After suffering from a large percentage of faded tags last year (about 80%) I decided I had to find another way to label my crosses. So I used several different methods of labeling this year.
The one that worked for my budget and with no fade at all (and I really mean no fade at all) is to take a long and skinny file/return address label and write the information (pollen/date) on it with a garden marker. I folded them in half over the peduncle of the bloom (a few of the minis were very short so I took off the top set of leaves) so that each half’s sticky back was covered by the other. I allowed a tiny bit of room so as not to restrict the growth in any way. They don’t get tangled like the tags on strings tend to get and no snail or slug took a liking to them that I could see. Even the birds left them alone.
They have survived full sun as well as some pretty wild rainstorms. All the hips that took still have their label on them and they are extremely legible.
So if you haven’t tried file labels (or return address labels) yet, I highly recommend them.
This is how I mark my crosses when I temporarily run out of the flag produce labels. But I recommend using #2 lead pencil because eventually those garden markers do fade, and the pencil lasts for yrs. I have found labels that have broken due to UV with still very legible pencil based labeling. Here in California where the labels go on early (my early ones are April, but there are those who start in March) and might see a prolonged exposure to UV, the glue that is used on those labels does break down and they simply unhinge. This happened to a few that I temporarily labeled that way in early May, of which I am now harvesting. So far the only ones that have slipped off totally have been ones that aborted anyway. But I have had a couple become unhinged when I threw them in the container I was dumping them into-and I was only able to pick them out and match them up with their labels because they have unique and different shape and color hips from each other. Had they been some of the not so unique ones, they would have become mystery crosses. Maybe in Iowa that works, but I would not recommend it for an area where the hips grow and mature with pretty constant UV levels.
Andre- I discovered the exact same system this year. Those long file labels are cheap and surprisingly tough- they survive some very harsh weather. They fold easily over the pedicel and are easy to read while on the plant.
I used a fine Sharpie instead of a garden marker- I had actually never heard of those. So far no fading and no disintegrating. Mind you we don’t get California’s UV here.
Clair Martin (former Curator of Roses at The Huntington) said he dug up labels buried in the planting holes from roses planted just after WWII and could read them. The graphite from the #2 pencils lasted forty or so years in the soil. As long as the tags aren’t slick, I’ve never had graphite fade, rub, wear or wash off. Now slick surfaces everything will wash off, but any roughness to it and the graphite sticks perfectly.
I have tried all sorts of tags over the years with varying success with wind and rain. We have a high humidity and rainfall in the summer months so finding one that worked was tough. I settles on electrical tape and a permanent marker. White tape works the best. I simply write the pollen parent on it and the date, then collect hips into sandwich bags marked with the seed parent on the outside.
I mentioned this a while ago, there is no way of fading or rotting. An Aluminium soda can cut into 1" X 2" ,punch hole it and use garden tie wire,
write your code on with an old biro and presto.
Definitely graphite. It’s the only thing that has lasted for me. Permanent markers fade. Paint markers are a bit clunky for my taste.
This year I tried something new – dumbbell shaped jewelry tags. They were cheap and easy to use. They seemed to work pretty well for the limited crosses I did, but they didn’t have to weather for too long this spring, so I can’t give a real assessment. The only regret is that they are a little too discrete. I wish they had a slightly more obnoxious color. Also, being Tyvek, they were a little slick. I used a freshly sharpened pencil, so it wrote well enough on the labels, but I’m not sure if, had we had a lot more rain, the pencil would have lasted as well, or if the adhesive might have come loose…
I will be using them again next year, and hopefully have more crosses.
I agree with all that you are saying, but just to clarify I am referring to just the tags to identify the pollen on the hips. So I only need the identification tag to last about 3, maybe 4, months. Many of last years tags barely made it a month (even with lead). The labels I used had 3 distinct advantages over the tags: 1) the snails/slugs didn’t seem to want to eat the paper; 2) the rain or sun barely had any effect on the tag; and 3) they didn’t get tangled up when the wind blew. The garden marker had an advantage of just not fading (maybe the slugs hated the smell/taste of it too).
