If I bred a rose with transparent petals I would call it ‘The Kings New Clothes’ LOL
There is definitely a relationship between foliage shape and striping. I have noted this before in my own work and other people’s striped hybrids: the leaflets are oddly shaped, narrower and more lanceolate than normal rose foliage. It is pretty clear in my mind that these two characteristics are linked.
A few years ago someone sent me budwood of a sport they found on a Hybrid Tea in their garden. A red rose sported red and white stripes. When I got a couple plants going, it was conspicuous that their foliage followed the same pattern I observed in plants that gained the striping trait through breeding: the leaflets were oddly lanceolate. I wonder what this tells us about the trait?!
Paul
hmmm… I have roses with very lanceolate leaves, but they aren’t striped (at least, the ones that have so far bloomed). The leaves are also very thin and have ragged-looking edges almost like torn tissue paper. So far all these roses that have bloomed have given me flowers with over 100 petals, and the plants are very shade tolerant. Interesting…
You know it is very interesting about Mr. Moore’s statement regarding heat taking the virus of striping away. I wonder if the cold can bring it back. I have a striped seedling that has very faint striping, I kept it under flourescent lights, and very close to the lights all winter and when it would bloom inside I did not see stripes, I took it outside in March when the temps were cooler and the stripes were more prominent.
I wouldn’t mind transparent petals either, could call it “Translucent”. Or there might be a rose by that
name.(??)
Regarding “Translucent”, I’ve been fascinated with this too. See this description.
Arena Roses 1999 Catalog
Website / Catalog (22 Dec 1998) Page(s) 40. Includes photo(s).
Sweet Afton Hybrid Tea. Armstrong & Swim 1964. Description… The color is near white with a reverse of soft blush pink.
“The petals are so thin that they appear to be made of tissue paper…”
My mauve/yellow striped rose has stripes Spring and Summer and then in late Fall and all Winter the flower is completely yellow with no stripes three years in a row now. I can’t figure that out. The rooted cuttings are the same way.
Patrick
Aha! A rose for every turn of phrase and occasion…
I would love to see a picture of this rose. I wonder if there could ever be a white with white stripes, giving it almost a lace effect…hmm now I am dreaming, thats probably impossible, but then again with God everything is possible, look at the zebra!
‘Sweet Afton’ balls badly here, and I suspect that its thin petals contribute to the problem.
lol Ive been buying these spray roses from New Seasons every week. “Theyre for my gf” wont work on you guys, so lets just say that I like them, too. Anyways, theyre often striped and only 5 bucks.
I am hoping to use a lot of New Seasons roses this sprin gif I can. I imagine this one is mini x floribunda lineage.
“‘Sweet Afton’ balls badly here”
No great surprise. Here is opens beautifully. Of course we often have humidity in the single digits.
Sweet Afton often passes along it’s wonderful fragrance. Unfortunately this doesn’t sometimes extend into the third generation.
Been thinking about this a bit… we know that mosaic-like viruses can cause striping/variegation of foliage and flowers and we also know that viruses can insert viral DNA into the host DNA. In cases where thermal therapy caused striping to vanish maybe, in this case, the virus is active and causing symptomatic inhibition of pigment in tissue layers 1, 2, or 3. In cases where heat has no effect on the striping, and the striping doesn’t appear inheritable, the virus has been successful in inserting some viral DNA into the rose genome in tissue layers 1 or 3 (so in effect it appears much like a sport) and in cases where the striping appears to be inheritable such as in the ‘Stars n Stripes’ lineage from FP the viral DNA may have been successfully inserted into the DNA in tissue layer 2 from which gametes originate either directly due to the action of the virus or indirectly by the transferal of DNA from layers 1 or 3 by some disruption to the segregation of genetic material in layers 1, 2 and 3. Maybe the virus that causes this is pollen borne too and what appears to be inheritable striping is only a case of successful transmission of the virus???
In this photo a rose of mine that was (it was shovel pruned) badly infected with RMV the flowers would also be badly mottled in early spring when the temperatures were very mild.
When the weather warmed up the flowers would then return to normal like this:
(BTW… is there anyway to use html to insert multiple imgaes here?)
Simon,
Your rose is VERY interesting! That first picture is exactly the effect I’ve been hoping for in crossing Fa’s Marbled Moss with Kordes Perfecta!
I notice that there are still a few spots on the warm-weather version, and unless my eyes are still not focusing right, they are very like FMM’s spots! Though I’ve never seen any sign of RMV virus here.
