Hi all.
I would love to hear from any of you who wish to brag about your best miniature roses (seed and/or pollen parents).
I think it would be worthwhile to define what “most successful” means. Every rose chosen for a breeding program does one or two things well, be it the passing on of good bloom form, a specific growth habit, color, ease of propagation, etc, etc. It would be useful to know what your goals are before recommending ANY rose as a breeder.
Paul
Paul, I am actually asking a question to breeders about their favorite minis, and to brag about what they liked in their minis’ breeding performance. I am not asking about any advice on breeding goals.
ie. what are the successes that the breeders have had in reaching their own personal goals using their favorite minis…
I like using Baby Love because it doesn’t pass on as much of the rigid growth most minis have. A lot of minis have too much florist-rose background in them for my personal tastes in plant architecture.
I WISH WISH WISH I could purchase a Baby Love here in my country.
My local rose farmer/grower literally laughed at me when I told him about it. He said not to believe anyone that said any yellow rose could possess good disease resistance. At least he then took the time to search for it on HMF, to find out more about it!
Here where I live, we are in a time warp relative to you guys in North America as far as access to newer rose cultivars goes. Makes me quite jealous at times I confess.
It goes a lot of ways. I wish I had acess to a lot of roses in Japan, India, Europe and Aus/NZ, lol. I REALLY want Wildfire 2000. I seem to have an addiction for colors that melt one’s eyes to their eye sockets lol.
We just have to breed good roses ourself George… what you see as a time warp… I see as an opportunity… I grow ‘Golden Chersonese’, an ecae hybrid with two other yellow species roses in the mix (xanthina and another I can’t remember… hugonis maybe, through ‘Canary Bird’), and it is disease free here too. I am sure I can make a non-foetida yellow and am collecting ‘Golden Chersonese’ pollen to put on wichurana and have already pollinated rugosa hybrids with it this year. Paul Barden has written about his thoughts on ‘Fortune’s Double Yellow’ as a non-foetida source of yellow and I intend to use this as well as ‘Mutabilis’ (with ‘Rouletii’ if I can find it) to try for another non-foetida source of yellow in a mini. ‘Golden Chersonese’ has minute foliage that I think would combine perfectly with wichurana miniaturisation and then with other miniatures… so it’s really, as I see it, a matter of thinking outside the square and reinventing the wheel, as has been bandied about in another thread… roses, in Australia at least, absolutely need reinventing in much the same way as Alister Clark started all those years ago… I feel rose breeding in Australia has lost its way a bit since then though people like Lilia Weatherly are doing excellent things as well… As far as the minis go… we have to reinvent the wheel here too and imitate some of Mr Moore’s, and Paul Barden’s work with bracteata. These are some of the most beuatiful minis I’ve seen, and Paul’s shrub bracteata hybrids are just divine… inspiration enough for me to accept that although we can’t get them here, or any other bracteata hybrids for that matter (except ‘The Mermaid’ and ‘Many Happy Returns’), we do have all the original breeders used to get things started and others that might take us in an even better direction and we can do it ourselves here too. Pierre advocates combining as many species as we can… I like this idea too… so gignatea, bracteata, banksiae, multiflora, rubiginosa, wichurana, rugosa, etc are going to get mixed here to see what turns up. I should also mention that here in Australia, so long as a rose ‘species’ (note the lose reference to the term species…) is included on the AQIS allowable ‘species’ list we are allowed to import small, non-commercial, quantities of rose seed into the country without a permit. There are many species already on the list and also Rosa hybrida and Rosa floribunda which means that most hybrid seeds are allowed in. If there is anyone on this forum who is willing to send us surplous seeds of a particular type, then all one has to do is make sure the envelope is clearly marked that it contains rose seeds and these will be inspected and, in most cases, cleared. I sent some seeds to the Maldives and dusted them in fungicide powder for the trip and was told this was a good practice… I would be asking for the same from anywhere else. So we may not be able to get such-and-such a variety but we may be able to get the genes we need to start out own lines here by importing small quantities of seed. I’d like to try and get some clinophylla seeds here and maybe some persica hybrid seeds… this, I have found, is totally doable. I’ve posted the source of this information here before, but going to the link below will allow you to jump straight to it without having to go looking. It specifically says you don’t need an import permit so long as conditions C7100, C7179, C7180 are met. These are explained at this link. Now… I must go and finish colelcting the ‘Golden Chersonese’ pollen for freezing ready for when my multiflora and wichurana start flowering 
Do others here have any cute little mini stories to share??