For more permanent tags for the seedlings I use regular plastic tabs and write on the rough side of it. For the seedling identification I use the garden marker instead of lead because if I cull the seedling I can reuse the plastic tag again (fading does, evidently, have an upside). With this method writing and tag will last a few seasons which is fine because as I can remake the tag when do a thorough inspection of the seedling which I perform every few weeks.
As Jackie stated thoguh, this is what can be used in Iowa. Despite the dry relatively dry weather we have had here, it is no where near CA dryness and sun intensity so it may not work there.
I’m just glad I can identify every single cross I did that took!
I have been making permanent labels for some of my plants and occasionally use the same method for labeling crosses. I cut the top and bottom off an alluminum soda can and then cut the remaining cylinder in two lengthwise so it will lay flat. Then I cut the labels into whatever size I want from the alluminum. A paper punch completes the process, making a hole for string. A pen, pencil, stylus, or even a nail will easily write on the thin alluminum. The label can be reused as a label for one of the seedlings from that cross, if desired.
This works well for me, but I probably make far fewer crosses than some of you.
It’s a great idea…if you drink sodas or anything else which comes in aluminum cans. We don’t consume anything canned like that and no sodas or other alcoholic or sugary beverages. Not judging anyone who does, they don’t fit the budget and I don’t like how they make me feel. The Cole aluminum labels are similar ideas for permanent labels.
Kim I dont buy any soda drinks at all, but with society today, there are always lots laying around as the litter bugs are too lazy to dispose of them properly.
Those are some innovative ideas, I’ve just been using a no-label system of different colored strings, where each pollen parent gets its own color. I imagine it would become cumbersome though if I had a very lage number of parents.
Jay,
I have been using that type of idea for years, only I use 4" strips of telephone wire. Just twist it on the stem. The piece of cable I have had 64 pairs of wires, each having different markings. A master list identifies each color to a specific pollen. In addition to a number of solid colors there are the combinations, e.g., white/green and green/white. I don’t worry about the date, as I make all my crosses on the first bloom cycle so I know I have a minimum of 90 days before there might be a frost. I typically harvest all just before Thanksgiving. I suppose that with the shortage of copper that these phone folks keep all scraps for their recycling.
Just as others have stated before, we use colored flagging in our program.
For ease, a single color represents a single pollen.
It does not matter what the female is, if yellow = OBxBR9 pollen on one female…it will remain the same for any females that are used in the breeding program.
Here is an example of the type of flagging we use (this is equivalent to the telephone wire method mentioned above):
[attachment 1889 Labels.jpg]
We loosely tie the flagging around the peduncle:
[attachment 1890 LabeledHip-Compressed2.jpg]
We don’t write the dates on the flagging…we only pollinate for a few months out of the year, so no need to track hip development that closely.
From my experience (and area of the US) Sharpie fades very quickly! Don’t use it!! I always have this battle with new graduate students…and unfortunately, they don’t believe me (in the beginning anyway!).
For labeling potted plants, we use graphite pencils that are produced for artists. The brand is Prismacolor Premier. They are called Ebony Graphite, number 14420. They are excellent! And…they erase cleanly from hard plastic pot labels with an eraser by Pentel called ‘Hi-Polymer Eraser’. Another item for artists… Those pink erasers are horrible and only smear the graphite around.
Philip, The tape is reusable, at least in my climate. I bought about 20 rolls in the early 1980s and haven’t needed one since. Yellow died, because it was the most used over that time, pink fades to white, red polka dots turn orange, but most of the colors do well. If you are doing more than a dozen different pollen types, just use two pieces, of two different colors. This gives the square of the input. So with half a dozen colors of tape you can handle 3 dozen different pollens. Hardest thing is remembering. So I carry a key to the coloring whenever I go wandering round collecting and placing pollen. One larger roll will do over 500 crosses with a 4-5 inch piece of tape. I do do that many with popular pollens in some seasons. But I collect back 2/3 or more of the tape strips within a few weeks. I ended up with 1 inch tape of some color patterns. That I split down the middle with scissor blades held as a continuous cutter, to double the numbers.
The colored phone wires approach is good if you can find them.
