Very nice, Jim. Does the hulthemia ancestor happen to be Persian Peach?
Thanks Don! No I haven’t had the opportunity to use ‘Persian Peach’. The Hulthemia ancestor here is ‘CHEWtiggle’, or ‘Tiggle’.
Jim Sproul
Hey Jim, I have a question. So, I did 3 persica crosses this year. I did Coral Drift x Nigel Hawthorn, Playboy x Eyes for You and Summer Wind (Buck) x Persian Flame. The first two are what I expected. Nigel Hawthorn had typical pollen for a rugosa type, which is like fine, white microscopic silt. Eyes for You had typical pollen like any other tetraploid floribunda would, which is like thick, dark gold silt. However, Persian Flame was a bit confusing. The male parts were deep red and gold but the pollen itself was like Nigel Hawthorn’s pollen. I am assuming the Persian Flame is triploid however I am wondering if it is sterile. What was the pollen that you used from the other Tigris hybrids? Summer Wind is highly fertile so I am sure it will set if Persian Flame is fertile but I am highly doubting that it will. Time will tell, obviously.
Hi Jadae,
I have been using derivatives that all go back to ‘Tigris’: ‘CHEWtiggle’, ‘Persian Sunset’, “Tigris 2”, “JAMore”, and one of my own ‘Tigris’ hybrids, “H65-2”. Of these, only “JAMore” was remontant. Now, I have had remontant Hulthemias from each of these lines. “JAMore” is one of Peter James’ earlier repeat bloomers. I suspect that ‘Eyes for You’ is a seedling of it.
‘CHEWtiggle’ has been very difficult to work with. Lots of pollen, but low fertility and I had several seedlings only exhibiting petaloids rather than true petals (very ugly seedlings). One remontant seedling, “G34”, has figured heavily into my Hulthemia breeding lines.
‘Persian Sunset’ was very pollen fertile for me, and produced a fair number (~25%) of repeat bloomers, but very few exhibited the Hulthemia blotch. A group of 5 sister seedlings coming from the [(‘Orangeade’ X ‘Abraham Darby’) X ‘Midnight Blue’] seed parent proved remontant and fertile. “I89-2” had lots of pollen, while “I89-1” set lots of hips and had a good germination rate.
“Tigris 2” is one of Mr. Moore’s seedlings that hadn’t been released. It has a very dark eye, blooms tons and seems to repeat quite a lot (though not remontant). I got one remontant seedling from it that looked good, but it promptly died after the second bloom cycle. There has been nothing else exciting coming from it yet.
“JAMore” though it sets seeds, the seeds germinate poorly, but it works very well as a seed parent. Because it passes on the blotch to a high degree, I suspect that it has 2 “doses” of the blotch gene(s). It has been a very good Hulthemia to work with.
“H65-2” has produced several remontant seedlings with good blotches. The yellow has not come through as strong as I would like, but at least it is in the mix.
Regarding Hulthemia pollen, you can almost bet that your Hulthemias with the best blotches will have the lowest fertility. Many of these have more of a brown colored dusty pollen that is harder to see, and though I haven’t done any pollen diameters, I wonder if some of these might be triploid. “M62-1” and “M40-1” have fallen into this category - when used with very fertile seed parents there are mostly aborting hips as compared to other pollen parents. The blotches on mature blooms of “M62-1” cover more than 50% of the length of the petals.
Have you found ‘Eyes for You’ to be remontant? Though I don’t grow it, I suspect that it is. If you are interested in Hulthemias, I would hit ‘Eyes for You’ hard with everything (and ‘Playboy’ is a great choice!) As you note, it probably is tetraploid, and probably has at least 2 “doses” of the blotch gene(s). Because of that, you will probably get a fair number of its seedlings showing blotches, and a few of them with blotches nearly as big as ‘Eyes for You’. I suspect that the other two will produce less rewarding seedlings.
