Anyone have experience with Maidens Blush either direction? I will focus on crossing both directions, but was wondering if one way might deserve more attention than another.
At first I was wondering, looking at the Blush series as compared to the Maid series, if it produces once bloomers as seed parent, but can produce repeat bloom if used as pollen parent. I noticed, however, there are exceptions.
So is it a numbers game no matter which way you use it? And if it can produce repeat in first generation, is the parentage perhaps not what is listed?
Any thoughts? Experience? Advice for this one?
Thanks!
Duane
Hello Duane. What’s your understanding of Maiden’s Blush? Greetings Rolf.
No answer is also an answer. I have been breeding albaroses for over 50 years. Greetings Rolf
Rolf, could you share some of your experiences working with Alba roses? I know they offer unique challenges, but also unique qualities.
Vielen Dank!
sorry for the delay, I have been off line traveling.
I don’t know much about Maidens Blush (Great Maiden’s Blush) except what I have read on Helpmefind.com
I purchased one in a pot this season. It has bloomed. Great fragrance. It seems to be setting hips. I am waiting to see if its pollen takes on any of the crosses I’m trying.
I purchased the bush I have from a nursery in Washington State, but it was brought in from Palatine roses.
I was just wondering about anyone’s experience working with it. Or other cold hardy old roses that would be beneficial.
I will look at the link provided.
Thank you!
Duane
“Great Maiden’s Blush”
Great Maiden’s Blush is not a uniform rose variety,
but rather rose plants that were generatively propagated in earlier times.
A so-called strain. So there are many varieties.
All plants are similar, but not identical.
Great Maiden’s Blush is an irregular hexaploid form.
Interesting, so many varieties. Since the fragrance varies so much I am glad that the variety I purchased has a strong and pure old rose fragrance.
I wonder how much difference there would be in using several different varieties in breeding.
Thank you for the link, very interesting reading.
I noticed on Redoute’s print a significant difference from mine, as there are a lot of hairs on mine, which caused me to wonder about crossing seedlings from this with seedlings from my moss roses.
By the way, your Charming Moss is exceptionally beautiful. I very much enjoyed looking through your varieties.
Duane
Under the name “Maiden’s Blush” you can buy 4 different roses from us in Europe.
1.great Maiden’s Blush (hexaploid) syn. Cuisse de Nymphe.
2.Rosa alba incarnata (hexaploid) syn. Cuisse de Nymphe emue.
3.Small Maiden’s Blush (tetraploid) syn. Rosa alba carnea.
4. duchesse de Montebello (triploid) hybrid China.
I have been wanting to get Duchess de Montebello, so I need to move it to the top of my list. I have Great Maidens Blush. I will see what is available for the other two here in the U.S.
Thank you!
Duane
Hi Duane, I can also be found on Facebook, where I show many pictures. Greetings Rolf
Hallo Rolf,
I’m quite surprised by the purity of yellow you were able to achieve with Yellow Blush: Small Maiden’s Blush x Golden Giant as listed on the wiki. Have you had similar results with F1 seedlings of Small Maiden’s Blush using other yellow pollen parents?
I’m curious: what made you decide to use Small Maiden’s Blush when you started with Alba roses? Were you aware of the ploidy then, or did you decide to use it for other reasons?
Im Voraus vielen Dank!
Beste Gruesse
Mike
Hello Mike, the “Golden Giant” has a very pure yellow colour. The sibling plants “Golden Blush” and “Lemon Blush” have a different colour. I have been breeding with Alba roses for 50 years and I know their genetics. “Great Maiden’s Blush”, R.alba incarnata and the white ones like “Semiplena” are irregularly hexaploid (28+14) and can only be used as pollen plants. “Small Maiden’s Blush” is tetraploid (14+14) and can be crossed very well with modern roses. However, the first generation will flower once. We now also have many more often flowering Alba hybrids. You only have to find the real “Small Maiden’s Blush”, which is never really offered in the rose nurseries. Greeting Rolf
So, find small Maidens Blush, will do.
What does irregularly hexaploid mean for breeding exactly, with tetraploid or triploids?
Duane
I’ve worked with many species of the caninae roses for about 13 years now.
Your query means that it has 6 sets of chromosomes, but they are distributed unevenly. We abbreviate such things as a 4+2, meaning 4 sets on the female side and 2 sets on the male side.
However, caninae types, such as the albas, have a unique trait. Within the female portion is a sub-portion of 2 sets of chromosomes that do not randomly arrange alleles like most sets of chromosomes can do in breeding. So 2 sets are mutable via breeding if these types are used in breeding as the mother plant, and 2 sets are immutable in breeding. So lets say you do something like “some older alba-type” x ‘Livin Easy’, you would likely get a 4+2, and 2 sets of the 4 would still be the same as the “some older alba-type”. While this may seem good, it creates many problems, especially because it often comes with shoot elongation alleles (climbing canes) and non-repeat bloom. However, if you were to do ‘Livin Easy’ x “some older alba-type”, you would get a true assortment of 2+2, and the 2 within the 4 from the “some older alba-type” would not be passed on or recombined. It would be lost. So this 2+2 hybrid would probably be once-blooming, but you would know it carries at least 2 repeat blooming alleles without any trailing dominance, so you could use it for seed or pollen with another modern hybrid to retain the alba qualities you selected for in a modern, repeating bush rose.
Uneven meiosis is a pain, but it’s workable.
You could also do the reciprocal cross, but eventually you would have to breed out the immutable portion in the future generations by using them as male parents on modern roses.
Why bother? Caninae types are excellent own-rooters, and many of them have been proven in scientific papers to have a higher proportion of their population compared to other species to pass on downy mildew resistance. Additional sources of downy mildew resistance is always welcome in many types of modern roses. For example, this is why you will see a lot of caninae descendents in roses like Flower Carpet, Frontenac, Lavender Thrive and other wichurana derivatives. Wichurana derivatives often get downy mildew which defeats their entire purpose of acquiring their race specific black spot resistance alleles.
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Thank you for that information! I did crosses both directions with Maidens Blush. So far she is setting hips from some of the crosses, but I’ll have to think about seedlings from her if I continue that direction. Fortunately I have hips set on a couple plants from her pollen, provided they don’t drop late. Hopefully they will germinate. It will be interesting to compare the seedlings from each cross.
Duane