breeding suckering out

Technique Embryo Culture
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1

As, in another thread, Kevin asked: What are you crossing rugosa and spinosissima with to breed out suckering?

I could reply: cross with anything that does not sucker.

In fact I crossed rugosa derived x spinosissima and believe it or not results if strong plants were not so much suckerers.

Also among many others, I crossed foliolosa and rugosa. F1 suckers a lot but there were many no sucker seedlings in next generations.

From my observations, and I never kept away of suckering species or vars, this is neither a dominant feature nor something that reappear generations later.

2

Pierre,
In the foliolosa x rugosa seedlings, did they make rhizomes like foliolosa?
Karl

3

Foliolosa x rugosa seedlings did consistently make rhizomes just like foliolosa x nitida.

I do not remember exception to when crossing with non suckerers or spreaders this hability to make rhizomes or suckers is gone in a single generation. (clear?)

4

Thanks, Pierre. I don’t think it translated very well. Do you mean to say:
“I cannot recall any exception to the generalization that this tendency to make rhizomes or suckers is bred-out in a single generation”, or
“I do not recall a single incident in which the tendency… was removed in [only] a single generation.”?

5

Pierre,
Thank you for this information.

There is much confusion in the literature about suckers, rhizomes, adventitious root sprouts, and stolons. In “Woody Plants of the Southeastern United States” by Ron Lance, I read (p. 304) that Rosa damascena is “A stiffly erect, rhizomatous shrub”. But on p. 306 he wrote that Rubus idaeus, which does grow from rhizomes, is a “suckering shrub”.

The attached image is from Commercial Red Raspberry Production (2007).
https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/files/project/p

Hitchcock and Clothier (1898) wrote that Rosa arkansana, “Propagates extensively by creeping rootstocks, or under ground stems. Here and there new shoots arise from buds in the axils of scales on the rootstock, forming thus a new plant.”
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/Rose_Pictures/Rosa/R_heliophila.html

How can someone confuse an underground stem (with buds in its axils) with a rootstock?

Best (1890) considered R. arkansana to be a mere variety of R. blanda. “Var. Arkansana ranges from Texas and New Mexico northward to British America and westward to the Rockies and probably beyond. It undergoes many modifications. On dry prairies it becomes markedly surculose; its rhizomes are transformed into in-ground stems which give off annual shoots like flowering branches. Since these rhizomes have no leaves, the demand for more foliage is met by an extra pair of leaflets on the suckers.”
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/BestRoses1890.html

In this description, “annual shoots like flowering branches” emerging from underground stems are “suckers”.

Karl
Raspberry.jpg

6

Right formulation is:
I cannot recall any exception to the generalization that this tendency to make rhizomes or suckers is bred-out in a single generation.

Karl I added to the confusion.

Rhizomes or underground stolons arise grom the “root collar” just under soil surface. Suckers arise from the roots.
However my observations are the same for both.

7

We may be talking about different aspects of the same question, Pierre, as I was referring mostly to F1 hybrids. In my experience, running increases, at least in the first generation, which results in my keeping few plants for a second - I don’t have room and I’m primarily interested in foliage. A current example is Fru Dagmar Hastrup (runs modestly for me) x Rosa chinensis minima (which has never run). This resulted in a thorny, fern-leaved plant about 18 inches tall, which on first glance would appear to be a spinosissima hybrid. After two well-behaved years in pots, I planted it out last fall. This spring, there are over a dozen canes coming up in six-inch radius of the original plant - but this one’s interesting enough to keep.

8

I’m back on this issue, again.

I’ve read that Rugosa and Nitida are stoloniferous, whereas Blanda and Foliolosa are rhizomatous. Unfortunately, I cannot find any pictures to show the difference. And no botany textbooks that can say anything really definite about the difference between stolon and rhizome, except that stolons are usually creeping stems (often with elongated internodes) that run along the surface of the soil (or among litter). Rhizomes, in the casual distinction, are underground stems with scales usually replacing the leaves at the nodes.