Jim Sproul
Hi Jim,
Eyes for You is a repeater. Personally, the color is ugly, fades funkily and the plant gets mildew but the plant architecture, bloom sprays, flower form, repeat and eye spot are all excellent. The twigginess of the persica hybrids I have experienced has a lot to be desired.
I much prefer Persian Flame to the other two I have experienced. It has the wonderful Playboy foliage and even more brilliant colors than Playboy. The hip spines are a bit much though.
Nigel Hawthorn would be a dream if even remotely fertile because of the plant size. I absolutely love compact rugosas. But I doubt the dream is possible without serious work and a dump truck load of luck.
I did ten survey crosses with Persian Flame pollen last season, the only one that may have taken was onto Golden Angel which is suspect because of the apomixis issue. It gave only one seed. The seedling does look primitive, lots of prickles.
I did about twenty survey crosses onto Persian Flame, none took including the reciprocal cross with Golden Angel.
Jadae, you are right that the Hulthemias have important work yet to be done. ‘Eyes for You’ sounds like it has many of the same problems/benefits as “JAMore”. It has a good blotch, but summer fade is pretty significant. Tops on my list of improvements needed are blotch heat stability and improved plant habit. I am seeing some good results along these lines in the Hulthemia minis. Mr. Moore was right, the minis do a great job of consolidating good qualities and make excellent tools for bringing in other traits.
Here is one of my favorite minis from last year. It is quite petite with tiny foliage. I have seen no disease on it (PM, BS, DM).
The cool thing is that it is setting hips very well and then right away afterwards is developing more tight clusters of flower buds. The blotch appears to have good heat stability. It’s only fault that I can see at this point is that it is a bit lax in habit.
Jim Sproul
Jim, do you know if eye’d decedents of Persian Sunset arise from non-eye’d seedlings?
I have a seedling of Livin Easy X Persian Sunset, and it is a repeat bloomer but has no eye. In fact, it blooms so good that it’s given 6 flowers-- and I remove the buds. (Although, I’ve let one so that I can put up a photo.)
I keep hoping that it will give me roses with eyes.
Don, thanks for the heads up. I kind of suspected that. Oh well, at least Persian Flame is a beautiful rose itself.
Jim, I like your seedling. I like seeing a more natural pic too. Keep up the good work with minis. They do have a lot of good traits. I cant wait to look back in 10 years to see if a lot of the cons are being bred out that got bred into them from all the breeders aiming for mini HTs in the 80s and 90s like mildew, black spot, cold tenderness and that stark twiggy look… lol. I think a lot of progress has been made already. The eye zones are a nice touch to minis. I think that only a few classes can pull it off properly (mini, landscape shrub, floribunda and climber). Although I’d love to see an HT version but I’d also be the sucker to open up Pandora’s Box =/
‘Eyes for You’ is remontant, has good health, but, as already mentioned, fades badly & for me its major failing is that the flowers don’t open nicely, so the blotch is largely obscured; also, although the blotch is large & striking, there are too many petals. I’m waiting to see if it sets hips.
Enrique, I have only used one non-blotched Hulthemia seedling in breeding (a seedling of ‘Persian Sunset’ though “I89-2”, that I kept for its bright orange coloration), but didn’t see any blotches in it’s offspring. I suspect that if there isn’t a blotch, then you won’t see the blotch in it’s seedlings. However, sometimes the blotch is very faint. In fact, the faint blotches can completely disappear in the heat, so you might wait until cool Fall weather to decide whether or not the seedling has a blotch.
Jadae, I agree with your suggestion of classes where the blotch will be best shown off. I particularly like the idea of getting them into the floribunda/shrub and climber classes. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I have some HT type seedlings with the blotch and have noted that even when there are technically too many petals to show off the blotch well, the presence of it adds interest as the bloom opens.
Malcolm, best wishes for hips on ‘Eyes for You’! As mentioned above, I would put it’s pollen on whatever fertile seed parents that you have.
Jim Sproul