Saw ‘Top Gun’ & ‘Sunset Happy Trails’ at a nursery today. Either worth using? Any idea of their ploidy?
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Assuming the Top Gun you saw is the (most likely) ‘Wekmoridahor’ cultivar and not one of the two earlier roses with the same name (funny how that works), it was supposedly tested extensively for Rose Rosette Disease resistance and the testers were unable to infect it. However, later in the the year of its introduction, people growing it in their gardens were finding it to become naturally infected anyway. Other than that, pretty much everything else you need to know is on HelpMeFind–it has been estimated by Texas A&M University to be a tetraploid, and its color is only really red during especially cool weather. That it has Memorial Day as a parent is curious, and I can’t help but wonder if the breeder hoped to raise a more disease resistant hybrid tea from the cross. I don’t know what your breeding goals are, but given the genetic prepotency of that semi-double, reddish pink, almost Borg-like shrub rose background, you would probably want to think carefully before using it and even more carefully before introducing yet another semi-double hot pink shrub rose to the world, no matter how cute you think it is.
SHT almost completely lacks photos and ratings on HMF, but based on the parentage, it is probably triploid or tetraploid. Being bred for resistance to downy mildew, blackspot, and rust is not a bad start if all of that holds up in the real world.
Stefan
Ironically, reportedly it was Top Gun, infected with RRD that Week’s brought in to the production fields in Wasco for “research” and propagated along side rows of commercial stock, leading to the possible infection of the US crop of commercial roses a few years back. They destroyed many plants. That year, there were new releases which weren’t available budded but were available own root because the budded stock had to be destroyed due to potential RRD infection. I knew MANY nurseries who cancelled their Week’s orders for fear of receiving potentially infected stock from that stupid “mistake”.
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Well, I decided to pop into the Buckerfields garden centre yesterday to check the two plants and see if they’d set any hips, but they were both gone. 50% off, so I’m not surprised.
The Top Gun was indeed the (Memorial Day x Home Run), which has both Knockout & Baby Love in its pedigree, and I thought perhaps working both those lines of disease-resistance in would be advantageous.
And the other wee shrublet also had an interesting pedigree of diverse and resistant cvs., perhaps not itself my ideal of perfection, but something akin to which I could add.
Honestly? I’ve built up enough of a collection of parent-plants. I need to settle down and get cracking. The newest dilemma is “do I want to work separate diploid and tetraploid lines for now?”, so I guess that’s what I’ll ponder this winter-dormant season.