Is repeat or single bloom a dominant trait?

I was recently advised to add some true old garden roses to my breeding program because of their natural disease resistance. They also have the high petal count and strong fragrance that are musts for me.
I notice most of them are single blooming. Portlands and Bourbons seem to be generally repeat blooming.
Is blooming frequency a dominant trait? If yes, I will buy more repeat than single bloomers.

My online research seems to indicate that single/repeat bloom is a recessive trait. If this is true, then my offspring from 2015 single blooming OGR crosses will need to be crossed with other repeat blooming roses, correct?

I appreciate all replies and your own experience with OGRs, as I am making my shopping list this week.

Happy New Year to you all!

Cathy
Central NJ, zone 7a

Happy New Year to you Kathy,

The once blooming trait is dominant over repeat bloom. So if you have a tetraploid plant with three repeat bloom alleles and one once blooming allele, the plant will be once blooming.

If you cross a repeat blooming modern with a once blooming Gallica, Moss or Damask, the offspring will have two once blooming alleles and two repeat blooming alleles. If you cross one of these offspring to another repeat blooming plant then only 1/6 of those offspring will have four repeat bloom alleles with repeat bloom. 2/3s of them will have three repeat bloom alleles and 1/6 will have two repeat bloom alleles and be once blooming like the first generation offspring. You won’t know if the second generation once blooming seedlings will have two or three repeat blooming alleles until you do some crosses with them, but the odds are in favor of them having three repeat blooming alleles. It’ll take another round of crossing with another repeat blooming plant to get repeat blooming offspring from these once blooming seedlings.

My limited experience with the few once blooming OGRs I’ve grown is yes they generally have better disease resistance then the moderns have. And the once blooming OGRs I have or had, a few Gallicas, Mosses, Damasks and Albas have had better DR than the repeat blooming OGRs like the Bourbons, Portland’s and Hybrid Perpetuals, which are no better than the moderns.

The Alba “Maidens Blush” has been very clean here with the Damask “Gloire de Guilan” close behind. MB is a larger plant and in really cold winters like last year, it dies back to the snowline and it doesn’t bloom the next summer. GdG is a smaller plant and though it died back to the snow line also, it bloomed well this past summer. I haven’t used either one in any crosses.

I have used two Gallicas; Belle de Crecy and Tuscany Superb along with one Damask Moss; Henri Martin in crosses. The few seedlings I got from HM didn’t do well and were culled. But the seedlings from the Gallicas have been done quite well and are some of my favorite seedlings, though I crossed them with Explorers which have no scent so the offspring have little scent also. I have made some crosses with these first generation plants but the seedlings are only one year old so I don’t know much about them yet.

Thank you for confirming what I suspected, pgeurts. Reading your information, honestly, I am looking for faster results than 5-generation crosses. So I will buy 1-2 single bloom OGR roses that have most of the other traits I want, and focus my buying on repeat blooming OGR roses with good to great disease resistance and the high petal count, great fragrance traits that are must haves for me.

I appreciate your sharing your experience with me,

Cathy
Central NJ, zone 7a

Cathy using OGR can be beneficial some times there are drawbacks as the above replies in regard to Once blooming. I used one of Kordes climbers and did this cross and did this cross (Sympathie X Queen Of Bourbons) and got Prinnie, a very tough shrub rose with a repeat but lacking any powerful perfume. A did a similar cross but using Champion of the World as the pollinator, the seedling is a climber, with doubled blooms and perfumed. This seedling is very fertile.

I used Gallica’s a lot years ago but I found the offspring developed so much PM I stopped using them. One thing that you must keep in mind is , Years ago breeding records were not used and a lot of crosses were OP, so those which are listed as Bourbon, Gallica or Other OGR may have repeat china bloodlines without you really knowing it. Crossing these with modern repeat roses can some times can create an offchance repeating seedling.

