R. wichuraiana F1 hybrids question

Roses for Hybridizing Blotch (Hulthemia)
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1

Can anyone share their experience with breeding with R. wichuraiana? I am mostly interested in learning what to happens in F1 progeny with respect to the petal count and color when paired with various other partners.

For instance, do singles predominate, do colors get washed out, do whites appear at high frequencies and so forth.

I’ve studied the F1’s listed at HMF and there seem to be some interesting patterns emerging but roses that make it into commerce are usually the exceptions so it would be interesting to learn what the unexceptional cases are as well.

2

I kept an F1 of wichurana and ‘Old Blush’ here for a time. It was nearly indistinguishable from wichurana with white single blossoms.

The next generation of selfed seedlings gave a wide range of petal counts and ranged from white to deep pink. I still have one of these.

Enrique the rootstock I used to bud Henry’s Rugelda X R15 specimen that I just sent you is this F1 wichurana hybrid.

It made a surprisingly good rootstock though it was hard to find canes large enough to make budding practical.

3

Robert, I had two, and still definitely have one, of the Old Blush X Wich. poterifolia hybrids. One was single, but with larger flowers than the species. The second was double with large flowers. I’m not sure yet which this is, but it is still tagged that cross and has layered itself in the front flower beds. It will be planted out on the hill once the construction is completed (HOPEFULLY, before the Second Coming!)

I also have a self seedling I raised many years ago from Poterifolia. It is once blooming, very thin wooded, small, double flowers about the size of an aspirin tablet and pure white. There is still a plant of the thornless Wichuriana out back which could provide many cuttings.

0-47-19 has grown quite a bit. I struck cuttings of it today. The crosses I germinated last year from it are growing like weeds in their cans. None have flowered yet. One is thornless and it layered in other cans. Those layerings have been potted. All of which are available for cuttings should anyone wish them.

4

I forgot about this seedling. 'IW0-47-19' Rose

It varies quite a bit with weather, etc, which is what I sought from it. It is also available for cuttings should anyone wish it. I chose Inner Wheel because Peter Schneider wrote it was the only hand painted rose not to suffer black spot in Ohio; it has lovely foliage and sepals; and it is wonderfully painted. I hoped to engineer in a higher level of black spot resistance as well as obtain larger, painted flowers from climbers and shrubs with it.

5

Kim, the cross was R. wichurana ‘poteriifolia’ x ‘Old Blush’.

Mike Fitts has, or did have the original. It was too feral and out of control for me to keep it long term. Yes, the blossoms are a bit larger than the species.

If the remontant selfed seedling is white it’s called, “Trudy”. If the blossom is deep pink it’s called, “Bob”.

I lost Trudy to neglect. The petals were too thin and it almost always balled. Bob is like a weed and repeats well. I really should put it to work.

All of these seedlings were created by A.C. Tunningley several years ago. I’ll ask his permission to post them to HMF.

“Thornless Wichurana” is evil incarnate. The prickles on the backs of the leaves are vicious, and I’ve never seen a rose root so easily nor regenerate so easily once removed.

It really should only be grown in a pot on concrete in my opinion.

It seems wichurana could easily naturalize and become difficult to control in certain situations.

Kim, if you get a smooth remontant 0-47-19 seedling, yes, I would be interested. Thank you.

I have one of Paul’s selfed seedlings and it’s nearly smooth. The potential is there.

6

Kim, your ‘Inner Wheel’ cross sounds great. Have you used it yet?

7

Don,

Like the other folks who replied I cannot speak about the species itself, as I have not used it directly in breeding. All of my experience is with cultivars like 0-47-19, ‘Papoose’ and other R. wichurana hybrids.

