Morning Magic is a tetraploid
Winners Circle is a triploid
It wasn’t surprising Morning Magic is 4x with all the nice hips filled with seeds it sets. I was surprised Winner’s Circle is triploid because it does set a very nice hip display too. Opening up some hips I found a low number of seeds in each. Last winter I raised some op seed and it seemed to have low germination and generally weak seedlings. This seems consistent with it being an above average triploid rose for fertility. Both are very beautiful and healthy roses here in MN so far and are proving to be very very nice landscape additions. They were strongly crown hardy too last winter. They may not be climbers in zone 4 without protection, but if nothing else they sure seem to be making nice full shrubs. Morning Magic is quite free flowering too!! Both were bred by Bill Radler.
Sincerely,
David
It’s wonderful you’re doing this work David.
Thanks Robert! I really enjoy knowing too and it is fun to share the information. I uploaded a photo of some Winner’s Circle cells on Helpmefind.
Sometimes it is difficult to get a really good photo with all the chromosomes in a single plane for a photo, but as one goes up and down in focus distinguishing each chromosome becomes a little easier. Sometimes with a single plane the ends of the chromosome are visible and then the middle is out of focus so the darker ends make it look like two in a photo. Anyway, it sure is fun to look at the cell and see chromosomes in different stages of cell division.
David
I know David.
I already gave your photo an “excellent” rating. I wish I had the patience and resources to do some of this myself.
I’ve got hundreds of things out there that I would love to have information on.
I’m about to go out and harvest hips. The quest continues.
It’s even better that you are doing it because it is so much harder to do than I thought it was going to be! I did a squash of ‘Violette’ tonight (because I assumed it was diploid and would be easy enough to see to practice with) and I just couldn’t separate the cells enough to even see the chromosomes, let alone count them… Onion root tips were easy… nice big fat roots that squashed really easily… I’d get the kids to sit an onion on a hyacinth vase until it grew roots down into the water and then we’d do the squash… do you think having the roots in the water made them more successful (being fully hydrated and soft etc)… do you think I’d have more success if I was to put struck cuttings into water for a week or so and then use some of the new roots that grow under water??? Quite frustrating really 
Hi Simon,
Unfortunately, I don’t think water would help with roses. The key is to have a lot of meristematic cells from actively growing root tips. I think water would limit oxygen for roses and limit their growth since they don’t seem to like to be waterlogged. I think just a little more tweeking with making sure you have just the most actively growing root tips (kind of white yellow cast at the end with some root hairs behind typically) is really key and will help a lot. There are a lot of root tips that can be avoided. I would then arrest more cells in metaphase by putting the tips in vials of water set on ice for up to 24 hours and then fix them.
It is really nice to carefully get out just the soft meristematic cells and get all the other material off the slide so it can be squashed and spread as best as it can be to make the cells appear larger, not be overlapping, and spread the chromosomes better.
They are a lot smaller and a bit harder to see than onion like you suggest, but with just a little more tweeking it will all work out and soon you’ll be counting roses!!
Sincerely,
David