So, one question comes quickly to mind. If a hybrid of Rugosa and Foliolosa (or Nitida and Blanda) is selfed or mated to a sibling, do the progeny segregate for stolon/rhizome? If so, is the segregation tidy (either/or) or muddled (a little of each mode of growth, in varying degrees)?

9

I wonder if roses actually have rhizomes or if that is a mistaken use of the term. I believe that the definition of rhizome (and much of how it differs from a stolon) is that of a stem that grows along or just under the soil and its’ purpose is both for food storage (thus most rhizomes are plump little stems) and to develop or help the plant spread, thus as the rhizomes branch and grow, they have the ability to send up new shoots and roots at each node. This allows the node to grow when conditions are right (like springtime). Some familiar rhizomes are ginger, cannas, and most iris. A stolon also is a horizontal stem from the base of a plant that produces new plants from buds at its tip or nodes (as in the strawberry, many grasses, bamboo) – called also runners. It also can run just over ground or below ground. It does not store food, but acts as an ‘umbilical cord’ until the new plant is established. ‘Shoots’, much like what was written above, are stems that arise from the root collar. I would hazard a guess that roses probably have both shoots and stolons, both of which have been called ‘suckers’. Tip rooting is a form of stolonizing. This is from memory of either a horticultural or botany class, and probably has a bit more nuance than this.

10

There definitely is much nuance. And plants are not inclined to fit their structures and functions into tidy categories.

I was thinking that “stolon-ness” had more to do with the elongation of internodes, but that’s just me.

So, I’m hoping to get a close look at the underground stems of Rugosa and Nitida to see how (or whether) they are different from those of Blanda and Foliolosa.

11

Elongation of the internodes seems to have a lot to do with it. I just do not think that ‘food storage’ is part of stolons-more like food delivery. Rosa wichurana is queen of the ‘long’ stoloniferous type roses. At least the thornless Bayses’ selection that I have.

12

I keep searching for some definite statement, and those are common enough. But for every authoritative description I find, there is another, equally authoritative contradiction (or two or three).

Back in the early 1980s, I spent a summer in a rural area in NE Kansas. There, along a country road, I encountered a colony of Rosa heliophila Greene (part of the very “lumpy” R. arkansana Porter). All the specimens bore white flowers.

But as I studied the distribution of these plants, it occurred to me that they were all part of a single plant. The image is still with me (no pics, though), and I have the sense that the rhizomes were the “true” canes. What I saw above ground were flowering “laterals”.

I have not seen that species since. And the only other example I might have seen were some possible R. foliolosa specimens growing in a park in Oklahoma City. I didn’t have a chance to study those plants because I only saw them as I hurried from work to the bus station.

Has anyone on the forum raised “pure” seedlings of R. foliolosa, R. arkansana, R. blanda, etc.? Do the rhizomes appear to be the primary growths even from a young age?

Maybe what I’m fumbling to describe is like the difference between clump-forming grasses and their turf-forming relatives.

13

Karl, your post brought to mind my seeing our local rose on a country road (Wabaunsee Rd, just a mile or so north of I70), in full bloom in October after mowing all summer long in the late 70s-early 80s. It existed along a long stretch of the gravel road, on both sides. Whether one clone or many I have no idea. I collected some suckers of that and have grown it ever since. In my back yard it gets up to 3 ft. As noted by Percy Wright in the 1937 Rose Annual, which I found at Bulb N Rose of course, heavy infestations of the snout borer prolongs the flowering season until quite late, for the dwarf prairie rose. Mowing may do the same. While trying to look up R heliophila alba I came upon a description of R pratincola from the Rose Annual vol 8 which says it is almost herbaceous. R. pratincola is also an old name for roses of this same arkansana group.

So I think the answer for dwarf prairie roses subject to repeated fires, insect predation and drought is that yes, the rhizome may be the actual over-wintering propagule. That is the mode of survival for big bluestem in the same environment. It forms vast clonal areas in prairies. But nothing beats huckleberries that have lasted in PA forests for millenia.

