Quietness works well as seed parent. Qt defoliates badly here, so use a healthy male in crosses. Only Qt seedling remaining here is a 2008 Qt x Lions Rose; it is healthy, with nondescript apricot double blooms; it wont be here much longer.
Thanks Kim for helping us understand more of the history.
It seems unfortunate that Iowa State would claim all of his material was “proprietary material” and royalties needed to be paid. Just saying so doesn’t mean it is so as we know. The only way of course to enforce rights on any material would be a plant patent to protect the propagation of his roses for the designated time, a trademark on the name in order to prevent a rose to be sold under that name without an agreement that would typically involve an exchange of money, or of course not letting any material out so no one else can have it. Very few of Dr. Buck’s roses were patented or trademarked.
Limiting the use of his roses in the marketplace because of misinformation would be very very sad. I don’t know the details of Iowa State and their efforts, communications, etc. along the way, but clearly without a patent for most of Dr. Buck’s roses, anyone could legally propagate them from the start knowing they weren’t having a patent secured on them and for the names, those without trademarked names could be sold under the variety name he declared and those with only trademark names could be sold under the common name or another trademark name someone would want to make up. If Iowa State clearly wanted to gain royalties that they could enforce (not just request and hope people voluntarily provide), they needed to have done the things necessary to make that happen and then hopefully also serve as useful advocate for Dr. Buck and his roses so more would be sold to benefit Iowa State and Dr. Buck. That typically involves helping to streamline the process for nurseries to trial his roses and make the paperwork and agreements as streamlined as possible with the Iowa State lawyers and the nurseries.
I’m SOO glad that Ruby. Mary, and Kathy worked hard to reidentify, propagate, trial, and distribute Dr. Buck’s roses in the 1990’s to help get the broader collection of them out to the world. It is really exciting that there is this additional group coming on the market.
Concerning Quietness as a parent, several years ago I put Pretty Lady pollen on it. As I have a small yard, I work with very small amounts of seed. I have two plants from that cross - both completely free of blackspot and both a nice variation of white, much like Pretty Lady. Both rebloom well: one is 18" tall and the other about 3 feet tall, and the taller is very, very fragrant. I take the easiest route by rooting roses in a glass of water, and Quietness is a cinch with this method - so also is its fragrant child. I’ve put other pollen on Quietness, too. Memorial Day was one donor, and I remember some very pretty blooms, but Memorial Day is long gone from my yard, due to blackspot, and so are those seedlings. They were similarly plagued, so I would guess that a healthy pollen donor is very important in this case. Blackspot is the worst porblem here in St. Louis, Missouri – that and a horrible virus that casues witchesbroom-like tangled growths that eventually disfigure the whole plant. That’s nasty stuff. I used pollen from Quietness on some things too, but never had much to show from those efforts. Again, we’re talking very small amounts of seed - probably fewer that 12 all told - so my experience is not definitive.
A general principle I’ve learned through my years in a university is to not attribute to malice something that can more easily be explained through incompetence. Horticulture and agronomy programs are always suffering from limits of space. So when a faculty member retires, it is routine to remove all their material. Our orchards all went that way.
They also suffer from limitations of administrators ability to think and communicate. I worked with a hort faculty member to contribute a considerable number of old-fashioned roses to the new rose garden. Next spring the dept head arbitrarily moved some of them, without asking her, or me. He wanted to put some evergreens in and never consulted the garden design first. I must confess I was annoyed. Over the years, many have gotten lost, mislabeled etc. But I don’t bother to spend much time there. (Teh faculty member went on to become head somewhere else, leaving the next year.)
Same thing only worse with our city rose garden. The former park director pointed out in his colloquial way that there’s a bunch of folks there that don’t know nothing and don’t want to learn. He personally had the most fantastic HT collection down the street from me, until he got too old to maintain it.
I suspect ISU realized the value of Buck’s stuff a few years after his death. I saw the new rose garden they were installing. Eventually someone got a lawyer to write some boilerplate when it became fashionable to protect intellectual property. Empty threats and hot air, probably bad publicity, but a grasping at straws by a new administrator.
Until recombinant DNA, public breeders did not seek patents, because their productions were considered in the public domain because federal and state funds were used for various research projects. It was only in the late 80s that there was a big push to have NIH patent genes, and universities form partnerships to make money out of everything living. Related to the Bayh-Dole amendment, blah-blah-blah.
It would all feel less sad if it were a wild-fire rather than a bonfire, an earthquake rather than a bulldozer. But unfortunately that’s how it goes.
Michael, I was going through Buck’s cultivars on HMF, I really like his work, some interesting crossing and results.
I am so regretting buying Quietness and Mary Susan. I can only hope Mary Susan isnt also blackspot prone. I am going to have to get creative or just grow them as garden plants because the world seriously does not need more reasons to have blackspot. The only good thing about roses like Piccadilly are the habit and the unique coloring, which can throw both bicolors and purples. Which reminds me, I find it funny how Knock Out is sometimes called Purple Meidiland, lol. I seriously doubt the French magically think that the color carmine is magically the color purple.
Since disease problems are not the same everywhere, Quietness and Mary Susan may be relatively disease-free where you’ll be growing them, Michael.
Do Buck’s roses have a tendency BS badly?.That Piccadilly very interesting colour wise, Peace and a lot of its offspring also tend to give you colour variations on the reverse of petals.
Maybe the French regard it being purple as it ages, looking at the pics on HMF , older blooms tend to be purplish.