I’d add one caveat: damask rebloom and chinensis rebloom are generally deemed incompatible, so putting (for example) Duchess of Portland pollen on a modern may get you healthy and fragrant seedlings, but you shouldn’t expect them to rebloom. A bourbon, later HP, or later reblooming moss woud have chinensis remontancy, so could give you fragrant, reblooming offspring, but which might not be so healthy, since those classes mostly aren’t. Outcrossing and restoring chinensis rebloom is theoretically only a two generation job, given reasonable numbers of seedlings, but if you’d rather not do that, you might want to look for roses like Hugh Dickson, which have chinensis rebloom, very good health, an older sort of fragrance, and proven fertility. I wish I could name some other healthy, non-sterile HPs for you, but nothing’s coming to mind. Maybe others can think of some.

I have to add that heredity is pretty random, despite Mendel’s equations. We use formulas to chart the odds of genetic behaviors but one may well have two recessive genes exhibit themselves in a first generation. If I had space, I’d follow five successive generations vs. five successive seasons of F1 hybrids from the original parent plants. Since the dominant and recessive genes are already in place, it should only be the number of seedlings, rather than the number of generations from the parent plants, that affects the results. Personally, I find it more satisfying to work with plants I feel passionate about than to operate in the abstract.

Cathy,
I’m sorry for spelling your name with a “K” last post. It was early and the caffeine hadn’t kicked in yet.

It shouldn’t take 5 generations to get repeat blooming offspring from a once blooming plant. It’ll depend on which plant you start with, at best it’ll take 1 generation or it could take up to three. Scharlachglut is a cross of (Poinsettia x Alika), Poinsettia is a HT and Alika is a Hybrid Gallica. I have a (My Hero x Scharlachglut) plant, it would be the second generation from Alika. It doesn’t repeat but I consider it a better plant than Scharlachglut. I raised OP seeds (third generation) from it and a high number of them do repeat.

There are a few repeat blooming OGRs that you might try. One I’ve been using is Stanwell Perpetual. It repeats well and has a lot of OGR characteristics. It has pretty good disease resistance but has to be crossed with things that also have good resistance. All of my earlier crosses with it were with plants that didn’t have the best resistance and I didn’t keep any of the seedlings. I used it again this past year on two different plants with better resistance and I’m hoping my results are better this time around.

I’m kinda dumb about this, but hasn’t Austin done a lot of work already combining HT’s and OGR’s? Maybe you could start by crossing some Austin roses with your Hybrid Tea’s. Definitely could be a source of high petal count and fragrance and repeat bloom. Disease resistance, maybe not?

I’ve grown 8 or 9 Austins over the years. About half did not have good enough disease resistance and were culled. Several of the rest were so double as to make them sterile and I couldn’t do any crosses with them. The few I was able to try some crosses with either didn’t produce many seeds or had plenty of seeds that didn’t germinate. Quite frankly they haven’t done that well here and I don’t get much flower production out of them anyway. Even though my own seedlings are once blooming and may not be as nice as the Austins, they are performing much better and are more fertile.

Paul , One of my methods is not to cross very doubled blooms with very doubled blooms, I found this is also applies to very doubled Diploid X Tetraploid crosses and you get Hybrid vigour and some petal count increase. When using Austin roses you must be aware that there is a high chance of proliferation occurring.

I’m very much a newbie, but I’ve been reading a lot. I think there are several bases for rebloom, beyond just Chinensis and ‘Autumn Damask’, and as has been posted, not all are compatible. In addition, some species seem more easily nudged into reblooming than others, indicating something more complicated than simple Mendelian genetics. I think there’s a dose-dependent factor as well. ‘Autumn Damask’ rebloom seems to be capable of “working” in F1 offspring with other European OGRs – sometimes. If the reported ancestries are correct, it worked on ‘Duchess of Portland’, ‘Rose du Roi’ and ‘Stanwell Perpetual’ despite being passed on from only one parent. Then consider ‘Autumn Damask’ itself – two ancestors (‘R. moschata’ and ‘R. fedtschenkoana’) have long bloom seasons. Somehow, the stars aligned and allowed for extended bloom in this Damask, but not as much in the others (though perhaps ‘Isphahan’ is just another expression of it).

