This seems a bit tacky, comparing these roses, since they are products of members’ hard work, but I was curious as to marketing vs performance as pertains to availability.
I don’t yet have Thrive, but was interested in it for its pedigree*. Local sources are more inclined to carry Home-Run (don’t have) and Miracle on the Hudson (do have), as well as the ubiquitous Knock Out (SO over it). I don’t see any awards given to Thrive, and wondered if that fact plays into the relative availability, or if there is some other reason that a parent, and a newer cultivar, are both more readily offered.
And if folks are comfortable weighing in, can you compare and contrast these cultivars, both as garden plants and as breeders?
(As far as that goes, is it worth comparing the red Kolorscapes? I assume they are of no relation.)
*Thrive has a bit of Baby Love in it, and i note that nobody talks about Baby Love anymore. (Another I have never grown…) Has it completely fallen from its pedestal?
What I see selling at the big retail boxes are mostly old varieties that the patents have expired, with a sprinkling of a few good sellers like Knock Out and the Drift series. Rarely do I see one or two newer varieties also. I think having won an award will definitely enhance a rose varieties’ chance of being sold. Most people know very little about the plants they are buying and if they see that a rose has an award they will think it must be a good one so they’ll but it over buying a different one.
I have grown Home Run, Thrive and Double KnockOut. Home Run not surprisingly, had good disease resistance but for what ever reason (I don’t remember it was 7 or 8 years ago) I culled it after three years. I only had Thrive for two years, it was susceptible to black spot and very susceptible to cercospora. I’ve had Double Knock Out for 6 or 7 years now. It took at a while to get established as it doesn’t rebound the well from winter dieback. I have thought about using it in crosses but just haven’t done it.
Thrive wasn’t winter hardy for me, even with just 0 F as the limit. And somewhat disease-prone as Paul said, though cercospora isnt’ a huge deal here. The others are suitable only as pollen parents really, with low seed production, and almost no hips except on older wood which is a strange phenomenon. Low germination too for OP seeds. I went with Rainbow KO which in combination with sort of red type roses gives incredibly strong red colors, long-holding petals (maybe too long), decent disease resistance even in crosses to very susceptibles. Only problems, thorny and tending to single. Playboy x RKO gave brighter than Thrive, reasonably disease-resistant, winter hardy everblooming bush. It survives 4-5 years so far with no spray, blooms all summer.
Miracle On The Hudson has been been far and away the better garden variety here in middle GA (zone 8b w/ lots of humidity). Lots of apparently viable OP seeds this year - in the frig now.
Stephen
I can’t remember if I had Home Run planted out, but if I did it didn’t make it. My potted plant was pretty iffy about setting hips. Thrive wasn’t hardy enough to survive.
Miracle on the Hudson has made it through one winter just fine, which is too early to judge for sure but I’m optimistic. It also sets fat hips easily. Good to hear from Stephen that it is doing well in GA. I’ve started using it a lot.
Thank you to all. One of the things that intrigued me about Thrive was the relative amount of Baby Love, which had been the darling of the breeding world many years ago. I think it fell out of favor after it was revealed that, while it had good vertical resistance, I seem to recall that its horizontal resistance become an Achilles heal. The attestations might serve as verification.
Glad to hear about the one I do have, MotH, and very interesting to learn about Rainbow KO. I seemed to recall that it did not look as healthy as KO in the nursery, and thought the colors of any kiddos might be insipid in our heat.
One of the things that intrigued me about Thrive was the relative amount of Baby Love, which had been the darling of the breeding world many years ago…I think it fell out of favor after it was revealed that, while it had good vertical resistance, I seem to recall that its horizontal resistance become an Achilles heal.
Indeed, ten years ago Baby Love was the kat’s pj’s among breeders yet it has fallen completely off the radar.
There is a real problem in determining what the successor to Baby Love is, though. It has to do partly with the use of codes for identifiers instead of named roses but mostly with the outright refusal of breeders to identify the lineages of their new roses.
Does this matter to the serious non-institutional breeder? Probably not. Still, it leaves us wondering about potential pitfalls like inbreeding and simply wasting resources on lines that we think are hopeless. On the plus side it focuses attention on that-which-matters which is, simply put, objective measures of performance.