In my opinion, KRISTIN ( Pirouette in your country ) is the best to use for miniature breeding. I must be used as a pollen parent only. It passes on great form glossy foliage and vigor. I do not use baby love for the same reasons Jadae does use it. It gets blackspot bad here and the canes are too soft for my liking Check out KRISTIN’S offspring on help me find.
Frank B
Yes Frank, Kristin certainly has been a very productive little ‘boy’ for you!
Hmm… after what you say Frank, I also wonder if Baby Love would get blackspot where I live too then. It is possible, the local strains are very virulent.
Yeah, Baby Love seems to be highly polarized. It is completely disease-free here, yet other places with similar blackspot pressure seem to hit it hard.
‘Baby Love’ is a great example of a rose with a single, race-specific resistance gene for black spot. When a race that has the “key” to unlock the ‘Baby Love’s’ locked resistance “door” it goes down hard. Andy Roberts reported a race that overtook it in England years ago and now it has broken down in multiple places in the US. The virulence allele in the pathogen that overtakes ‘Baby Love’ is likely just not as common out there, so many of us just didn’t have that virulence allele in our black spot populations. Since we know black spot is variable, likely transported with plants around the country, and there isn’t clear patterns of what races are where from Vance Whitaker’s graduate research, it is likely ‘Baby Love’ will continue to break down in more and more places in the country where at first ‘Baby Love’ didn’t get infected.
I’ve tried it a little as a parent, but since I had trouble keeping it alive over winter here (eventually lost it), I wasn’t able to make too many crosses with it because it took so long to rebound in the spring and start flowering again. I have one descendant I kept of it with 'Rise ‘N Shine’ that I like a lot and am trying to use as a parent. This seedling has red tinted new growth and a very vigorous, dense plant habit with single yellow blooms. Many of my favorite “miniature” shrubs and such trace back to polyanthas as well as some of Ralph Moore’s really easy to use minis as seed parents like ‘Orange Honey’, ‘Splish Splash’, 'Rise ‘N Shine’. I’m definately out of the loop on the more recent minis and their use as parents. I sure enjoy the miniaturized shrubs out there on the market that seem to have at least some minis in them (Oso Easy roses, etc)!
Title: A no-spray, worry-free rose that’s oh so lovely.
Author: Cohen, Stephanie Add.Author / Editor: Cohen, Stephanie
Published in: Fine Gardening Dec2009, Issue 130, pages 22-22 (2009)
Abstract: “The article offers information on the Oso Easy Paprika rose. The rose has a mounded shape and leaves that are glossy green in color. During summer, this rose is covered with reddish orange blooms with a bright yellow eye. Dead tops or crossing stems should be removed in the spring. Other than the need of slight reshaping to keep it inbounds, the rose is generally maintenance-free.”
Henry, I wonder what the parentage of ‘Paprika’ might be.
David, thanks for sharing your experiences with minis.
BTW Frank Benardella, your mini ‘Black Jade’ is to die for!
Thanks for the highlight Henry on ‘Paprika’. It is one we reported at ASHS last summer as being resistant to the three races of black spot we challenged all the Earth-Kind trial and potential future trial roses to. It is triploid and very healthy. It’s pollen is fertile and it does set some hips. It is generally very healthy. It can get some spot anthracnose, but it hasn’t been too much of a problem as it hasn’t built to higher levels until fall. Very few roses in my garden totally resist it. There is variable tolerance / resistance to it though. ‘Paprika’ is moderate for it. I think it would be a great parent to work with. It has been crown hardy and overwintered 2008/09 for me in my garden and regrew strongly from the soil line.
For the parentage, this is what is listed in the patent “The new cultivar originated from a cross-pollination made by the Inventor in 1991 of an unnamed proprietary Rose seedling selection, not patented, as the female, or seed, parent with the Rose cultivar Laura Ford, not patented, as the male, or pollen, parent.”
David
Oh thanks a lot again, David!