Anyone try crosses like these?
I’ve got several candidates for the gallica/moss parents (would be seed) and then I would use pollen from R. spinosissima andrewsii as the spin pollen. Might come up with something interesting if they take and germinate.
It may make a difference which moss you have. If you have a Centifolia moss, then they are pretty much sterile from what I hear. But the damask mosses are fertile. I have done crosses with Henri Martin as the seed parent and the seedlings had moss on them, I just didn’t keep any of them. So if you have a Centifolia Moss then go with the Gallica. But if you have a Damask Moss, then you could do either or both.
Just curious, why aren’t you considering crosses with repeat blooming plants? I understand wanting to create a hardier Gallica and or Moss, but what if you crossed them with an Explorer or other pretty hardy repeat blooming plant instead of the Spinosissima? And crossed the Spinosissima with a repeat blooming plant also, like an Austin. Some of my best seedlings are Belle de Crecy x Frontenac crosses.
Oh I definitely am. I got some Nuits de Young X Midnight Blue/Fourth of July/Cuthbert Grant seedlings sprouted for this year and can’t wait to see them bloom in 1-10 years. I am planning on crossing my red and purple moderns with the purple toned old garden varieties and then add in a few yellows and apricots to see what they would do for the color pallet. It should be interesting.
I was only asking about spins because I never heard anyone mention making such crosses and because I wasn’t counting on many blooms from my mosses, gallicas, and other once bloomers due to their age and the winter we had. I am in the middle of deciding what to put on them. I have a good amount of andrewsii pollen I collected already this year and some from a late blooming last year so I am trying to figure out where to use it.
I have a lot of the purple gallicas, damasks, and mosses with a smattering of other colors. For Damasks I have: Autumn Damask and its mossed/color sport Perpetual White Moss (Quatre Saisons Blanche Mousseuse). For Gallicas I have Belle Biblis, Cardinal Richelieu, Charles de Mills, Ellen Tofflemire, Hippolyte, Nouveau Vulcain, Orpheline de Julliet, Rook, and Tuscany Superb. For mosses, I have Capitaine Basroger, Fara Shimbo, Nuits de Young, Old Red Moss, and William Lobb. I also have Great Western which fits in with the hybrid bourbons but I just consider it one of my gallicas (because of its habit and needs) and a few other bourbons like Louise Odier, Variegata di Bologna, and Eugene de Beauharnais. I now have about 10 spins but only Suzanne and Andrewsii will bloom this year (the rest were given to me by Joe last fall when he offered some of his suckers on this forum - Thanks Joe!).
So with that large of a list I have plenty of options even though half will never be used in breeding because of fertility reasons. I just need to decide which of my many varieties would do the best on these ones.
For what it is worth, the once blooming varieties that I am finally getting blooms from this year (after waiting for about 3 years) is Charles de Mills, Tuscany Superb, Great Western, Orpheline de Julliet, Nouveau Vulcain, Perpetual White Moss (only two clusters, but I’ll take it) and autumn damask. So they will all have their fertility tested this year and next to see if I can move them into my stable.
Since you’re just trying different things to see what you get, you might as well try the pollen on both the gallicas and the mosses. But I had better luck using Belle de Crecy and Tuscany Superb than I did with Henri Martin. I think the Nuits de Young x Cuthbert Grant cross should give you hardy seedlings with interesting color. But I hope the Midnight Blue and Fourth of July crosses are hardy enough for them to flower. A couple of my Gallica crosses bloomed the second season but they all bloomed in the third season, so I don’t think it’s going to take 10 years for your seedlings to bloom.
I think crossing red and purple repeat blooming roses with the purple Gallicas is a good idea. Two years ago I crossed Tuscany Superb with Champlain and (Hot Wonder x William Baffin). They are in there second season and hopefully some will bloom this year. For what it’s worth about half of the seedlings didn’t have any dieback after -25F, something that can’t be said about any of the parents. But I plan to cross these seedlings with a couple different reds and Cuthbert Grant also.
I have a Prairie Peace OP plant that has lots of flower buds on it and I’ll probably use it on several plants, but most likely just yellows.
I went ahead and made 15 crosses with Charles de Mills last night. Since this is the first time Charles de Mills has bloomed for me I really don’t know what will take so I am just throwing everything I have at it. I used the following: Comtesse du Cayla*, R. fedtschenkoana, DLFED 3, DLFED 4, Carlin’s Rhythm*, Golden Wings*, Blue For You, Altissimo, Scentimental, Stephen’s Big Purple, Red Dream (BUCred), Kashmir, Saturnia, The 777 Rose, and This is the Day. Because I am testing it this year and next as a seed parent, I tried to put pollen on it that is as diverse as I can get - diploids through tetraploids, minis to climbers, etc. Some of the pollen used was sent last year that I didn’t get to trying out too (indicated by the *). It will be nice if they take because it would show that pollen can be kept for a longer period of time if kept chilled. I will be making a few more tonight and will include andrewsii pollen in the mix.