0-47-19 gives a large percentage of pinks and whites with a range of petal counts. Most are semi-doubles, open, cupped or flat blooms borne in clusters. R. wichurana foliage and growth habit shows up frequently in the seedlings, but you can get everything from extremely dwarf plants, to huge lax Ramblers of the Barbier style. (Think ‘Alberic Barbier’) About 20% of 0-47-19 offspring show some remontancy in the first year, and a few of the non-blooming seedlings will become remontant in year two. (‘Mel’s Heritage’ was like that.) Most seedlings from 0-47-19 are sparsely prickled and a few are close to thornless. Occasionally you will find a completely thornless seedling. I think that 0-47-19 might be useful in the search for other types of thornless roses and I plan on mating it this year with ‘Commander Gillette’, even though this will be a mismatch of ploidy) (0-47-19 = diploid, ‘Commander Gillette’ = tetraploid)

I have begun working with a self seedling of 0-47-19 (see: '42-03-02' Rose ) that is very likely a diploid, like its parent. This is a short, shrubby plant to about 2.5 feet in my climate, flowering nearly continuously with deep pink blooms that sometimes shift to purplish with age. It is also quite fragrant, and nearly thornless. It takes pollen from most anything, but I am starting to believe that diploid pollen is more likely to work. It took pollen from ‘Scabrosa’ (really looking forward to seeing this lot germinate!!!) and ‘Therese Bugnet’ and other diploids with enthusiasm last year. I cannot comment on its offspring yet, as I haven’t seen a large enough sample to draw conclusions. It does appear to make dwarfish plants in medium to deep pinks a lot, so far. This year I ought to have more information about its behavior.

‘Papoose’ has not been a very willing breeder for me compared to 0-47-19, and so I have not put much effort into working with it. (I have only attempted it as a seed bearer, since this is how Ralph used it) I expect to make some crosses with ‘Papoose’ this year again, probably using it as a pollen parent instead of a seed parent. It bred ‘Ralph’s Creeper’, which is a remarkable rose. It blooms in the most inhospitable situations, in near full shade, and has been extremely disease resistant in my climate. (‘Papoose’ is completely disease free in this climate as well, which is remarkable for a modern hybrid) I can ship you a plant of ‘Papoose’ this Spring along with the other plants I am sending you, Don. Let me know if you are interested. (see URL)

I also grow Kim’s 0-47-19 X ‘Inner Wheel’ hybrid and it is quite lovely. I can’t speak to its disease resistance since it is growing in the floor of one of the greenhouses and is protected from Blackspot infection. (In my climate ‘Inner Wheel’ gets Blackspot to some degree unless sprayed, but rarely defoliates completely. I don’t consider it particularly disease resistant, although it is far better than most hand painted roses, disease wise) I can also supply cuttings of Kim’s hybrid later on if anyone wants it.

Link: www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.19226

8

Don, I have no experience breeding R. wichurana, but I do grow a considerable number of the tender Teas and Chinas used as pollen parents to produce the early Hybrid Wichuranas. The coloring of Tea and China roses follows a very predictable pattern: the apricots and buffs fade in the sun, while the “coppers” and deep pinks darken in the sun. Mid-pink is variable: usually it holds its own, sometimes is darkens. I don’t have any medium pinks that fade.

All of the early Hybrid Wichuranas I’ve seen seem to follow this pattern: the lighter colors very quickly fade to white or pale pink, which the brilliant rose and red colors seem to hold their own - - not that they don’t change color, but fading isn’t the issue. IOW, Barbier Wichuranas seem to follow the color aging pattern of the pollen parents. To state the obvious, I don’t think the fading is necessarily a function of R. wichurana, as it could easily be a function of the pollen parents used at the time.

9

I understand that there is some question as to which plant Barbier used to breed their Ramblers, the suggestion being that it was Rosa luciae, which may or may not be closely related to R. wichurana. It is entirely possible that the Barbier plant used behaved quite differently from the R. wichurana that other people have used in breeding. It may have been a different species entirely.

Interesting observations about the fading behaviors, Cass. thanks for that!

10

Yeah, Inner Wheel was one of the healthiest hand-painted I grew. It hated heat, tho. I raised a nice seedling from it, but some moron window construction dude destroyed it while working under the window. I think it was Champagne Cocktail x Inner Wheel. It was ironic because my very first hand-painted (Stretch Johnson) was massacred by the city because they dug it up in August in the heat to do some minor work. They let it sit there without notifying me they were visiting. When I got home, it was fried and dead.

I gave up on hand-painted roses, though. It is difficult alone to contend with breeding out their nasty blackspot habit, but they also have a nasty habit of not showing the hand-painted look during the summer. It would take some intense coloring to make up for that. Otherwise, they look sub-par during those months. They usually keep the reverse, though. If I tried hand-painted again, I would probably use Candella. It’s decently healthy.

