Every year I find myself falling in love with some of the first blooms on the new seedlings. I know that some of these may get too much disease and will need to be discarded, but I still take photos of my favorites and hope for the best.
So far, this is my favorite first bloom at least with respect to color and form.
Jim Sproul
I could not imagine getting something that good from a first bloom. Very lovely.
Yes that is very pretty. Thanks for sharing.
Very nice Jim. what yellow did you use to make this one?
Patrick
Lovely indeed. Reminds me of the old HT, ‘Prominent’.
Patrick after reading your comment I was wondering how you know one of the parents was yellow.
Jim it is a great color and has beautiful bloom shape, like a hybrid tea. What sort of rose class would you say this seedling might become?
Its a mini. I am guessing it descends from Hot Tamale.
Thank you for all of the kind words. I decided to go ahead and use this bloom’s pollen in a few crosses today.
The parentage is:
{(‘Chipmunk’ X ‘Heather Sproul’) X [(‘Singin’ in the Rain’ X ‘Roller Coaster’) X ‘Tropical Twist’]} X {[‘Gemini’ X (‘Stainless Steel’ X ‘Baby Love’)] X [ X “Unknown Cut Flower Variety”]}
‘Heather Sproul’ comes from a cross of (‘Lynn Anderson’ X ‘Tournament of Roses’) X ‘Hot Tamale’.
Adam, the seed parent (in bold) is ‘Pearl Sanford’. That is the seed parent that I mentioned to you in Denver that I thought you might like to try. Though it is a mini, it produces the full range of types from smaller minis to smaller HT’s, and though it is a pink blend, from it’s parentage, you can see that it has potential for the full range of colors. It is by far my favorite seed parent for class exhibition type roses.
The pollen parent is an un-named, orange/yellow bicolor floribunda to HT type seedling.
Patrick, from the parentage, you might guess that the yellow could have come from several of the roses in the lineage. I suspect that most of the color is coming from the pollen parent. Though, as Jadae mentions, ‘Hot Tamale’ is a possibility (it is a great-great grandpollenparent!)
The “Unknown Cut Flower Variety” was from a bouquet that I had picked up at Costco a few years ago. It was an orange/yellow blend HT.
George, as for classification, I am anticipating that this one will fall somewhere between a larger miniflora and a floribunda sized rose. I may bud this one to push maturity to see what it looks like as a full grown rose.
Jim Sproul
Looks like a keeper to me Jim…Larry
Very beautiful Jim, I love the color.
Jim I see you used Halo Today as a seed parent. How is it as a parent?
Adam, my database shows ‘Halo Today’ to be average with respect to number of seeds per hip and germination rate, 9-10 and 25-30% respectively. I got some excellent seedlings from it that figure heavily into some of the breeding stock that I use.
The strengths that it gives to its seedlings are floriferousness, and nice plant habit. The most important weakness seen in seedlings perhaps is lower petal count, but that can be corrected in another 1 or 2 generations. Many of its seedlings tended to exhibit good fertility.
Jim Sproul
Beautiful Jim! And I love to read the parentages of your seedlings - it’s kind of like math problems where someone shows all of their work. The answer is great, but it’s especially nice to be able to see how you’ve gotten there.
Bravo!
That one will go down in the records as “seedling x seedling”. LOL
Seven generations of crosses, did I count in there?
Jim, the quality of that first bloom is very strong… How old is the seedling?
Very nice.
Thanks Tom - that’s funny, “like math problems”! In several of my seedlings there are unknowns, like the"Unknown Cut Flower Variety", but at least most of the record is intact. Thank goodness for MS Excel!
Thanks too Philip, I hadn’t counted, but I guess that you are right - seven generations. These seeds were planted the first of January. This cross has been very good for color and form. I think that I planted them too closely though, because I am liking too many of them. There were 889 seeds from this cross. I may repeat it again this year, and next year plant the seeds further apart.
Jim Sproul
Only 889?
Geesh, how many bushes of each parent do you own?
Jim, you’re making some of us look like real slackers.
About how many seedlings do you grow in a season?
Hi Philip,
I first did this same cross in 2008, got 84 seeds with 41 germinations. I think that I ended up keeping four seedlings, which is a pretty high ratio, about 1:10. That’s why I wanted to repeat it in a big way. This was my 5th largest cross for 2009.
Last year, I used 3 plants of ‘Pearl Sanford’, and got 5,192 seeds from them. This year I am using 5 plants of it. Though it is a mini, it is a very productive seed parent.
I plant a lot of seeds in order to get my goal of 10-15,000 seedlings.
Jim Sproul