I like it when I see Frontenac being used. It is my favorite hardy repeater. It sets some OP hips but other than that there is little seed fertility (at least in my experience). Fortunately, I am finding the pollen to be extremely fertile!
Belle de Crecy is on my 5 year list. I have just recently started to collect the once blooming old garden roses (because, you know, they only bloom once) so I started with the purples so I should have it already but I don’t for some reason. Paul Barden’s work was what changed my mind about these varieties (a huge “thank you” goes out to Paul). I think in the next 5 years I should have a sizable OGR stable to draw from and maybe I can get some neat things out of them.
I followed a much more limited process similar to yours when I was first starting out. There were a few years where I tried as many pollens as I had on as many seed parents I could, but I didn’t have that many plants to choose from then, so the number of different crosses weren’t that great. Now I like to germinate some OP seeds of a plant first to see how many seeds per hip there are, how well the seeds germinate and see how vigorous and healthy the seedlings are. Then I’ll try just a few different pollens on it, usually ones I’ve had good luck with in the past to see how well the plant takes pollen. I don’t always do this, sometimes I put one or two different pollens on a new parent before germinating OP seeds just see if the polinations will take. If those pollenations go well I may try more pollens on it. Looking back at my records, I’ve used 15 or more different pollens on two different plants but those pollinations were over a 4 or 5 year period. The most pollens I’ve used on a seed parent in a single season is (6) and I did that twice. The most different seed parents I’ve used a pollen on in one year is (7), this was done several times.
I admire your gumption wanting to work with spins. McGredy painted roses came out of his early spin work iirc but he was a sapling when he started with it so he had the time he needed to bring it along.
To comment on Paul’s mention of sterility in centifolias, I’ve found that the centifolia mosses are not sterile so much as they mostly lack anthers and pistils on account of being so double. I’ve wasted lots of effort tearing apart blooms to find some. Sometimes you can get lucky, Ralph Moore’s Crested Jewel being a case in point.
An exception is Mosseux du Japon which is far less double and still quite well mossed. It is fertile and seems to me to behave like it is tetraploid.
Another fertile moss is Ralph’s 12-59-10 (Pinocchio x William Lobb) and it has the advantage of strong pigmentation and carries carotenoid genes so it might be a good starting point for crosses onto spins.
I suspect when the genes are analyzed we’ll see that the centifolias are largely gallica in nature and I will guess that these would be cross fertile, although my own MdJ crosses have been with moderns.
Don,
You didn’t say if you used MDJ as the seed parent or as the pollen parent. I must have read that the Centifolia mosses were female infertile, I haven’t worked with them so I don’t’ have any experience to base that on. But it also could be that most of them are female infertile and that MDJ could be the exception to the rule. With Crested Jewel, Ralph somehow was able to collect pollen from Crested Moss and use it on Little Darling.
Crested Jewel’s lack of winter hardiness is what led me to the conclusion that if I’m going to do crosses with once blooming OGRs is that I better cross them with hardy plants. I bought CJ in the spring of 2007 and by then fall of 2010 it still hadn’t bloomed. Every winter it would die back to 2” or 3” above ground and since it is once blooming and only blooms from old wood it was never going to bloom for me, so I culled it.
Speaking of Spins, one of the Prairie Peace OP plants from the embryos you sent me back in 2008 is loaded with blooms this spring. It had a few blooms last year and they’re nowhere as nice as Prairie Peace blooms are. But it’s yellow and completely hardy here so I’ll probably do some crosses with it. A Ross Rambler #1 OP plant from an embryo is loaded with blooms also. I’ll have to take pictures of them this sparing.
Paul, good news about the PP OP. As for Crested Jewel, mine has a good number of buds after its first year in the ground (zone 5b/6a, and a cold hard winter) having spent three or four years in a three gallon container. You could always overwinter yours in a lean-to which is what I do with my tender breeders. Then there’s always the Minnesota Tip.
Ralph’s success with Crestata came from pure brute force much like getting pollen from Orden.
