I always enjoy reading of new potential parents when posted, so thought it might be interesting to just ask folks about roses they’ve seen or found through research that seem to be the most intriguing under-used prospective parents, and what about these cultivars or species catches their interest (in terms of pedigree, or proven progeny.)
I know this is just trolling for information that would be found in hundreds of independent threads, but thought it would be fun to just consolidate some of folks’ ideas.
From a species POV, R. sweginozowii has caught my interest. It’s meant to be a hexaploid so should make 3n gametes and when crossed with a diploid species or variety, which should make haploid (n) gametes, it should make tetraploid seedlings that might marry directly with modern tetraploids. Nutkana and moyesii are in the same boat. I have a hip forming on my sweginzowii right now that is most bizarre! It is Sweginzowii x gigantea! I think there will still be considerable genetic misalignments but the ‘what ifs’ seem amazing! What got me thinking about this is an intriguing new variety I have called ‘Heart of Gold’ which is meant to be wichurana (or setigera… depending on the source you read) x moyesii which should make it a tetraploid. It’s pollen worked on ‘Graham Thomas’ this season (but failed on ‘Eyes for You’) so it will be interesting to see what happens. I got curious and did a similar cross using ‘Jersey Beauty’ (JB x Moyesii) instead of wichurana and now have hips forming from that cross too There’s also a single hip ripening that is ‘Fire & Ice’ (aka ‘Cherry Parfait’) x virginiana too… which will be cool if I can get them to maturity.
Speaking of R. virginiana, I’m intrigued by it. There are only 8-10 F1 crosses of it on HMF, half of which are Warren’s.
Last year was my virginianas first year, and I was impressed by the glossiness of their foliage. However, it was a new spot for roses so there are not any established pathogens in the area. Also, I have no idea of winter hardiness. (-17 F, -27 C right now.) I suspect they’ll die back but regrow vigorously.
Warren’s crosses are lovely, but we are literally and figuratively on opposite sides of the rose breeding world. I may need to cross R. virginiana with hardier varieties to ever see a bloom.
It’s interesting that there is a virginiana x rugosa on HMF, but with no breeder or picture listed. I’m excited to have quite a few seeds stratifying with R. virginiana as pollen parent, but they’re all tender seed parents.
I’m curious about people’s experiences and knowledge about R. virginiana.
I think virginiana (as well as other North American tetraploids like carolina, arkansana, californica) has lots of potential!
One of my favorite seedlings from it so far is from virginiana pollen on an F1 of ‘Fragrant Cloud’ X Rosa carolina. Here’s an old post about it and a more recent one. This season I collected a boatload of open-pollinated seeds from this seedling and hope that I’ll end up with enough of a population to find reblooming version.
I’ve also crossed pollen from that same virginiana onto davidii and got a thriving suckering hybrid. It bloomed well this past season but I could only find a single seed from open-pollination. Maybe this hybrid would be better tried as a pollen parent?
I’ve got a few intercrosses between various collected North American tetraploids (virginiana, carolina and arkansana) but these have been really slow to mature. Hopefully I’ll see some first blooms this coming summer.
I love the limited number of R. virginiana hybrids I have. Some I have are from a plant collected by Elton Strack, my rose breeding mentor. Others are out of seedlings bred by Kathy Zuzek. My memory may be failing, but I think Dr. Roger Mitchell for a time was writing summaries of his experiences using different species roses in his breeding (he is in Michigan). One of the articles I think was on his work with R. virginiana and I think he was very excited about what he was getting. Kathy has expressed that in her crosses it seems R. virginiana lets warmer colors come through more readily in hybrids with warm colored modern roses than other pink species roses. The apricot climbing rose I shared with you that traces back to Elton’s clone seems to be consistent with good color transmission as well as the hybrids Joyce F. out of Canada has with the species. Elton’s R. virginiana clone has been very very cane hardy in zone 3 when I lived in Rhinelander, WI. Hopefully the R. virginiana plants you have are super hardy too. The downside of Elton’s clone is that it is a super aggressive suckerer and shoots pop up far and wide.
My R. virginiana and R. carolina were ordered from Lawyer Nursery last spring. You never know where things could get mixed up along the way, but the two look quite similar, I have to say. One R. carolina in particular seemed like a R. virginiana phenotype. We’ll see if many differences manifest as they mature. R. virginiana has that really cool glossy foliage that I see in Tom’s hybrids. Fun to cross that with modern roses that may have gotten their shine from China.
I just looked up what I’ve got in the cooler that was pollinated by R. virginiana:
First Impression - 136 seeds
High Voltage - 40
Sparkle n Shine - 20
Hannah Gordon - 1
So we’ll get to see how it crosses with a yellow! Exciting, but I have to reconcile myself to waiting a few years for those blooms, if they are ever able to bloom in my dieback climate.
I’ve also got way too many OP R. virginiana seeds in the cooler. Maybe 600+. If they germinate well I have to decide whether it’s worth it to line them all out for observation and selection. There was a small degree of variation between my 5 virginiana plants.
All of the collected virginiana clones I’ve grown have had glossy foliage (at the very least moderately glossy).
The one collected clone (from Berkeley Springs, West Virginia) that I call “carolina” has a much different matte/dull finish to the foliage and isn’t as strongly suckering either. But the characteristic that makes me most think that it is carolina rather than virginiana is the reliable repeat performance when it blooms at the tips of the new canes in late summer. I used to have an old dichotomous key that used that trait [“flowering at the tips of the turions”] as a distinguishing trait between carolina and virginiana.
It just occurred to me that my hybrid of multiflora X rugosa repeats in the same exact way (tips of the new canes) just on a much taller scale.
