That is why I keep saying Carefree Marvel. It seems like a fairly universal link so far. Anyways, I am having luck with it.
Thatās also why I want my scabrosa to hurry up and grow to a useful size. Those varieties that are not far removed from species level offer a lot to the hybridist. Iād like to try my hand at miniature rugosa type roses.
Question: When we do try and go back to the species do we find they are now so far removed that success is limited at bestā¦ almost like the traditional speciation barrier.
Question: R. laevigata does not figure much in the pedigree of any roseā¦ why is that? When you do look at the few descendants it does have they mostly look like variations on a laevigata theme instead of drastic departures from the wild type. Even in looking at how it seems to have naturalised in the U.S. it seems to havedone so vegetatively rather than sexuallyā¦
Laevigata is tough to use. I have exactly one seedling left alive and itās not vigorous.
Robert
If more work is for better results why not.
Will not the vars with all and every qualities supersede those that have less.
But I do not intend at larger progenies and lower efficience.
When I say they are allmost accidental, uncommon from unlikely combination: it is because outstanding as they are there are no other notable registered vars from the same cross. As you say ample progenies are needed. I know: I tried.
Why: parents were not selected with this modern roses look as a goal. Certainly the close to species one. There were no modern roses in 1910/1930.
That is why I think the close to species parent has to be bred for better cross complementarity and breeding efficience.
Iām not disagreeing Pierre. Youāll note species are largely what Iām interested in.
āThere were no modern roses in 1910/1930.ā
That doesnt make sense in American English.
Hi Robert
May be I like too much friendly controverse and do not enough avoid misunderstandings.
āThat doesnt make sense in American English.ā
Sorry! My english is not native.
I am meaning that New Dawn was ahead of its time.
Simon
Species crosses are not foreseable. Progenies are wide scatered from close to species to close to modern with each sp different behaviour. Many sp features such as short lasting flowering and flowers or large stiff untidy growth are not welcome. Not all as New Dawn modern looking glossy foliage from wichuraiana.
Yesā¦ laevigata is magnificent. This is my old one, that I struggled to tame into this form, on HMF
I found it strange that I didnāt ever even find any self/OP hips on it. Itās almost as if it is self-sterile. Itās a series of contradictions to meā¦ a plant that puts so much energy into producing flowers that are both numerous and designed (apparently) specifically to attract pollinators and also produces loads of pollen. It doesnāt make any sense to me why this would happen if it never produces any seeds shrugs especially when other species, such as R. rubiginosa has less spectacular flowers, is less floriferous but sets seeds in abundance and is a weed in my local areaā¦
In my experience, if you are lucky enough to get seedlings from laevigata, they usually fail over time. Iāve only ever used it as pollen parent.
Iāve got some more fat hips using it for pollen again this season. This is the same cross that gave me my lone surviving seedling from last years efforts so I have hope.
Simon, it must have taken some real patience to get laevigata into the form shown in your photo. Itās quite beautiful.
In the Wageningen botanical garden there is a specimen of R. laevigata growing in one of the beds. It is not very well protected and seems to freeze down every year, because in the two years I saw it, it was as small as a floribunda. However, it does give some flowers in spring that give one or two hips. I remember seeing a hip last year, but didnāt come round to it to harvest it last winter. Iāll see if I make it there this year. It is surrounded by all kinds of other species. Those next to it are, if my memory is correct, R. roxburghii and R. multiflora. So maybe it is pollinated by other species than itself.
I wonder if it is interesting to do R. bracteata x R. laevigata and than use that hybrid to further outcross to other species or near-species modern hybrids.
Rob
I hope you will forgive my comments, as I come to this discussion with a generalistās perspective, not experience. Think of me as the disruptive factor (unencumbered by knowledge).
I wonder how many of you have read Guns, Germs & Steel[/u]? The messages concerning domesticated plants are pretty clear. (1) Domesticated species spread by latitude because a common latitude is where the climate zones exist for optimal growth. IOW, a rose well-adapted to latitude 32 is not going to be optimal in latitude 50. So breeding using species adapted to the target latitude makes a lot of sense for basic survivability. (2) The actual number of domesticated species compared to their close relatives is very, very small. Thatās because the actual number suitable for domestic use is really rather limited. I wonder if using species that have proven successful in the past is the most likely avenue to success. Wide species crosses may produce interesting results, but in the long run, I have my doubts how useful those novelties will be - Lensās R. multibracteata x stellata being a case in point.
