This rose is so beautiful! It seems to have a strong color transition like ‘Double Delight’, but be a bit more vigorous. I wish it had stronger fragrance. It sets lots of large op hips. Just wondering if others have tried it as a parent yet and what others’ experience with it is. I hope to give it a try next year and cross it with some of the healthy, hardy shrub roses adapted in the North.
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I’ve not even seen White Lies, but the similar appearing Cherry Parfait proved a good parent in both directions for me. At least in my climate, it’s healthy, vigorous, fertile (again, both directions), as attractive as the photos of White Lies and, like it, also lacks the scent of Double Delight.
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‘White Lies’ was covered in mildew in the racks at Home Depot 2 years ago, so I never touched the rose. I was also not impressed by the blooms. The blooms may not be great for cool, humid springs. I noted bloom stunting and the white was not so white (off-yellow), and the red was not so red (pinkish).
Tested in high UV, high elevation, low humidity areas. Does not always translate to coastal states.
Heart n Soul is an easy seed parent breeder, and one I would recommend over White Lies.
What about experience with the ‘Never Alone’ cultivar, which is visually similar to the others mentioned? It has its origin in the Agriculture Canada program, and released after the shuffle of the original materials to other stations across Canada.
I posted about ‘Never Alone’ years ago on HMF.
Campfire, introduced on the same timeline by the same folks, is superior in every way, except stem length. It easily produces red blends much darker than itself. It’s also not prone to the gunk Never Alone is. Never Alone, like Morden Belle, is quite prone to secondary spot foliar diseases. Never Alone by far more than Morden Belle. The use of Scarlet Meidiland may be responsible for this, although it itself is not prone here.
Personally, if you can get both Campfire and Heart n Soul, they are the best bets. The latter for seed. Heart n Soul x Home Run gave me seedlings that produced colors in hybrids of them similar to White Lies/Double Delight.
Also, Never Alone is not like the former roses. It is not specifically a color changer. The margin is quite static. The intensity of the margin is dependent on bud-formation conditions, and the amount of awful chlorophyll it puts in the blooms at the time. Yes, it is a must-deadhead rose. An awful trait for multi-flowering roses.
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Reviving this thread since I just did my first pollinations on White Lies this evening. I was very impressed last year with how well this rose handles extreme heat. I have it planted where it receives full, full sun and it still put out flowers in the dead middle of July. Admittedly they were tiny compared to the spring blooms, but even still, heat tolerance is a top priority for me. And it sets hips very readily.
Combine all that with just how pretty and novel the flowers are and I’m excited to play around with it despite it being particularly thorny and prone to blackspot. Through my own novice stupidity I failed to germinate any of my OP seeds from last year.
I’m bummed there’s no info on the parents, as I’m still trying to figure out if the color changing attribute is heritable or not and that would have been helpful. Looking at the most comparable rose out there, Double Delight, there is at least one progeny which has photropic characteristics, but the actual scientific implications of that term escape my understanding, and it also seems to be used rather liberally to describe color change.
I figure it’ll be easier for me to just see for myself either way. I hit it with some Scentimental pollen thinking it might be fun to create a striped, color-changing flower.
Amrit studied color transition in Brite Eyes and progeny.
https://roses.tamu.edu/past-graduate-students/haramrit-gill/
She learned some fascinating things. There is a unique variation of an anthocyanin that is triggered by UV light that leads to the color intensification. It would be interesting to see if the same trend for the trigger and anthocyanin works across all the roses that have a similar color transition (White Lies, Mutabilis, etc.).
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We’ll have to compare notes a year from now. I’m also using it this year for the first time. I suspect we’ll find out first-hand what Mssrs. Garhart and Rippetoe have already observed…mildew. 
Indeed we will! But I suspect as much, too. I’m playing around with it as my seed parent for all those pretty-but-unhealthy roses at the garden store that I can’t help but snag pollen from. A tertiary project just for fun where I pursue interesting flowers without worrying about health and genetics and stuff.
Campfire is a neat little rose. I thought I had lost mine in last summer’s heat and drought despite having her in filtered light, but thankfully she is returning from the roots.
How does White Lies handle drought? I saw A&M posting something about how they were impressed with her.
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