Ive been ignoring my HT breeding ideas for a few years, but my mind has decided to continue progress this year. I think it really helped out to narrow down what is healthy, vigorous, easy to grow, and so on, from the piles and piles of junk out there.
Portland Nursery had Grande Amore for sale, so I bought one. I was so excited – an easy-to-grow red that can be used for the garden and the vase. Brilliant idea.
I know that HTs are not especially popular here nowdays, but I still love them, too. Royal Philharmonic is such a grace HT, and it could easily be useful for breeding newer and better shrubs, minis, climbers, and, especially, floribundas. Some of these newer HTs take the “giant stick plant” out of the HT, while still retaining graceful blooms.
As an example, I aim on trying Grande Amore x Golden Eye, Solitaire x Grande Amore, Grande Amore x Winter Sunset, and Carefree Marvel x Grande Amore. So many possibilities can open up with some of these newer HTs.
I’m excited about this :] I also think likewise for the new grandiflora, Sunshine Daydream. It may be a pastel yellow, but you can see that rose from 2 blocks away. It literaly glows, and its healthy and compact. Win/Win/Win.
It’s interesting to realize how few of the modern HT’s I’m even familiar with. I was just thinking about this. I think that, having long ago burned out on the high-maintenance, thorny sticks having bad hair days, but with the occasional spectacular bloom, I have avoided the class, and yet, as I start to get back into this, I found myself wondering about marrying the best of the HT with shrub roses, and wondered what awesome new cultivars were already out there of which I was unaware.
There are so many obvious crosses that every amateur has likely thought of (but probably not experienced hybridizers) as an attempt at marrying the best of the landscape roses with the best of the cut-flowers (but likely to disastrous effect)…
Hmmm… I wouldn’t have expected Christoph Columbus in GA’s parentage.
Rob, I’m intrigued by PL. It’s not exactly a striking bloom, but, (and I dunno why) ever since Baby Love, any rose with R. davidii in its parentage makes me sit up and take notice.
I’m going to concentrate on using my HTs this year as well. I’m tired of getting 5 petaled pink seedlings! I’m going to use all the oranges and reds I have. Probably still end up with pink but maybe with 10 petals, lol? One I’m going to use a lot is my Dick Clark. That thing is vigorous, healthy and blooms it’s head off. It has lots of petals and color too. I’d like to play some with Red Intuition too, even though it does spot some, but I love the stripes. Definitely will cross those two both ways for sure. After that who knows. A lot of the time for me it’s all a matter of who is in bloom at the right time around here.
Paul, I wish you’d been sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear last year when I did use Angel Face…dumb, Dumb DUMB! With Fragrant Cloud no less. Another spotty weakling in my garden. What was I thinking! But like I said, timing is everything and those two just happened to time out right last season. I have some seeds from them but so far no germinations. We’ll see what happens. I can always toss them if they’re dreadful, lol.
‘Soleil d’Or’ ought to be sold with a tag that says “Survival not guaranteed at more than 4% relative humidity.” Being a little slow on the uptake, I bought this rose no less than three different times from different nurseries, lured by the history, the color, the fragrance, and reports from Canada about its hardiness…and every time it croaked due to never keeping enough leaves to live. I don’t spray–too many children, pets, and Rugosas in the vicinity. Now I get all the joy I want in that way from Larry Davis’ Carefree Copper.
However, HTs have a lot going for them as a class–the range of color, the pretty flowers, repeat bloom, long cutting stems, and most of all fragrance. (Though Philip’s point about high-maintenance thorny sticks is well taken!) It’s interesting to see what creative hybridizers of the past have done to combine their best traits with those of other rose families–the Pemberton hybrid musks and Kordes’ Frühling series of hybrid spinosissimas, for instance.
With this in mind I used some R. spin. pollen on Carefree Beauty and Pink Parfait (neither a HT, I grant you, but as close as I can get) and the seedlings are just coming up now. So far, they take after dad with the spiny thorns. I’m hoping for pale pink single once-bloomers but you never know.
Which spinosissima did you use? With Altaica in our northern climate, I am zone 2, we will often get light rebloom. not great but pleasant. Good luck! Johannes P
Johannes, I just used what was growing at the beach when I was on vacation in Holland. It just looked like the generic species, white flowers about 1 1/2 inch in diameter. It was growing everywhere and flowering was almost finished, but there were some scattered flowers still opening. I dried it in the wardrobe, then folded it up in a piece of paper and put it in my suitcase. What would you do if you were spending the weekend in one house with 9 other people, four of which were 7 and under? I sneaked out and collected pollen from the back yard.