Some other F1 hybrids of ‘R. moschata’ rebloom, despite expectations based on the other parent. I have ‘Reverend Seidel’, and while mine is still young and doesn’t bloom a lot, it does have flowers over an extended period, despite its other parent being assumed to be a once-blooming Synstylae Rambler (‘The Garland’). ‘Dupontii’ is reported to have some scattered Autumn blooms. ‘Yvonne Rabier’ is an F1 from ‘R. wichuraiana’. John Starnes got repeat bloom on an F1 from ‘R. brunonii’ with his ‘Lemon Zen’ seedling. My ‘Baltimore Belle’ has what could be called either “extended bloom” or “scattered repeat”. Perhaps this indicates that Synstylae roses are more easily coaxed into reblooming than some other species. Maybe this is an independent Synstylae “prediliction” for forming dwarf repeating plants, either as seedlings or sports.

Then there’s ‘R. rugosa’ rebloom, which also seems to “work” sometimes in F1 seedlings from once-blooming roses. ‘Basye’s Purple Rose’ is the first that comes to mind there. Does this mean that ‘R. rugosa’ rebloom is dominant? Maybe, sometimes. Maybe some rose species need more things “knocked down” genetically to induce rebloom than do others, and maybe the various “forms of rebloom” target different mechanisms. Perhaps it’s better to think of it as genetics for “preventing bloom period shut-down” rather than “causing rebloom.”

Then there’s another wild card – epigenetics. It could very well be that “surprise” reblooming offspring have, for whatever reason, the “stop blooming signals” shut down or diminished because of expression – rather than genetic – variation. I think of this as a possibility for ‘New Dawn’ sporting from ‘Dr. W. Van Fleet’. Both are triploid, and based on parentage, likely have three copies of “Chinensis Rebloom” and one copy of “Wichuraiana easily-nudged-into-rebloom”. In the sport, perhaps an epigenetic mechanism favored activity of the two chromosomes with “Chinensis Rebloom” and silenced the third member of the triad which lacked the “reblooming gene(s)”, and these epigenetic changes were maintained in gamete formation.

This is all just conjecture from an amateur. I became fascinated with rose ancestry and genetics since it’s so “fuzzy” for someone coming more familiar with animal genetics. My first season’s attempts at hybridizing have netted a total of three seeds, all from two ‘R. moschata’ hips – one with ‘Nigrette’ as the daddy, the other with ‘Chateau de Clos Vougeot’ providing paternity. If they grow, will my “red Noisettes” rebloom? I hope so.

:slight_smile:

~Christopher

I became fascinated with rose ancestry and genetics

Believe less of what you read and more of what you see. A corollary is don’t over-analyze: most crosses will give you some of each parent, others will give more of one than the other. There are few lurking surprises.

Remontancy is a matter of degree rather than kind.

My first season’s attempts at hybridizing have netted a total of three seeds

From how many crosses of what parents?

"Remontancy is a matter of degree rather than kind. "

This would indicate that it doesn’t follow simple Mendelian genetics, which is more about discrete “either-or” traits.

“From how many crosses of what parents?”

Not many since my roses are still new – this was only their second year since coming as bands, so I’m still watching them grow. My main interest was in making more (or recreating new) OGRs. Some failed first attempts:

‘Clotilde Soupert’ X ‘Lady Hillingdon’
‘Souvenir de Victor Landeau’ X ‘Lady Hillingdon’
‘Quatre Saisons Blanc Mousseaux’ X ‘DLFED 3’
‘Rose du Roi – original’ X ‘Indigo’

:slight_smile:

~Christopher

This would indicate that it doesn’t follow simple Mendelian genetics, which is more about discrete “either-or” traits.