11

Thanks for the feedback, everybody.

Robert, your experience illustrates what is also evident with 0-47-19, that that the partner’s floral genes can express unimpeded in downstream out-crosses from the F1.

Paul, thanks for sharing your experience with 0-47-19. I got off on this tangent after soaking up the photo you posted at HMF of Ralph Moore working it over. Incidentally, do you know if that was a single plant?

Wichuraiana wasn’t something I was originally planning on working with because of space constraints. However, I now have a young plant of wichuraiana from seed collected in the wild in China, and I will have OP seedlings this spring from a richly dark cultivar growing at Elizabeth Park since about 1905. Papoose would fit right in along the arbor that will be needed, thanks for the offer.

Cass, I think you hit the nail on the head with your comments about the color patterns following those of the partnered rose. It also looks like the petal count in the F1’s can reflect the partner as well.

Here is a spreadsheet of most of the wichuraiana F1’s listed at HMF. It includes the partnered parent, and gives the color profile of both the F1 and the partnered parent. Note that there is a second page on which are listed only those F1’s that express yellow in some form (that is to say, which make carotenoids, a trait that can only be derived from the partnered parent).

Based on the data from Eugster’s paper (discussed elsewhere on this mb and in the RHA newsletter) I think that it is very likely that some of these hybrids could provide an avenue to densely pigmented, non-fading yellows that don’t carry the genes (and liabilities) of R. foetida.

Link: spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AqvsTurYctpWdGF5bm42RU9fSEd1UUpUZy1YdWlqMnc&hl=en

12

“Paul, thanks for sharing your experience with 0-47-19. I got off on this tangent after soaking up the photo you posted at HMF of Ralph Moore working it over. Incidentally, do you know if that was a single plant?”

Based on what I know about the early history of this plant, it is possible that this is a lone specimen Ralph is working on in the photo, yes. He did say that several of the seedlings from the 0-47 lot were all planted out in a row in the nursery, but that all but #19 were dug out and discarded. By the time 0-47-19 became big enough to be used on a large scale (as it clearly is in the photo) it is probable that the sister seedlings were long gone.

It DOES get to be a large plant. In my climate, it grows new canes to fifteen feet in one season!

13

Don, I think that R. wich is pretty decent at not dumbing down color saturation too much. However, the chart is somewhat misleading because it uses color classes, which are obtuse and dependent on the breeders subjective class choice.

For example, we will use this line:

hybrid: 0-47-19

color: Orange blend

other parent: Floradora

Parent Color: Orange and Orange-red

From this, we know that 0-47-19 is somewhere in the spectrum of salmon pink, which is to say that it is neither pink or orange or cream, but that it is some combination found between those three obtuse colors. However, it is definitely not an orange blend in the conventional sense. Floradora is a bit more appropriate. It is some very weird shade of coral red and coral pink in person. I’m not even sure if a color chart could explain the color. It’s …weird. It is even more weird than the marred colors Fragrant Cloud can produce in extreme conditions, which doesn’t surprise me since Floradora is its grandparent.

So, my point is is that I think that R. wich is definitely useful as a species to marry color and nice genetics, but that the chart is obtuse and requires a subjective lens to filter it with since there is a huge difference in color between somehting like Livin’ Easy (ARS: Orange Blend) and 0-47-19 (Orange Blend). Orange pink, pink blend or medium pink would be closer to current color standards.

14

lol check out this rose:

Paul, do you have it?

15

Michael,

I might have ‘Lollipop’ here, but I have lost my text list of the Moore archive and so I need to go out and catalog everything again. (ugh) I suspect I do NOT have that one, as it does not appear to be here in the US anymore. A whole lotta ‘Floradora’ going on in its pedigree, eh? lol. I have long toyed with the idea of using ‘Little Buckaroo’ in breeding, as it is one of Ralph’s best roses IMO. It is sturdy, reliable, a nice color, has fragrance and excellent foliage. Its more of a dwarf Wichurana shrub than a true modern miniature, which appeals to me a whole lot more than what most modern miniatures have become. (dwarf Hybrid Teas, mostly. yuk)

16

And yes, 0-47-19 is essentially a pink with salmon shadings, the salmon/orange hues fading out very quickly.