Last season was my first with Mosseau du Japon. I got seeds from the following pollens onto MdJ:
Carefree Copper
Diablo Hawk
Either Tiffany or Scarlet Moss
Fashion
Its Showtime
Joyseed
Rosa glutinosa
Sacred Heart
Scarlet Moss
Tiffany
Zorina
I did not get seeds on MdJ from pollens of
12-59-10
153-5 (a Baby Love OP)
Aloha
Apricot Twist
Bill Reid
Bubblegum Lynnie (a Lynnie OP)
Carefree Copper
Castle Bravo
Happiness
Joycie
Joyseed
Scarlet Moss
Note that there are some pollens that both succeeded and failed here, not unusual for any cross.
In my hands MdJ pollen gave seeds on:
Orange Impressionist
Sacred Heart
Sympathie
Joycie
Rosa glutinosa
and MdJ pollen has not succeeded on:
Let Freedom Ring
Rosa glutinosa
Rosa roxburghii
Scarlet Moss
Zorina
As always, any given cross could actually be an accidental selfling or from an intrusive pollinator but it does at least seem that Mosseau du Japon is fertile and probably tetraploid.
I bet Ralph had to emasculate a ton of flowers of Crested Moss to get enough pollen to do any crosses with. How many Orden flowers did you emasculate to get pollen for me? It was a lot of work for nothing though I didn’t get any seedlings from it.
I see you have the same philosophy as Andre in that you throw lots of pollens at a rose the first time you use it to see what sticks. I count 23 different pollens that you tried. Plus you used MDJ pollen on 10 different plants. How many pollinations of each cross did you try? And how many seeds did you get from them?
I used to do the Minnesota tip with the Hybrid teas and Floribundas but it’s a lot of work and they need a lot of space to lay them down, so I quit doing it. Later I would mound dirt around all the roses in the fall and that helped with the tender roses. Even with doing that Crested still didn’t survive the winter well. Maybe it was just in a bad location. I moved all my roses three years ago to a sunnier spot and they’re all doing better. Now I have landscape mat around the roses to keep the weeds down and that makes it harder to mound dirt around them. But I think I’m going to start doing that with the Hybrid teas and Floribundas again. I have my Miniatures, very tender roses and new roses to small to plant in the ground in pots and I don’t have many of those so I can bury them in the ground in the fall. Even doing that several of them still died back to the crown.
I usually try to do several pollinations of a given cross. It is my practice to do survey crosses then narrow the focus once I know what sticks. I am beginning also to replace commercial hybrids with my own hybrids. I’ll send you a spreadsheet when I get a break, its planting time here and I’m popular this week as I have a rototiller.
While you’ve got the rototiller out, Don, I have a few beds that need tilling.
Yes, Prairie Peace OP is exciting! It is such a hardy rose. I hope you post a pic, Paul.
The thing I like about the PP OP is that it’s a nice size, it’s about 3’ tall x 3’ wide. So it’s not as big as some Spins can get.
Several years ago Julie sent me a mix of yellow spin pollen and like dummy I didn’t use it the first year. I froze it and used it on several plants the next year but nothing took. I’d be three years farther along to a repeat blooming hardy yellow if I had used that pollen back in 2011.
One of the reasons I try crosses out on potential seed parents is that I have had many varieties that just will not set an op but take every pollen I put on them (self-sterility) but I also have several varieties that will set OP hips with abandon, but not except anything I put on it. So instead of wait a year for OPs and then test, I do both at the same time with a large range of pollens and see if I can see a trend appear. I do this over a few years so if the environment is a factor from one year to another I can sort of compensate for this.
I did notice that CdM has been used as seed parent a few times. In this thread I asked last year http://www.rosehybridizers.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=50327&p=50352&hilit=old+garden+purples&sid=688f4f580a3170aa78450b1bc7b6101e#p50352 Paul Barden mentions that it will rarely set seed and is hit or miss which it will accept (I guess its good I used a wide variety). I did notice that only one bloom had any pollen parts on CdM, and it only had 3 total. Definitely not worth trying to use it as male. Lovely color though.
For my once bloomers crossed with tender, I have left them in pots that I bury in a layer of leaves. I sometime test a branch by sticking it out of the layer of leaves just to see if it is hardy enough. Last year was the first year that I had a true winter to test though (I’ve only been serious about rose breeding for about 4 years now) and it was an especially brutal one. I enjoyed the two mild winters but I would like to have a winter fall in the “normal” range sometime soon. Unless I come up with something completely fantastic, any of the tender X hardy seedlings would be used only to carry forward genes of the once-bloomer so I wouldn’t need to preserve a 6 foot high bush - just protect a few lower branches safe for flowering material.
Here’s some pictures of my Prairie Peace OP I promised. I’ve pollinated most of the blooms that have opened so far, so that is why there is so much blue tape on it and so few open blooms.
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