The Buck roses generally have a reputation for BS-resistance, hence my dismay. Peter may be correct. i have noticed that the awful BS near the Great Lakes area is vastly different than the awful BS in the Pac. NW. Both areas, for those of you all elsewhere, are areas highly prone to blackspot. I do not even dare grow something as highly popular as Graham Thomas, knowing it will defoliate. Yet, Baby Love is perpetually clean, but it is sometimes defoliated in other locales. Its all rather confusing. It’d be cool if someone mapped out a geographic map with strains on it, lol.
Graham Thomas is ok here in Deniliquin Australia, BUT Charles Austin, seen some in town where there just bare canes sticking up. Yet I have used C Austin in creating some nice roses and they do’nt have the BS problem.Gee’s your asking alot, a geographic map for BS strains LOL
Hi Jadae,
In our Dec. 2010 HortScience article we report the resistance of many Buck as well as other roses in the Earth-Kind trials to three races of black spot. Quietness for instance was resistant to some but not others. So, depending on what races are in ones area that is very important. There are many races around and more have been documented in the US and collected since we started that study. One thing from Vance’s Ph.D. and doing DNA fingerprinting on dozens of black spot isolates from Eastern North America, there is a lot of variation for fingerprints and it does not follow geographical patterns well. The projected explanation is just that races/genotypes of the black spot fungus move readily through most likely commerce of roses. Characterizing isolates into races takes a lot of resources because that relies on infection patterns (+ / -) across rose isolate combinations. The many isolates with different DNA fingerprints may represent many more races as only a subset of isolates were used for the race characterization.
So, what we propose, that is consistent with others, is that high horizontal resistance rather than relying on single gene race specific or vertical resistance is a good thing to aim for for durable landscape resistance. Most horizontal resistance is controlled by multiple genes each having an effect to limit the progression of disease. Roses get black spot, but it does not develop as quickly as those with less horizontal resistance.
In our selection, it makes sense to select roses without any black spot, but we have now real understanding of the underlying horizontal resistance until that single gene is stripped away by an appropriate race. Testing roses in multiple locations and over years would of course help. In addition, utilizing the collection of international races accumulating at the U of MN to challenge roses is a great tool that is being developed. So far, there is no single rose that has been resistant to all races. Therefore, we can hopefully find a race that can overtake every rose and then after there is infection monitor the rate of development to assess horizontal resistance.
There is some great guiding principles to understanding black spot resistance and now preserved tools in the form of these preserved races and laboratory innoculation techniques. We can hopefully develop some good opportunities in the future to use the tools at hand to benefit breeders more widely in developing roses with strong base horizontal black spot resistance with some race specific resistance alleles too.
Hi David,
I had wondered about the various races intermingling. Its a good thing roses arent shipped back to their wholesalers (that Ive heard of before), then redistributed. That’d definitely be bad.
Its all still very confusing due to the complexity. It makes selecting parents very difficult and problematic, especially if you want other positive traits too.
Warren,
I do ask for a lot. I have the eyes of an idealist and the mind of a fractal, lol. I do aim and aspire for better roses, more than just aesthetics (my favorite part, of course), but making them practical. So, objectives like self-supporting root systems, vigor, general health, generalized hardiness, good rebloom, etc. on non-monster plants are my ideal. It makes me happy to see roses people can grow at whim, clip some for the home, keep some outside for color, and then forget about it other than usual maintenence like dead-heading and watering. I really become disappointed when any type of plant either eats someones yard or dies/becomes ugly with normal care. It just forces people to not want to garden or to go to a throw-away plant culture. I think anyone that doesnt know me well should know that even though roses are my favorite, that I think of horticulture/landscape as a whole, which includes roses.
Hi Michael, I was only joking in the above post, I have the same objectives as you when going into a breeding programme, one thing I am doing though, is breeding thornless cultivars, so many people out love roses but will not go near them because of the thorns.
Thornlessness is something I am leaving up to you all. I try to avoid roses that are nasty, especially those with hooked thorns. I do not really mind spiny prickles. I stopped using Livin Easy because, like Impatient, it is excessively armed. I have a seedling of it with superior color and very few thorns whatsoever. I have noticed that random descendants of Tropicana tend to have a pattern of completely thorn-covered basals. That is definitely something to avoid, lol. Not only is it painful, but it is also not practical for either cuttings or grafting.
I have used Vanilla and Smooth Buttercup crossing over Charles Austin (which has few thorns) and the results have been really good. Nevada by Dot has a few thorns low down on the thorns, but is thornless 75% of the cane.
Bred a rose called Cento Qaranta which has very similar characteristics to Nevada in its thorn numbers, great for picking, you can rub the lower leaves off with your hands.
If you want to see the rose from hell, Laneii a moss rose but you have to see it growing to understand why I call it that. Very very thorny.
Laneii is bad, Warren, but take a look at Waldtraut Nielsen! His thorns aren’t hooked like Fakir’s Delight’s. Waldtraut’s stick clean through you. Kim
Laneii and waldtraut Nielsen would stick in but Fakirs Delight would, nt let go, who put delight on the end of that name OUCH!!!
Warren, Fakir’s Delight’s prickles are hooked sufficiently that you can grab an inch thick cane and move it around without it sticking into you. It’s so densely armed, it reminded me of a bed of nails, hence the name.
When Ralph was 99, he landed in the hospital for the first time in his life. They were limiting his visitors so Carolyn put Jim Delahanty and I to work taking cuttings for her until it was our turn. Because I like the rose, I named it and she was getting her revenge, she set me to taking 150 cuttings of it for her from the huge one in the ground behind Burling’s greenhouses. Believe me, those prickles are MUCH easier to deal with than the two mosses! Kim
Since the topic of thorny Moss roses came up, this is a Moulin Rouge X Laneii I bred a few years back, its a once only bloomer but its worth the wait a year I think.
cheers Warren