Another question Iāve never seen addressed satisfactorily is why hybridizers spend little time selecting from within a species. One of the many lessons of Walter Lewisās doctoral thesis fromā¦1959?.. is the remarkable range of variation within a species. We know this intuitively, and it was used in hardy roses breeding in the USA (Hansen) and in Canada. I see little mention of it otherwise. I appreciate the practical difficulties in doing this, but I suspect it is often overlooked. Botanical garden material is already self-limited ā where seedlings are usually selfs. And some species are clearly more uniform (i.e. from a more limited geographic area, perhaps even isolated) than others. But species like R. californica are dazzlingly, shockingly diverse, from foliage surface to armature to size. When I hear someone say theyāve used R. californica for breeding, my immediate question is: which one?
My last point is that, in light of all this, it wouldnāt surprise me if the major breakthrough in terms of disease resistance comes not from novel crosses but from genetic engineering by inserting the genes of species immune to certain fungal complaints (as R. laevigata is) into a modern cultivar, to create a super breeder.
Cass, in my opinion once genetic manipulation occurs in earnest by large entities attempting to breed new rose cultivars we can pretty much kiss the efforts of those like ourselves goodbye.
The good news is this type of experimentation requires specialized facilities and funding. As you know progress is already being made in terms of attempts to integrate genes for blue pigment and perhaps much more?
Roses are a relatively low priority when we look at the need for advancement of food crops and bio fuels.
What I find particularly disturbing is gene patenting. How can something be patented that occurs freely in nature?
I hope we as hybridizers donāt become totally obsolescent in my lifetime. Iād be satisfied to be known historically as having done it the old fashioned way.
We may be redundant already. I suppose only time will tell.
Having written a couple of recent reviews on genetic engineering and agriculture, I am much more optimistic that we are needed. It is ferociously expensive to go through the hoops needed to introduce a gen engg plant. Many clever constructs are sitting in seed banks, but will likely never be released into ordinary commerce. A blue rose is right at the margin because it can be grown in greenhouses and sold as a speciality crop, but getting blackspot resistance into multiple cultivars of relatively low value, field grown plants is just not going to happen in the next few decades. EU regulations and phobias will assure that. So conventional crossing, mutagenesis and selection is the way to go.
Cass is right about adaptability. Some weeds grow over a very wide range of climatic conditions and latitudes, but with cultivated crops, most cultivars have very limited adaptation. Soybeans are the prime example with at least 11 different maturity types used from Canada to Alabama. Actually the weeds have many biovars, that are adapted to different latitudes. I think the same is true of tree and shrub species where some are much hardier than others within a species and we who live further north run into problems with nursery stock propagated from southern (cheaper) places and sold nationwide by cut-rate big box stores. Monsanto produced a disaster introducing U.S. lines of BT cotton into India. Examples abound.
Recall that the UK has about the same territorial area as Kansas. But with 25 million gardeners they support a lot more plant breeders than we do. Someoneās earlier suggestion is likely correct, we need to select for best growth in particular niches and donāt go for a knockout or homerun with every swing.
This has continued to be a very thought provoking thread with lots of great ideas/thoughts shared.
Yes, we should all consider introducing traits/genes from desirable species roses, but I suspect that ultimately these will be few. However, as mentioned above, roses available in commerce (āmodernā and otherwise) are a very diverse lot already.
Most species are not truly ādesirableā. Yes, that is only my opinion, so I expect lots of disagreement here ; ) - and yes there will be a few example of species that can be spectacular.
But, most are too large, or do not bloom enough, or do not bloom long enough, or have a very narrow color range, orā¦orā¦orā¦
The tendency will be to breed hybrids of these back to modern roses to tame them because they will need to be tamed at least to have commercial viability (even if only regionally).
Isolating recessive traits, especially in tetraploids requires extensive backcrossing and inbreeding. That step can only be omitted if genetic engineering techniques are employed.
I like Simonās estimation of the possible number of unique offspring when only two human beings are involved - itās phenomenal! Though some may look at modern roses and see a narrow, small gene pool, I believe that the gene pool remains very broad and is open for exploitation through selective breeding (I include āKnock Outā and āBaby Loveā, and others in the term āmodern rosesā).
Cassā observations about diversity within a species are also excellent and perhaps better selection within the range of a desirable species should be considered in order to take better advantage of the particular species.
Jim Sproul
One other thing I have been thinking about is whether we are seeing the real picture of a rose varietyās actual resistanceā¦ Discussions on here periodically bounce back to RMV and I have noted such comments as; there are many varieties that are chronically infected with RMV, like āAltissimoā, and that there may in fact be various other, as yet undescribed, viruses that plague our roses that ultimately affect their resilience. Our reliance on vegatative propagation only serves to aid their distribution and abundance and now many of these viruses could be described as being cosmopolitan - a rose pandemic if you like. I often wonder if varieties that invariably drop dead as soon as you look at them are affected by such pathogens and if efforts were made to remove them then we may get a better picture of their real resistive qualities. I donāt know enough about plant immunity to comment further (though I gather that as they lack a conventional immune system immunity is mostly achieved structurally with strategies like thicker impervious cell walls etc, and physiologically with strategies like producing antiviral/antibiotic compounds in their tissues etc) but I canāt see anything being overly effective at fighting off diseases if their health has been compromised from the start. Are viruses like RMV found in samples collected from species rose in the field or is it a condition specific to cultured roses?