17

Interesting spreadsheet, Don. If I’d known you were doing this, I’d have spent some time on HMF to update the color attributes of these hybrids and their pollen parents. When a HMF admin studies a rose and researches contemporaneous references, we update the color attributes. Most roses originally came into HMF with the color descriptions from Modern Roses. Those descriptions use the inaccurate color classification system of the ARS. An example is William Allen Richardson… Yellow blend…that’s a stretch. The color is buff-apricot at the darkest. I suspect either color over-saturation of some of the shots in Europe…or it’s a different rose.

Another example: Perle des Jardins, described by Modern Roses as light yellow, and by the contemporaneous references as bright straw-yellow, occasionally deep canary-yellow, center orange. Even after a few adult beverages, I won’t see orange centers in these roses:

I’m struck by something else: how many of the pollen parents are lost/no photos/no gardens or the rose in commerce under that name is an attribution. Again, I don’t want to overstate the case: I do believe the coordination of the color of the hybrid and that it is related to the pollen parent. I simply remind everyone that we cannot assume the names and identities of currently identified cultivars of old roses are accurate. My best estimate is that most are accurate, with “most” being only a simply majority.

18

There are many yellow Teas growing here some very very old. I grew many.

I concur color descriptions are “at its best” for cvs whose color saturation is quite undependable. In fact here on a large plant it is not every year you can see a single flower that for a short time meets color description.

When these roses were initially described these colors were outstanding and described as such. A hint of yellow/orange was glorified. Really yellow roses were not available for comparison.

In my experience that one can breed good saturation yellow roses from yellow Teas and Noisettes alone is illusory.

When crossed with modern roses one can get full actual yellow.

In a hot summer climate F1 wichuraiana hybrids usually have short lasting petals that cannot compare with actual standards.

That better petal quality and color fastness are attainable with further (modern roses) crosses is examplified i.e. by some Noak and Kordes achievements. Difficulty is holding species desease resistance as stated by their own ratings.

19

The odd thing about the glowing descriptions of yellow Teas, Chinas and Noisettes is that brighter yellow was known at the time, in the form of Persian Yellow, Harison’s Yellow and others. I suspect that originally accurate color descriptions have been poorly (or never) translated into English or described in the modern era with exaggerated, inaccurate color descriptions.

Cr

20

I think what you might be trying to express about Floradora’s color is that it is ‘dull metallic’. The color is saturated, but definitely a mix of pigments most don’t find particularly attractive. Unfortunately, I believe it was probably Ralph’s favorite color as so many of the seedlings he embraced were that awful orange-pink with, what I teased him about every chance I got, “the Floradora fade”. Between that orangish pink fading to a muddy salmony pink and the Anytime “shovel” petal shape, there was enough there to keep him happy a couple of life times.

Here, 0-47-19 can range widely from nearly white to a mid pink, though heat fades it very quickly (Floradora fade again), and has created many white seedlings from those observed at Sequoia and the very few which have flowered for me. Interestingly, the whites are very “greenish” and many of Ralph’s green roses stem from it. I’ve often wondered about mixing 0-47-19 with Tournament of Roses because they both just impress me as potential sources for odd colors. I have used 0-47-19 with Greensleeves and they’re germinating now. I know, making the blind man deaf.

Robert, I have pollinated the Inner Wheel seedling many times but never have been able to get to the hips before they are dinner for migrant vermin. I have found its pollen viable for creating hips on other things, but usually on the fringes of the area where they get eaten. I can’t vouch for any bloom characteristics of the thornless seedlings as none have bloomed yet. They are in their second and third years so something MUST flower this year or they go out in the erosion zone to stabilise the hill and fend off the rodents by themselves. Whether they prove worthwhile or not, I must say they are attractive plants.

I tried many times to get Papoose to breed with Lilac Charm in hopes of recreating something along the lines of Moutain Haze. It grew at Rose Hills during the years I had an in there but never propagated for me. Though classed as a floribunda, it grew more like a mauve ground cover there and was actually quite pretty. Unfortunately, it was one of many casualties in their “improvements” years ago. I hate when publc gardens dump rarities to include the Home Depot selection.