colours in Roses that is worth a look. He lists the ancestries of various mauve and tan roses. It’s interesting to see how many trace their ancestry back to Rosa foetida, especially through ‘Charles P. Kilham’.
Karl
This just in …
Herald-Journal May 30, 1956, p. 4
Widow Creates New Rose as Tribute to Husband
WOBURN, Mass. Mrs. Gladys Fisher, a grandmother and widow of a horticulturist, is being honored this year for creating a true lavender rose while trying to fulfill her husband’s dream of a blue rose.
Mrs. Fisher’s rose, which she has registered with the American “Sterling Silver”, made its debut at the New England Spring Flower Show of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, a national organization and the largest of its kind.
She freely admits that when her husband, Gordon, died in 1953 [should be 1943] she didn’t know a pistil (the part of a flower linked with the miniature seed) from a stamen (the organ of a flower which produces a fertilizing cell).
Because her husband, like many other flower growers, dreamed of a blue rose, she too took up the quest—hoping she might create a memorial to her husband. This involved the study of hybridization which she undertook with such earnestness that she became known as one of the world’s most distinguished woman hybridizers.
It is 10 years since Mrs. Fisher went to her greenhouse one morning to see what seedlings had bloomed in the night. She found the first blue-gray lavender rose.
“It was a weak little thing,” she says. "But I took out a patent and carried it along, hoping it would grow stronger. Names are registered with the American Rose Society, and I asked for the name Moonbeam, but was told that it had been used in England. Then I selected another name, Morning Mist. I never introduced this rose because the seedling wouldn’t produce a strong plant. But Morning Mist is one of the male ancestors of Sterling Silver.
"Peace is Sterling Silver’s female parent. Peace has had countless rose children. Aside from beauty. a successful rose must be a good grower. It must be disease resistant and capable of producing a fine crop of both flowers and foliage. It must be upright sturdy and long lasting. I have had thousands of hopeful seedlings, but few survivors.
“I have tested it since 1952 to be sure that its characteristics—keeping quality, color, scent and fertility—have settled to a changeless pattern.”
Being local I made some effort to see if Morning Mist was possibly still extant or if I could determine the possible parentage based on cultivars listed in other Fisher patents. I concluded that Morning Mist was most likely an opportunistic seedling of a non-named florist trade cultivar. The Fisher greenhouse business served the Boston cut flower trade and the lack of prickles on Sterling Silver point in that direction. Because florist trade is served by a different pipeline not entirely parallel with the horticultural trade we will likely never know for sure what they were.
The mystery may have an answer in the correspondence between Conard Pyle and the Fishers. The business records of the original Conard Pyle company are now archived at a university having been dumped there when the Meillands took over.
Gladys had children who, I think, still live in the Woburn area. While not likely it may be possible that they still have relevant records or correspondence, or maybe even some family lore.
The Conard-Pyle business records are archived at the University of Delaware. Reading the finding aid for that archive will tell you how thorough the collection is. Here is the URL for the finding aid: http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/html/mss0634.html
If you plan to go there and look through the archive, you’d better expect to spend several days.
Peter
Once upon a time there was not such a great divide between Florist Roses and Garden Roses. ‘Radiance’, for example, was bred as a forcing rose but proved to be remarkably fine in gardens.
Florists’ Review, April 8, 1920
Gordon Fisher, of Woburn, who has hitherto grown carnations and sweet peas principally, will plant all of his four large houses with roses this coming season. The varieties will be Premier, Columbia, Double White Killarney and Ophelia. About 27,000 plants will be used.
So, Gordon Fisher began growing roses commercially in 1920. I don’t know when he started breeding his own, or on what scale he worked.
Gladys stated that she “had thousands of hopeful seedlings, but few survivors.” This gives us some idea of the scale. I’m guessing she picked up where her husband left off, since a blue rose was Gordon’s dream. He died in 1943, and in 1946 Gladys found ‘Morning Mist’ blooming for the first time.
It seems an odd coincidence that both ‘Morning Mist’ and ‘Grey Pearl’ should be such weak growers.
‘Grey Pearl’ was first sold in the U.S. in 1945 by Jackson & Perkins. Even if Fisher had managed to get an “advance copy”, it seems unlikely that she could have bred from it and raised a second generation by 1946. More likely, she just stumbled upon the new color in the same way that Sam McGredy III did.
New traits are often associated with weakness, whether they arise from mutants or unusual recombinations. Marshall and Collicutt (1983) wrote, “Peonin segregated in each of the three native species tested, suggesting that some factor maintains a segregating condition. There is the possibility that peonin is a sub-lethal gene as four plants selected for unusually high peonin grew poorly and were sterile.”
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/peonin.html
But this is not always the case, however, because ‘Hansa’ blossoms contain almost pure peonin, according to Eugster and Marki-Fischer (1991).
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/EugsterPigments1991/EugsterPigments1991.html
Here’s a poor image of ‘Morning Mist’ from the patent application.