Jim, Iāll agree that many species have little to contribute although they might offer some surprises.
On the other hand I disagree that the number of species integrated into genome will ultimately be few. I think there will be many more.
We havenāt begun to explore the genetic expression possible given the variety of genetic options available.
I agree the easiest route is to taming a species is to integrate modern roses.
Breeding modern roses to modern roses is infinitely easier than going the long route required to bring a new species into the mix, yet continue to do so over and over. There are recent examples, some of them very successful brought forth by some of the most admired hybridizers.
One the subject of variation within species, yes, it can be very useful, especially when seeking to set a particular characteristic.
As for the variation within a species as diverse as californica, these are subjects for botanists. Many species overlap in their native range with all manner of intermediary forms. I canāt be bothered as to pin pointing what is what. Even experts often disagree.
This thread gets more interesting the longer it goes on.
breeding using species adapted to the target latitude makes a lot of sense for basic survivability
Cass, this is largely true and is already practiced to some extent for rootstocks so why not the rest of the plant too? Iāve wondered whether the trademark/branding phenomenon weāre seeing will be adapted to offering regional variants on a theme rather than a single pedigree for new introductions - or perhaps it already is, and thatās why pedigrees are disappearing.
Donāt completely dismiss wide crosses, though, nor judge a rose by itās latitude alone. The former have lots of value if not directly for thier market appeal; and elevation plays an equal role to latitude so that, for instance, Sericea is right at home in Hartford though it comes from Yunnan.
Another question Iāve never seen addressed satisfactorily is why hybridizers spend little time selecting from within a species.
Spot on, but easier said than done even when working with a species in your own region - and how many of us do just that? Iām shopping for Moyesii and itās catch as catch can for the species and the close hybrids. I have gone to great lengths to find additional cultivars of Sericea/pteracantha than the one(s?) in commerce - not a lot of people remember to bring it back from China with them.
Most species roses are not even in commerce. Ironically, many less common American species are available in Europe but not here. The same is true for one-of-a-kind F1ās of dozens of species though thereās a rose-gap in the opposite direction too; and thereās just a whole bunch of Chinese species known only by their inclusion in Flora of China.
Robert,
once genetic manipulation occurs in earnest by large entities attempting to breed new rose cultivars we can pretty much kiss the efforts of those like ourselves goodbye.
Not likely. In fact, the technology will make more work for us, not less. New technologies synergize with their predecessors and hybridizing is already showing signs of this happening. Take, for example,
attempts to integrate genes for blue pigmentā¦
Your assessment of expense being a barrier is true in spades here. Three near bankrupcies, $25 million and climbing and what theyāve got is no better than Gladys Fischer did in a greenhouse fifty years ago with Sterling Silver. However, its not direct gene injection thatās going to set the standard for biotechnical innovation in rose breeding. There are other technologies that are cheaper, easier to do, get quick results and still favor the hybridizer over the engineer. Take for instance, the technology that this company recently patented:
http://www.hortresearch.co.nz/index/news/467
see also
They have created a set of gene probes which super-accelerate the color selection process. To prove the point they have bred an apple thatās red throughout, not just the skin.
With an approach like this you could select blackspot resistant roses without ever infecting the foliage, or for that matter without even growing it past the first leaf set - yet you will still need your little pinkie. Itās one thing to know you have a particular genetic suite, its entirely another to be able to do something with it.
Selecting within species is all good and well but once a hybrid is created we have an entirely new creature.
Yes, we want the best of what each species has to offer but then again which rose is perfect to begin with?
Itās all subjective. All we can do is the best we can given what we have to work with.
āMost species roses are not even in commerce. Ironically, many less common American species are available in Europe but not here.ā
And here in Australia we donāt get many at all and any we do have we are grateful for and provenance never comes into itā¦
Robert
My formulation is that many species genomes will be added to modern roses population.
In my opinion the best way to integrate species is taming them with as little as possible domesticated roses contribution before crossing the species derived genitors with modern roses. This in order to have as much efficience and different sp content as possible.
All and every desirable features of modern roses are from species.
I know many other species have as desirable or even better features to contribute. Which ones we will know when achieved. We can foresee only raising seedlings.
As actual roses development was not at all planned we have to do better and speedier.