The ads for ‘Home Run’ sound fantastic. It has ‘Baby Love’ and ‘Knockout’ in its background and supposed to be very very disease resistant. I bought a plant of it already and just finished a chromosome count on it and also looked at its pollen. It’s triploid and the pollen looks like there may be some fertility, but it will probably be challenging to use as a parent because of low fertility. It’s very beautiful though with its rich red single flowers. ‘Knockout’ is triploid and a lot of crosses of tetraploids with triploids produce triploids. I have found that with crosses with Carefree Beauty and a number of triploids this past season. Actually about half were 3x. The very nice people from Belgium (Leen and Johann) have found primarily 4x progeny in this type of cross. Higher ploidy pollen tends to be more competitive in potato going down the style. Maybe they just applied more pollen than I did and had more 2x pollen fertilize the eggs and obtained primarily 4x progeny this way. It’s funny to see Elmer Fud on the tag of ‘Home Run’ to advertise the rose. Sincerely, David
I have ‘Home Run’ too David. About half of mine seems to be a lighter red (pink) sport. Thanks for the information regarding ploidy. According to Tom Carruth this cultivar doesn’t produce hips which is part of it’s appeal as a self cleaning landscape subject. I’m hoping it will produce some viable pollen.
I’d been hoping that ‘Homerun’ was tetraploid.
‘Knockout’ is a triploid, correct? How is its fertility?
Any tests on ‘Double Knockout’ as yet?
Thanks,
Chris Mauchline
Hi Chris, Yeah, Knockout is triploid. I have a little op seedling of it that I hope will be tetraploid and more fertile. It is just a few weeks old. I hope to get ‘Double Knockout’ and test it. There was one at a tradeshow in January that I asked if I could buy after the show was over, but it was already spoken for… It is a full sibling of Knockout. Hopefully it will be more fertile. The pollen of Knockout looks very sparse and a bit aborted. Kathy Zuzek said it has been very challenging to get pollen from and use as a pollen parent. I barely got any pollen from it and soon gave up. Hips form, but have limited seed numbers and germination seems kind of poor.
Sincerely,
David
I saw many bareroot plants of Home Run this weekend while shopping around nurseries. The main thing I noted was how very, very thorny it was which suprised me for a landscape shrublet. This was especially suprising because I remember Tom Carruth speaking at a convention show locally about how Weeks aims for low thorn count because it cuts production costs in grafting.
Chris, Dave
Last May I had Knock Out in the Green House and used its pollen with apparent success on a few of the other roses I had there at the time. Right now I have about 15 seedlings remaining from roses pollinated by Knock Out. Out in the garden I attempted to pollinate Knock Out with a variety of roses. Quite a few hips formed but they mostly remained small and really didn’t develope viable seed. However one hip did develop well and produced about 10-11 seeds. Three seeds germinated about a month ago, out of the three, two of the seedlings died after forming the first true leaves. One is remaining and so far is doing fine. More on this and the other KO seedlings as they develop.
John
I think they plan on producing ‘Home Run’ own-root Jadae? Mine is own-root from Chamblees.
I’ll look at the union area next time I see some.
I’m supposedly getting a ‘Home Run’ through Jung and its supposed to be own-root.
A breeder on the hybridizing section of Rosarian’s Corner has stated that Homerun is working well for him as a pollen parent.
Chris
I didn’t know ‘Knockout’ was a triploid until recently, so I used it fairly extensively as a female parent in 2004, and less in 2005.
I only keep records on the hips that produce at least one seed, and I don’t record a separate seed/hip number if there are more than 1 hip per cross. In 2004, I got 42 hips from a total of 29 different crosses (pollens). There were 446 seeds, for an average of 10.6 seeds per hip. For 2005, the numbers were: 19 hips, 10 crosses, 132 seeds, and 6.9 seeds per hip on average. Seed number per individual hip, for those crosses that only had one hip, ranged from 1 to 22, with numbers above 10 fairly common. It rarely aborted any crosses made early in the season, although I didn’t try any really difficult pollens. I never used its pollen.
I don’t have any records right now on germination, and I always end up planting late (the 2004 crosses were planted last June, and I am only now starting to plant my 2005 seeds). I do know some Knockout seeds have germinated from 2004 crosses. I even had 1 bloom as a small seedling, showing that it does allow recurrence in its offspring. The other parent was segregating for the trait. The seedling’s first flower was single and white.
I haven’t really decided how heavily to use Knockout next summer, but I do have one bit of advice: Only early season crosses produced a significant number of seeds. Crosses made in my greenhouse in early summer accounted for all of the hips with good seed numbers, while later crosses typically produced 1 or (more often) no seeds. It must be unusually sensitive to environmental conditions, seed-wise. This cultivar’s ability to produce hips that do not contain any seeds is truly remarkable. These hips are small, but otherwise normal looking.
Dr. Roger Mitchell, Ferris State University, Big Rapids, Michigan (zone 5)
I had the opportunity to use ‘Home Run’ in crosses last year and it worked without any difficulty. I ended up with about 1,100 seeds with it used as the pollen parent. These seeds seem to be germinating as well as other crosses.
Because of it’s blackspot AND powdery resistance, ‘Home Run’ is gong to be a better parent for me than ‘Knockout’. This rose looks like it will be an important link to clean roses. I can’t wait to see some of the seedlings in bloom.
Thanks David for the work that you are doing on ploidy in roses!
Jim Sproul
Thanks for the info Jim. It will be fun to use this one for pollen this season. I hope to make it up that way again. I’d love to see what you’ve got cooking. I can bring a few things that way too if interested. Robert
Hi Robert:
Yes, HR is definitely something to bring into the breeding program.
Drop me an email.
Jim Sproul
Im having a hard time thinking of possibilities for using it. It’s definately an improvement over Knock Out in the aesthetic sense, though. So far Ive come up with Cherry Meililand since it sets and germinates so well in combination to being able to produce good color and very aesthetic foliage.
Actually…this might be a good rose for mini breeders to introduce into miniature lineage. I’d definitely buy more minis if they were cleaner and not the disease magnets they often are here in the PNW (some exceptions of course).
Jadae, I would use HR with anything and everything. I did the same thing with ‘Baby Love’ three years ago and am now using BL offspring in breeding minis, HTs, F, and stripes. I think that the more we bring these clean varieties into all lines, the better.
Jim Sproul
I was thinking that, too, but cant think of many combinations I want to try with my limited space. I thought using it with Pride of England would be an excellent start due to the excellent garden qualities of each but PofE is a horrid seed parent (great pollen, though…). Maybe I should try it with Kanegem or Solitaire scratches head
Jadae, it’s a longer range strategy, but I would consider using HR with whatever excellent seed parents that you use that may have traits similar to PofE. Then, from the resulting seedlings, I would select a clean new seed parent and put PofE pollen on it.
Jim Sproul
Yeah I was thinking that, too. Good red HT seed parents are so rare. I was also thinking of Champagne Cocktail, as well, for additional color range in an excellent seed parent. I should buy Royal William. I wonder if it sets well or not…
I bought one. It is definitely own-root. That size of an own-root for 15 bucks is a steal. The foliage is quite nice so far. It isnt dull like Knock Out. I finally decided to use it with New Year since that seems to be a decent seed parent that will give me a wide variety of F2 choices if they turn out well. Living Easy was a thought but I realliy dislike how thorny it is. I’d rather use Hot Cocoa as a pollen parent to get around that as best possible. It has been a very viable pollen parent so far =)