Do you recall the country road where you saw the alba form? You can PM if you prefer not to tell it abroad. It might still be around 35 years later. For sure my local rose suckers, and late flowering shoots come from the base of the plant, from an underground stem. I took a photo and send to the RHA newsletter for an article on plant architecture. But I forget if it got in there or not.

For seedlings maybe we can distinguish depending on whether shoots arise only from leaf AXILS or whether they are adventitiously popping up from below the location of the cotyledenary leaves. I’m thinking right now of a peculiar seedling that I have in the lab in a pot. Last week it shot out a horizontal shoot at ground surface which is now several inches long and still nearly horizontal. I’m fairly sure that the first true leaves were several inches up from where this came out. If it had stayed below-ground it would have looked like a sucker when it finally emerged. In fact one of its siblings, a Rosa laxa x R virginiana OP (from David Z) did exactly that in a pot outdoors in the fall.

14

Rosa pratincola Greene = R. heliophila Greene. Greene changed the name when he learned that “pratincola” had already been used for a European species. I think it is important to distinguish the various forms lumped together under R. arkansana Porter because of their particular environmental adaptations. As Greene (1899) wrote: “Probably no botanist knowing, as I know, both the Illinois and Wisconsin prairies, and the valley of the Arkansas in Colorado, could be brought to entertain the notion that any species of rose could be common to the two. The latter is an arid and subsaline half-desert country, a region of cactaceous and salicorniaceous plants, probably about as different from the region of Rosa pratincola as Arabia is from England; a consideration which does not seem to have entered the minds of our American rhodologists—if we have any—much less those of the European students of the genus.”

Do you recall the country road where you saw the alba form? You can PM if you prefer not to tell it abroad. It might still be around 35 years later. For sure my local rose suckers, and late flowering shoots come from the base of the plant, from an underground stem. I took a photo and send to the RHA newsletter for an article on plant architecture. But I forget if it got in there or not.

I PM’d the address. I doubt that the area would be swarmed by mad rosarians, but if you happen to be in the area you get first dibs. I also indicated the area where I found a couple of red-flowered forms. The exact site is no longer there - on the slope of a railroad overpass (now gone). But maybe in the area.[/quote]

For seedlings maybe we can distinguish depending on whether shoots arise only from leaf AXILS or whether they are adventitiously popping up from below the location of the cotyledenary leaves. I’m thinking right now of a peculiar seedling that I have in the lab in a pot. Last week it shot out a horizontal shoot at ground surface which is now several inches long and still nearly horizontal. I’m fairly sure that the first true leaves were several inches up from where this came out. If it had stayed below-ground it would have looked like a sucker when it finally emerged. In fact one of its siblings, a Rosa laxa x R virginiana OP (from David Z) did exactly that in a pot outdoors in the fall.

I once had an odd seedling that seemed normal, until the tip abruptly went horizontal. I suspected insect damage, but saw no evidence. The shoot continued horizontally, and side-shoots grew out in the same fashion. Then another shoot from the seedling did the same thing. I have no pics and no explanation, since none of the possible parents grew at all like that. The only remote possibility was a bogus R. soulieana I purchased from Ralph Moore. It looked more like a form of R. wichuraiana, and was a relentless creeper. It insinuated its way through my zoysia lawn. I didn’t even notice it until it was a few feet long, hidden in the grass.

There are too many degrees of variation to name definitely. I have given up any notion that there could be a “gene for stolons” vs. a “gene for rhizomes”. The distinction apparently is not in stolon vs. rhizome, but in where the plant invests its self-preservation resources. A tough, winter hardy bush can send out horizontal, underground branches to expand its territory while maintaining its “home base”. On the other hand, a different sort of plant can escape the ravages of winter (and of summer) by going underground, and sending up flowering shoots that survive for only a year or two.

Here are a couple of papers you might find interesting:

Studies on Subterranean Organs. I. Compositae of the Vicinity of Manhattan, Kansas.
Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis, 9: 1-8 (1899)

Studies on Subterranean Organs. II. Some Dicotyledonous Herbaceous Plants of Manhattan, Kansas.
Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis, 10: 131-142 (1900)