With apologies to Joe and to Philip and not to be one to let an opportunity pass I think it’s high time to call for an end to a particular obfuscation by jargonization, namely the business of Horizonal versus Vertical Resistance.
What are these creatures and why do they warrant their own wikipedia entries which tell us, simply and concisely, that they refer to general versus specific disease resistance?
It’s such a mollifying concept that it gets broken out into two distinct wikipedia entries! How hard can it be to know that there are genes that give resistance to specific diseases and genes that give more general disease resistance? Why do I need to memorize arbitrary terms like ‘vertical’ and ‘horizonal’ when ‘specific’ and ‘general’ convey the meaning more precisely and don’t require me to take Botany 485 to interpret?
Love ya, Don. I’m not going to get into the x and y axes thing cuz I haven’t even had my tea this morning. I still eagerly tout Raoul Robinson’s “Return to Resistance” to anyone foolish to talk to me about plant breeding for more than twelve consecutive minutes.
But Philip brought up Rainbow Knock Out:
Can get some really nasty looking foliage disease. Not sure if it is cercospora or blackspot. I think cercospora.
One of the heaviest blooming roses in existence around here.
Significantly hardier than KO, and hardier than DKO.
Blossoms do not drop off cleanly.
I still think it might have some breeding potential.
After doing some research and finishing my first cup of tea, permit me to introduce the terms “abscissal resistance” and “ordinate resistance.” To ease the transition to these new terms, I suggest that we replace “horizontal resistance” in our usage with the phrase “horizontal, or abscissal, resistance” for a period of three years. We should thereupon switch to saying “abscissal, or horizontal, resistance” for another two and a half to three years. After these transition periods we can finally drop the obfuscatory “horizontal” term and simply refer to “abscissal resistance.” Similarly, the confusing term “vertical” can be gradually replaced with “ordinate.”
I’m glad we’re all in agreement on this. If someone could create Wikipedia entries for these new terms, that would be great.
I agree with Don on both the points he’s making. I and I’m sure most of us here do as well, find it a little disappointing when the lineage of a rose is not listed or when it is listed, the parent plant simply states that it’s the parent of the rose you just looked at with no other information about it. I guess I don’t know why people have to be so secretive about it. One advantage of using plants from your own breeding lines, is that you know what is in the lineage of your own roses.
With regards to horizontal and vertical disease resistance, at first I thought what difference does it matter what you call them. If you change the names of them you’re just swapping one term for another. But as I thought about it, if the author had used the terms general resistance and specific resistance I would have known instantly what he meant. But instead I had to learn what he meant by horizontal and vertical resistance, which are terms he picked based on how the two different resistances plotted out on his graph. While the terms that Joe are suggesting may be more accurate scientifically, as a lay person I have no idea what they mean and it will be hard for me to remember them. General resistance and specific resistance may be more generic but I know what mean and they would be far easier for me to remember.
I dunno how many posts I read discussing horizontal and vertical resistance before I put away my pride, showed my ignorance, stuck my neck out there and asked what it meant. I’ve learned the new words, and now you guys wanna deprive me of that?? I felt like I’d been given the secret rose breeder society passwords!
I can understand why breeders might want to safeguard their secret weapon breeding parent identities. I don’t like it, but I can understand it. And I assume that “seedling” might frequently be a rose on the market readily accessible to other breeders.
On the subject of RKO, I wonder how many folks are playing with RADsweet aka Alaska. I’ve heard good things about it, I seem to recall, but I don’t think it is available on the American market, strangely.
Kim, yes.
(To both, actually.)
I do have a number of old seeds from crosses made at the prior homestead in the fridge right now (“Honey, WHAT is in this container?”) with hopes that they might still have life, and I am planning all sorts of weird crosses with the stock I do have on hand. (I’m honestly not sure how/where I will test-grow the seedlings if a whole lot of them do sprout. My wife has made clear she is not a big fan of the pot-ghetto esthetic, and our realty has been greatly reduced.)
