Currently, I have about 200 roses in my garden. At my father-in-laws greenhouse, we have a few thousand. He’s been telling me I should pay lots of attention to whether I see a sport happening. I know it happens, but I’m not entirely sure it’s common enough to spend a significant amount of time doing this.
My primary goal is hybridization, so I will spend most of my time caring for and observing my seedlings and such along with planning for the next round of breeding.
I know that sports are random, but some cultivars it is more common. Essentially, my question is what are the odds of actually finding a sport? Is it worth putting significant effort into looking for sports?
So, finding sports on the Koster Clan of Polyanthas is a little like shooting fish in a barrel. And I’ve read that even more can be found/induced by regenerating plants from root cuttings.
Once you are familiar with what to expect from your roses, spotting a sport actually requires little time and not a lot more attention than you probably already pay them. ANYTHING which appears out of the ordinary can be a sport. Sometimes it’s as insignificant as a lighter colored wedge on a darker petal. Others, it may be a significant reduction (or increase) in prickles, can length, number of petals and a whole lot more possibilities. I never really spent inordinate amounts of time searching for mutations, other than when I shopped large wholesale nurseries which grew hundreds to thousands of the same varieties . Your chances of catching a sport increase quite nicely when you have several thousand canned plants of the same rose to sift through. I think you may be surprised how often you can find them under those conditions. In just a few years, I found nearly a dozen, mostly in HTs and floribundas.