Jim, you have now given me a real gem which I will always remember. Thank you.
“I don’t worry about all that, I just try it.”
The best advice!!! Thanks for sharing that one with us, Jim.
“Repeat flowering is said to be a recessively inherited trait. So, 2 copies of this repeat gene have to be present in the seedling progeny for repeat flowering to be expressed.”
If we expect, that repeat flowering is inherited by a recessiv allel (gene), repeat flowering does not necessarily require the pressence of 2 recessive allels.
Important is the absence of the dominant allel of the respective gene. Isn
Hi Werner,
Great point. I have worked with ‘Robin Hood’ too and have found delayed experession of repeat bloom and such. I suspect there is a second gene or even more that modify the expression of repeat bloom in some of the roses. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with your seedlings once they mature. I suspect that there are more than just one gene for delaying repeat bloom expression or suppressing it, especially with some descendants out of The Fairy and other R. wichurana descendants and some more R. multiflora descendants like Robin Hood.
Roger Mitchell has a wonderful article on the inheritance of juvenile recurrence- the ability to flower quickly from seed. It’s in the special issue of FLoriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology devoted to rose research that came out last year. Some roses with repeat bloom like rugosas have what is consistent with additional genes that modify the expression or repeat bloom and delay it so the plant can establish itself. Typical, modern roses that flower soon from seed are here because we have selected that trait in cultivation. In populations like rugosas where the trait really took hold on populations over time there was selection for expression that made sense and helped the population. I suspect that may be what is the case from Robin Hood too. Repeat bloom (suspected to be an altered or knocked out GA gene) probably surfaced across many species over time, but the key is if it had an advantage and modifying genes that were selected for to help make it more advantageous.
It’ll be fun to learn what happens as your roses mature!!!
Hi David,
thank you for shareing your experience!
My assumptions are surely rather bold, based on the little I know of my seedlings.
What I observed is, as you call it juvenile recurrence. Against this trait would be strongly selected outside intesive human care. I allready started to remove any flowerbud to give them a chance to establish.
It will be indeed intersting to see if there are plants with delayed recurrance (I wouldn
Last year I grew two somewhat similar crosses: ‘Rosy Purple’ X ‘Violette’ and ‘Rosy Purple’ X ‘Vineyard Song’. Both crosses produced a percentage of once blooming seedlings. (assuming that seedlings that did not bloom in the first year would be non-remontant. That may turn out to be a bad assumption, of course) However, in both crosses, only very few bloomed in the first 6 weeks, and at least 50% of both crosses did not begin flowering until they were 10 weeks old, and then they bloomed through to frost (November). This “late starter” phenomenon is something I have seen in some breeding lines and is different from modern Floribunda/HT/Mini breeding lines, which tend to flower very young and keep blooming.
for a half dyslexic like me its a pity that postings can not be edited here.
Of course I wanted to write:
“I should be able to see “late recurrance” this year?”
just because meaning might have been changed in this case.
Spring Fever is a weird one. It gets an extremely late start to flowering. But once it begins (late June, usually), it does not stop. White Drift is similar.