Of course, my ideal breeding stock includes some real monster climbers from which to work… How shade-tolerant are Basye’s amphidiploid (abyssinica/rugosa version)? Commander Gillette? R. sinowilsonnii? R. soulieana? R.foliolosa?.. And the dream list goes on…
I will email you, but, I do sincerely know what you mean about no room and wanting to mess around with monsters. Basye’s Amphidiploid and Basye’s Legacy (all of the Basye’s Legacy, Commander Gillette, Basye’s Thornless and the two number associated with the two are identical. I have yet to see one which isn’t the same as all the rest, and it was Dr. Basye’s fault. He provided “Commander Gillette”, identified as CG to Richard Neumeyer (I hope I spelled his name right, it’s been many years…) at Basye’s garden in Texas. He handed him the plant and told him what it was. Richard and I met through Garden Web and as Richard was moving and feared losing the plant, he graciously sent cuttings to Sequoia, which propagated it and gave me a plant. Dr. Basye sent 77-361 to The Huntington Library and identified it as that plant. I have a photocopy of the accession card identifying it as 77-361, and Dr. Basye wrote he had sent it to them in the ARS annual article about the roses. Someone years prior, gave Ralph Moore a plant of “Basye’s Thornless” which I have also grown. They are ALL the same rose. Which they are who can say? But they ARE the same) grew on the drip line of a monstrous oak tree in the Study Plot at The Huntington. Both plants were in the shade of the tree, receiving only filtered light. Both grew up IN to the tree with massive canes, where they threw themselves through the limbs out into the sun. Even where they only received reflected and filtered light, they were healthy and flowered. How they would be in other climates, I couldn’t even begin to guess, but there, they performed admirably. Sinowilsonii appears to be the same. Mine is trapped in a five gallon pot and is ONLY about 7’ long. I’ve only had it a few months. It receives filtered light through the trellis part of the patio cover on the north side of the house, where the sun shines over the house and through the trellis. I don’t have Ralph’s Soulieana now. I sent it to Jonathan Windham at Clemson and a nurseryman friend who has promised to propagate it to get it distributed. Foliolosa is new to me and is about as diminutive as you could imagine. Totally thornless, very thin wooded and completely deciduous, it is also potted in the shade of the patio cover and seeming to be completely content. Currently it is bare, but it is colonizing its pot vigorously. I doubt any of these will have many issues with filtered or reflected light.
The two trees in our backyard pretty much shade the entirety of it. They are probably about 60 year old live oaks, so aren’t even fully deciduous, but I was thinking that rampant climbers might be adapted to that sort of thing. You are a good enabler, sir. I will point the finger at you when the wife questions my planting monsters to grow into her trees. How tall of a ladder will I need to do my hybridizing?
Sorry to be so thick, but am I correct in understanding you to say that the real, original Commander Gillette appears to be lost to history, and that only “legacy” is in circulation posing as both parent and offspring?
Not thick at all. Who knows which rose it is? I’ve asked Malcolm Manners about DNA testing them all to first, see if they are all the same (they certainly LOOK the same to me, NO variations between them), and second, to determine what is behind them. I figured that would be possible by testing them against the Probable Amphidiploid as that may be one parent. The second part then could be filled in testing them against R. Carolina…except, Malcolm said it would require THE Carolina Basye used to get any credible results. So, he says the best that could be hoped for is to determine if they are all the same, or not. That doesn’t change the fact that Dr. Basye handed a plant to David (sorry, I remembered his name inaccurately) Neumeyer, then sent the SAME plant to The Huntington, identifying it as TWO different plants. So, which are they? I dunno. Paul Zimmerman and I decided to call this specific one “Basye’s Legacy” because the identification and provenance are well documented. Basye identified it and I collected it from the plant Basye sent The Huntington. The plant I have is THE plant I rooted from the one in the Study Plot, so I know where it came from. I know when it was planted, where it was planted, and I know what Basye said it was.http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=21.215354
Total, reach-down-and-slide-your-hand-up-the-entire-branch-without-any-fear thornlessness. Glossy, attractive, healthy foliage. Above average hardiness. Vigor. The potential to give reblooming F1’s.
All of the above. Plus, wonderfully colored wood; autumn foliage; beautiful, plentiful hips; a high percentage of prickle-free, healthy babies; and tremendous “what if?” potential.
How tall of a ladder will I need to do my hybridizing?