Quite the contrary. Since roses are polyploid the effects of Mendelian traits are quantitative - dose related. Don’t let the recent discussions here on epigenetics lull you into thinking roses are somehow special with respect to the rules. The primary literature is filling up with known Mendelian traits for roses and a lot more that are generically true for dicots.

My main interest was in making more (or recreating new) OGRs.

Well, there’s certainly room for revisiting old haunts. Hybrid OGR’s did have a short run if you accept a period of from 1814 to 1867. You may want to consider, though, that two hundred years is a lot of time for diseases to play catch-up. Moreover, keep in mind that a lot of OGR’s are the result of the great remontancy and pigment chases so even their breeders considered them intermediate steps to glory.

[quote=“Don”]

My main interest was in making more (or recreating new) OGRs.

Well, there’s certainly room for revisiting old haunts. Hybrid OGR’s did have a short run if you accept a period of from 1814 to 1867. You may want to consider, though, that two hundred years is a lot of time for diseases to play catch-up. Moreover, keep in mind that a lot of OGR’s are the result of the great remontancy and pigment chases so even their breeders considered them intermediate steps to glory.[/quote]


I’m not interested in anything commercial. For me, it’s more about satisfying curiosity, and making more of what I already like. One of those avenues was trying to see if I could re-make an Autumn Damask, subbing a Damask Perpetual for the Gallica in the original ancestry. Another was a red Noisette, or a Polyantha look-alike that’s really a mini-Noisette. A third was trying for more Bourbon-Teas, since I like the ones which already exist. Anything “garden-worthy” I get will likely be of interest only to those who already prefer OGRs, since essentially that’s what they’d be.

:slight_smile:

~Christopher

I understand your sentiments, Christopher. My “goal” was to see if I could generate something resembling the older European Garden Roses, only containing different genes such as those contained (though it DOES have some of the European OGR genes) in Basye’s Legacy. I wonder if those types of results could be obtained only better suited to the Western climates where aridity and intensity of sun and heat are the norm? I love the Centifolia, Damask, Bourbon, etc. look, but the plants simply are not suited to these conditions. While some will grow for a while, they seldom flower and almost universally suffer extreme, chronic fungal issues.

First, I want to see which roses I like and planted do well here. Then, I’d like to try making more like them, and see how they do here. My conditions being so unlike yours, our “successes” will be very different. As Jeri often says, “location, location, location.”

:slight_smile:

~Christopher

Absolutely! And, that is precisely what I have done…grown everything of interest to determine what would cooperate, then select those I enjoyed the most to play with.

Something we often forget when looking back at these wonderful roses of yesteryear is that they flourished, or at least survived well, in a different environment–different climate, different pollution levels, and maybe different fungal ecosystems.

In those days the air in most populated areas was heavily contaminated by coal smoke and other fumes–acidic vapors and various sulfurous compounds which acted as fungicides. We may think of our air as relatively polluted, but pollution was much worse back in the not-so-good-old-days.

Without those contaminants in the air and on the leaves, many of these roses nowadays “suffer extreme, chronic fungal issues,” as Kim puts it so well.

Sometimes people plant these roses because of their reputation as stalwart growers that are nearly disease free. Under modern, very different conditions the outcome is great disappointment, a disappointment magnified all the more because expectations were so high.

If you add evolution of fungi to the less contaminated conditions that are more favorable to these fungi, growing these greats of yesteryear becomes much less easy and much less fullfilling than we’d hope.

Peter

Absolutely, Peter. What few know today, too, is by the “end of their run”, many of the “stalwarts” were already being demonized for their “loss of vigor”. Even then, the thought that they weren’t as healthy as the higher sulfur levels of the polluted air allowed them to be, hadn’t been considered. Add that the climates in which they were originally introduced are often far different from those in which we attempt to grow them and you have scenes set for failure.