Hi Fara,
I don’t think the ambient temperature EVER gets hot enough here in Tasmaina to totally kill the virus off. I can see symptoms of it at all times during the year on plants known to be infected. I think spotting and striping probably has multiple causes and origins and FMM probably has some other genetic basis for spotting (i.e. none-virus… maybe related to a virus originally and the DNA might be of viral origin but hey… that’s evolution for you 
doesn’t matter where you get the DNA from). Some people look at these two photos and say they were caused by heat stress but they were taken in early spring when the max. daily temp. barely hit 20 degrees Celcius and the ground was still damp from early spring rains we get and this plant was the worst RMV affected plant I’ve ever seen… its leaves had oak-leaves on their oak-leaves!!! I lost my nerve with this plantas I was going to leave it and accept that it was infected but then the ‘Bonica’ planted next to it started to show it too, when previously it hadn’t, so out it (and Bonica) came incase it was root grafting all over the place. A pity because I quite like this rose and it was very vigorous despite being badly infected with RMV.
Hard to resist jumping back in here. Hope I don’t disrupt too many genes for Simon. If you read about maize coloring and the work of Barbara McClintock, you’ll find descriptions of lots of things that are commonly called transposons and insertion sequences. But her mind was so far ahead of most folks and her understanding was so deep, that her papers are nearly impossible to understand. But now we can begin to grasp it, once we have lots of DNA sequences from plants and animals. The difference beween a virus like RMV, and transposons is thay the virus makes neat packages of protein coats that make it more resistant to the outside world so can spread from plant to plant. The transposons and insertion sequences are stripped down versions , sometimes just pieces of DNA that code for only one enzyme that can copy them, plus some helper that ccan let them insert randomly or specifically into DNA somewhere else. Viroids are a special case where it seems to be just nucleic acid, no protein coat, so it is usually not a terribly spready disease, but nasty none-the-less.
High temperatures work by making the enzymes dysfunctional. So if the plant cells can divide and grow a few generations without the virus being able to keep up, some cells will end up cured. If these are the apical meristem of a shoot, you get a cutting free of the virus. High temperatures may stop a transposon from jumping round so if that’s what is causing the spotting or striping- an insertion sequence getting inserted or taken our for instance- then you might have non-striping at high temp and striping at low temp as mentioned. But I’d guess that would not be a permanent cure if he original DNA was permanently built into the chromosomes of the plant.
There are lots of examples of cryptic viruses, where virus-like DNA sequences are inserted into chromosomal DNA. These usually are missing something needed to be able to replicate themselves and spread from cell to cell. There may be latent viruses, like the herpes in people that only shows up under certain stress and gave me cold blisters every fall when I had to play the horn in marching band in the cold weather. I don’t know if latent viruses are important in plants or not. time to go google.
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Jeanie,
Thanks for starting this thread even though it raises more questions than answers! I think that our understanding of striping in roses is quite limited, so we only have our observations from which to make educated guesses.
As Paul mentioned, striping seems to be the effect of a base color of the petal showing through when the overlying petal color is eliminated. Base colors tend to be white, cream, or yellow, but I have seen instances where it seems that they can also be pink and orange (and perhaps other colors).
Something else about striping that I have noticed is that it appears that the upper and lower petal surfaces inherit striping independently. That is to say that you can have a rose that shows striping on the upper surface, but not on the lower surface. Also, there is a phototropic effect that can be operative to give various shadings of pigment to the stripes. And finally, there is the effect of fading (an effect seen both in the base color, as in yellow to white, and in the overlying petal color, as in orange/red to pink). All of these various effects can produce quite a number of variations in presentation of the stripes.
Last year I did have a yellow on white stripe. What it really may have been, was a darker yellow on a very light yellow, where the lighter yellow faded very quickly to white. Because the yellow also faded significantly, leaving almost no striping effect, the seedling was eliminated. I almost now wish that I had kept it (but I do know where it came from).
Regarding the brown/tan and red stripes, I have had some luck using ‘Honey Dijon’ for this, however, I would agree that ‘Hot Cocoa’ is also an excellent choice and I will also be using it this year. I did get a brown/tan on yellow stripe from a cross using (‘Stainless Steel’ X ‘Purple Tiger’) X ‘Honey Dijon’. Though both parents were vigorous, the brown/tan on yellow seedling was somewhat of a runt. Because of its unusual color, I did use it in crosses before it was eliminated. I have one seedling remaining from it being crossed onto a seedling of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ X ‘Roller Coaster’. It is a red on yellow/tan striped mini climber, with an unusual coloration. I will try to remember to get a photo when it blooms.