Now that I think of it, wouldn’t that be a fun one to try… pollen from the tetraploid carolina on the relatively sterile diploid hybrid (multiflora X rugosa), hoping for an unreduced ovule.
Tom, I really like the idea of davidii and virginiana genes together in a repeater. I always enjoy your species crosses.
Dumb question though… If one wants to create a recurrent hybrid, would there be advantages to doing (species1 x modern rose) x (species2 x modern rose)? It seems a quicker way to a repeat bloomer. Or are there greater benefits to not diluting the species genes too quickly?
(I’m assuming that (species1 x species2) x (modern hybrid) would likely still be at least one cross away from a repeater, no?)
Tom, I really like the idea of davidii and virginiana genes together in a repeater. I always enjoy your species crosses.
Dumb question though… If one wants to create a recurrent hybrid, would there be advantages to doing (species1 x modern rose) x (species2 x modern rose)? It seems a quicker way to a repeat bloomer. Or are there greater benefits to not diluting the species genes too quickly?
(I’m assuming that (species1 x species2) x (modern hybrid) would likely still be at least one cross away from a repeater, no?)[/quote]
My personal perspective is to isolate the traits you desire first, since there are a lot of unwanted traits, too. However, that is just my preference. I dont think there is a right or wrong way.
I would definitely choose that route - (species1 x modern rose) x (species2 x modern rose) - as a logical way to quickly get a variety of species genes into a line of rebloomers. In that case, I’d definitely want to accumulate at least a small handful of the second generation hybrids that could be intercrossed, to try not to lose too many of the species genes along the way.
If you look at the crosses I’ve done, it’s probably not always clear what exactly I’m shooting for. In all honesty, a lot of times, I’ve done crosses just because the opportunity presented itself and I wondered what if… davidii X virginiana was one of those. Rosa davidii was in bloom and so was Rosa virginiana and they were both supposed to be tetraploids, so I thought why not give them a try. I realized that it would be highly unlikely to get any rebloomers from the cross and that it would most likely take several generations of subsequent modern crosses to get to that, but it still sounded like a fun path to explore at the time.
And actually, I have a question/theory in mind for this non-repeating F1 species cross… suppose it has fertile pollen (which is still another question since it only set a single open-pollinated hip with only one seed in it)… but if I grew enough seedlings from modern seed parent and this one’s pollen [just the reverse of the cross you mentioned last] could I possibly see some cases where crossing over or just generally disturbed meoisis leaves out the once-blooming genes from the paternal gametes? In this case, the repeating offspring would still be for the most part half species. I think this approach would be better at the diploid level, but even so I plan on at least giving it a try with this tetraploid hybrid.
And back to the idea of (species1 x modern rose) x (species2 x modern rose)… I’ve mentioned it before, but still hold the opinion that two specific suggestions that I think hold great potential for that strategy are: wichuraiana hybrid with spinosissima hybrid, and rugosa hybrid with spinosissima hybrid.
Was just browsing through another current thread and saw Rob Byrnes mention of MORsoul in one of his seedlings. Being especially interested in Rosa soulieana, I checked out MORsoul on HelpMefind and see that it’s a probable example of what I was just talking about - a rare case where a repeater has appeared in a population of species cross seedlings that should all be once-bloomers. I’m hoping that the hybridity of the davidii X virginiana will up my chances of just such a lucky disturbance occurring in its pollen.
MORsoul is effectively a miniature polyantha, where the climbing genetics have been removed from the synstylae type. Lullaby is similar, but its simply a dwarf polyantha.
MORsoul has proven to be a good container plant here, but it spots like pretty much anything from Anytime. However, that doesnt seem to bother it much. I am curious if the glossy mini-type foliage an be breed out in favor of the soulieana type foliage, like Lullaby has. Lullaby is pretty much mechanically sterile both ways. One huge advantage R. soulieana seems to have, other that really cool foliage, over the other synstylae types is petal substance. Lullaby, for example, has fairly weather-proof blooms. Chevy Chase, another hybrid of R. soul., is pretty densely red for a F1 synstylae hybrid. The only major drawback to R. soulieana is that its somewhat less hardy than other synstylae types =[
Rosa virginiana seems to be able to repeat in some F1’s, but I havent heard of R. davidii doing that, but, then again, there have been accounts of Rosa persiana types everblooming, lol. So who knows.
light bulb I should cross my Danae x Leonie Lamesch onto MORsoul to see if anything cool happens.
Even though fedtschenkoana supposedly repeats, I was really surprised to see buds on two of three Cal Poly x fedtschenkoana seedlings from seed Kim sent me. If his source pollen was from a pure fedtschenkoana then this seems like a really cool species to use.
Looking at the pictures on HMF it does look like R. soulieana has cool leaves. In the description it lists hardiness to zone 4b. Would you agree with that based on your experience?
Rob, I dont know about zone 4, although that tends to be a “default” status for species types. Ive written catalogs before, so Im always weary of what zones are listed. It is incredibly difficult to be as accurate as possible. Sometimes I think ppl make stuff up to fill in the gaps, lol.
What I do know is that multiflora/wichurana/seg/(maybe arvensis?) are the preferred types of the synstylae family for northern climate breeders.
Speaking of which, I want to try crossing Rosa brunoni to something diploid and dwarfing next year. It looks fun to use, but I need another species addition like I need a hole in the head.
Rosa sinowilsonii would be fun to play with, too, but I know its among the less hardy from this family.
There’s also a single hip ripening that is ‘Fire & Ice’ (aka ‘Cherry Parfait’) x virginiana too… which will be cool if I can get them to maturity.