I think there is still value in breeding with hybrid teas. With some of the better disease resistant varieties of today and the past we can cross these to the hybrid teas. Then take the resulting seedlings together and hopefully you can make slow progress. I don’t think this is a short term program, but could you imagine something that comes close to the health of knock out with hybrid tea blooms, non stick like plants and the blooming ability that comes closer to a miniature or floribunda. We have all the genes we need we just have to wade through the bunch of crap in the process. Good thing you are young this could take awhile. The most important thing I think would be to chose your hybrid tea parent very carefully.
Adam, I agree. Double Knock Out is no less stick-like than a few of the HT’s I mentioned. Royal Philharmonic, for example, is a real good model of what some of the newer HTs can bring. It is about 3’ tall, healthy, with a low thorn count, well-branched stems, and 4" blooms. This seems like a good compromise between looking nice in one’s yard, large patio pot, or cut on the kitchen table. HT’s do not need to be one-stemmed, disease-blasted, monsters.
Almost all of the non-dwarf and species parents that Ralph Moore chose to use were not exactly my idea of healthy. Gold Badge, for example, despite being among the more modeern of his choices, brings a lot of headache. The only two roses that I think were worthy from its breeding were Playgold and Apricot Twist. Even then, Playgold has poor hardiness from using this heavily Mediterranean-bred (several generations of France to Cali) line of roses. I was not even impressed with Cal Poly, except for its color and size appropriateness.
Well, heck, Kim, if it was good enough for Ralph…lol. I think I will try and refrain from using it in the future though.
I guess it’s just me but I don’t feel my HTs are any higher maintenance than any of the rest of my roses. I never give them special care. They get exactly what I give the flories, polys, OGRs, Austin’s, shrubs and minis: sunshine, water, some fertilizer now and then and a good hair cut in the spring. Is there something I should be doing different with them? They seem to be growing and blooming for me just fine. Yes, some of them spot more than others but if you look at all the other groups they have good and bad spotters too. I don’t understand why some people feel they’re any pickier.
Nope, Sharon! If they’re doing what you want, the way you want them to with the effort and expense you are comfortable allowing them, don’t fix it, it ain’t broke.
As with any plant, it’s location, location, location. In Paul Barden’s climate, HTs are hemopheliacs. In Lyn G’s, they are one of the most easily grown types. In my old Newhall garden, they were pretty much perfect, requiring little more than copious horse manure, water and sun. I NEVER sprayed that garden. It was too large, too windy, too hot and there were too many road runners, quail, hawks and rodents of all kinds. I didn’t want to poison them, or myself. Plus, it would have cost an arm and a leg just for the chemicals to cover them all. Here, many HTs are quite good, as are most other moderns and a few OGRs. It all depends upon how suitable the type or variety is for where you want to grow it, how it will perform there and whether that is acceptable to you or not.
In my area with low humidity if hybrid teas make it through the winter they tend to be very good plants. But every three or four years expect to lose half of them. In my opinion if you could get disease resistance and have a plant that looks good in a landscape you could produce a very successful hybrid tea. Now add better bloom production on that and you got a real winner. But hybrid tea that lacks heavy bloom production with the other two traits will be successful because people like to cut flowers and bring them inside and the general public’s idea of the ideal rose flower is hybrid tea type number one everything else second. If Ralph Moore could produce a few healthy miniatures like Scarlet Moss considering the general lack of health in the group I think it is not too far fetch to imagine a healthy hybrid tea. This will be the biggest need for the days of spraying roses are going to come to an end especially as the younger generation begins to take over. Or everyone could move to Fort Collins were they will be healthy for the most part without any spraying.
So, what’s up with the lack of fragrance in so many HT’s out there today? Is there a demand for less fragrance? Or is it just a side-effect of breeding for other priorities?
I’ve not found a cut-flower rose with a decent fragrance in a very long time, but I’ve been surprised that there are so few garden roses with good fragrance. (Or is the old sniffer just getting weak?)
For instance, if you want deep garnet velvet with heavy Damask fragrance, you WILL get mildew, black spot and weak, nodding peduncles. If you want healthy deep red, you miss out on the scent. If you’ll accept average health with a medium red, you can have the heavier scent. Getting great fragrance in a yellow or white is often rather difficult, particularly when you also demand durable foliage and decent growth. Heavily scented pink roses abound, and often with average to better health. If you want lasting, durable flowers, forget the scent because they are often mutually exclusive. Which is of greater importance to you? Many OGRs are nicely scented and the vase and plant flower life are rather short. Lasting blooms are, necessarily, lacking in scent. Very often, really healthy plants have little to no scent. Getting all those little boxes checked is quite a juggling act!
Plus, we “baby boomers” are developing greater and more severe allergies with each passing day. I’ve read where some blame the higher pollution levels we matured under. As allergies develop (and olfactories “mature”) scent perception diminishes. As an Asian woman I worked with for years always said, “Whacha gondu?”
Kim, I have just browsed over your post on HMF, great article. At the bottom it tells me I have to contact the author, which is you. I would like your permission to download and save it please.