Regarding whether striping comes from viruses or not, I am fairly convinced that even the heritable stripes are probably of virus origin. There are certainly animal models where viruses do in fact insert themselves into host DNA and “transform” the cells. These cells then replicate with each new cell carrying a copy of the inserted viral DNA in its transformed genome. I suspect that is what is happening with roses descended from Mr. Moore’s hybrids. Transformed cells may at a future date release viral DNA/particles that can “infect” other cells (this would be a different effect than what we see when crossing a striped rose with a non-striped rose). For whoever might be interested, I wrote an article several years ago following a discovery of a striped sport branch on a ‘Lynn Anderson’ plant that was growing adjacent to a ‘Scentimental’ plant(http://sproulrosesbydesign.com/stripes.htm). What I think happened, is that a stray “CHANCE” pollen from ‘Scentimental’, where the transformed DNA released viral particles that upon pollination of the ‘Lynn Anderson’ bloom, “infected” it. I then think that what happened is that the virus did not move very far into the plant before it reinserted itself into the host ‘Lynn Anderson’ plant DNA so that it didn’t “infect” the entire plant. The branch that contained the stripe mutation did come from a distal tip of the
Ahhh… normally in html you’d put “” around the image url too… thanks Jim
Hi Jim, I am really glad I came here and started this thread, and I am afraid I might have started an obsession in everyone to start concentrating on hybridizing striped roses, although that is not a bad idea, perhaps this time next year we can post pictures and compare what we come up with. But I really appreciate everyone for your sharing your knowledge about striped roses, all of you have been so helpful. I will definitely be looking back on this in the future.
Its good to know Jim that you did get a yellow on white stripe rose, that means there’s hope, lol. But I have been looking at several yellow roses and I noticed on quite a few that the yellow fades to white on the outer tips of the petals. This is what led me to believe that it could be possible to acheive a yellow/white striped rose.
I have Honey Dijon so I most assuredly will be using it in my breeding to get that brown/tan & red striped rose.
Very nice striped roses you have posted Jadae, especially for $5.00, there is not a New Seasons any where around here but I am going to keep my eyes open for some striped roses at our local grocer store.
Again thanks all.
This work by Moore is consistent with 2 earlier reports presented in the 1969 British Rose Annual, page 152. “There appear to be only two records of transmission of colour break to a rose variety which normally has self-coloured flowers. One of these records refers to the light red flowered var. ‘Maria Enriqueta’ which produced only variegated red and pink flowers when grafted with buds from a plant which produced variegated flowers. The other record came from New Zealand in 1966 where colour breaking occurred on ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and ‘Super Star’. On infected ‘Queen Elizabeth’ bushes the flowers failed to open normally and the petals were crimped at their outer margins. The petals showed areas of white, pink, and deep rose with a distinct tinge of green on the outer petals. This condition has been sucessfully transmitted by budding.”
To me it seems the easiest way to determine if stippling or stripes in a given variety is caused by a virus is just to graft it onto a non striped or stippled plant. If it is virused the virus should transfer itself to the other parts of the plants and then the flowers of the other plant would so the stripes or spots. If its genetic the likely hood of genetic transfer is almost impossable!
While fighting insomnia I began thinking more about this post. I do not know if any of these thoughts are right or just due to lack of sleep.
On your rose pocajun. If stripping is due to the effects of UV light then it would make sense that in spring and early summer you would see more effect on them. The light from the sun would be coming from a more direct angle at you so you should get more UV light also with that. It would be the same effect that you get with the phototrophic roses that change color in the sun or get darker. At least that’s how I would imagine it would be. Those with a greenhouse do stripes differ from inside the greenhouse to outside? Because the glass from the greenhouse should block part of the UV rays. Or do stripped roses differ from low altitude to high altitude? In high altitudes you also recieve more UV light? Maybe striped roses just need a little sun block?
This thought is a great leap and probably really wrong but here it goes. My next thought was that maybe the gene for stripes and the gene for lanceolate are not linked but the very same gene. There are many cases where a gene has wide spread effect over an organism. In dogs you have developmental genes that regulate the rate at which it grows. These genes have more affect on what a breed looks like than any other gene. I guess my thought here is that maybe the gene messes up more than one thing in the plant. I guess however it would not matter either way because genes that are really close together are almost impossible to break apart anyways.
Does any of this talk of stripes and spots make anyone else think of Tulip Mania? By the way I have one of the most beautiful plants at my house. It is a Colorado Four O’Clock affected with a virus but the leaves are varigated light green and white with occasional stripes of pink. It has been growing for three years that way and does not seem to transfer the virus to anything but it own kind so I let it keep on growing.