regarding the use of species

Rose Genetics Ploidy Level
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1

Hi. I am new to this forum and as many others have been reading for some time…
I wonder a bit about your wiew of using species in breeding?

If you look at a population of “wild” roses there are usually some variation of characteristic within the population and If I where to incorperate this with “modern roses” does it really matter which clone I use?

I mean if I would refine the species for several generations by crossing and selecting that wold be a different story, but when I use a species that overall is helthy and “native” to my area does it make any diffrent if i use the best clone o the worst? The genetic this species would contribute is diverse (and hopefully) valuable for continued breeding no matter the specific plant/clone ?

2

Hello Paul-

There are many discussions here about breeding with species. A little searching around will reveal a lot of interesting exchanges. This year I started breeding with R. nutkana and R. acicularis and am anxious to see what they produced.

As for your question- others more experience than I may weigh in, but I would suggest that within any population of species roses, there will be considerable genetic variation. The challenge with any given rose is knowing whether its particular characteristics (particularly tall, vigorous, striped, spotted, dwarf) are ontogenic or phylogenic. IE are they a result of that particular plant’s soil, exposure, moisture, etc, or are those characteristics in the genes? My feeling is that we often get excited about a unique plant when in fact it’s a just an average plant in a unique growing environment.

That said, if you look up the different species on Helpmefind.com you will see many named clones of a given species that appear to have their own unique qualities regardless of growing environment. It makes sense, given the tremendous geographic range of some of the species.

And then there’s ploidy to add into the mix: within some species (acicularis for example) you’ll have tetraploid, hexaploid, etc within the same species. These will influence your hybridizing program.

Don

3

You have to remember that when you’re crossing two plants that you’re going to get a mix of all of their characteristics and not just the characteristics you’re looking to combine, like hardiness or foliage type. So it’s best to use plants that are closest to your ideal so you’ll spend less time breeding the unwanted characteristics out later. Another thing to consider is that some plants are going to be more fertile than others, so collecting more than one specimen of each species will increase your odds of having successful crosses.

When I first started doing this I wanted to use the native species because I figured they were already well adapted to my area. So I collected around 20 specimens each of R.blanda and R.arkansana. Over the course of several years I winnowed those down to just several of each. I didn’t have much luck with crosses using R.arkansana and I got two first generation R.arkansana hybrids from another member so I ended up using them instead. I kept two of the R.blanda plants, one was completely thornless but it didn’t have as good as disease resistance as the other one. But it turns out I used the thornless one more in crosses anyway because it was more fertile. I also had an R.glauca that I tried numerous crosses with but all I ever got were self-pollinated seedlings. I know others have had better luck with crosses with the R.glauca plants they’ve had. So there can be a difference in which species specimen you use.

1 Like
4

Welcome, Paul! If you are planning to use the species with more modern roses, you might consider using the species’ pollen on the modern. I’ve done both directions and found it much more difficult determining if something was actually a cross or simply a self, when using the species for seed parent. When a modern seed germinates with species traits, it’s a dead give away that it’s an actual cross. You’ll find discussions indicating you may get more of the species trait if it’s used as seed parent, and that may be true (or not), but if you’re like most of us, you have limited space. Using the species pollen on more modern seed parents can significantly reduce the room required to raise the seedlings as you can more quickly, easily focus on those which are more likely crosses between the two.

5

I am like Kim, I mainly use them as pollinators as they have the ability to shed pollen before the bloom has opened.

6

Different clones of a given species, and especially different mutant types, can give different results.

American Rose Annual (1956) 41:123-125
New Approach to the Breeding of Hardy Roses
Dr. F. L. Skinner, Dropmore, Manitoba

“Rosa virginiana was one of the American rose species that I used many years ago with rather indifferent results; however in the spring of 1950 I had in bloom, in pots, plants of R. damascena Celsiana, R. d. rubrotincta and a double white form of R. alba as well as a plant of R. virginiana alba. The flowers of the latter were fertilized with the pollen of the three old roses and from the seed secured about twenty seedlings germinated in 1952. Two of these seedlings that flowered for the first time this year had double flowers, one had white flowers resembling R. alba while the other had clear pink flowers like Celsiana in form and only slightly smaller; the foliage of all these _R. virginiana alba_hybrids is clean looking and nice. Pollen from these hybrids was used this summer on some of the old roses with apparently satisfactory results.”
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/Skinner/skinner_new_approach.html

And reciprocal crosses with a species may or may not be equivalent.

ARS Magazine, May-June, 1933
Hybridizing Species Roses
J. H. NICOLAS

“Mendel and his interpreters, Drs. Bateson and Hugo de Vries, are silent on the role of the sexes, probably because their experiments have been mainly with simple species for both parents, while in horticultural practice a species is generally crossed with a hybrid; but Dr. Blackburn believes that results should be the same whichever sex of a species is used when crossed with a hybrid. However, my experiences of many years concur with Mallerin’s of France, Lambert’s of Germany, Dot’s of Spain, and other practitioners, that the species is more easily and quickly “cracked” when used as pollen parent; its imprint at the first generation is generally more subdued, or to be more correct, the percentage of the mother type, with, of course, a more or less pronounced species influence, will be much larger than the species type, and these mother types will save time in bringing the desired finished product. For instance, a cross of Hortulanus Budde x R. Moyesi gave me slightly modified Hybrid Tea types where Moyesi was only recognized by the weird red single blooms and smaller foliage, while one almost totally mother type revealed the pollen parent only by the queer bottle shape of Moyesi fruits. The reciprocal cross (R. Moyesi x Hortulanus Budde) produced plants almost as uncouth and crude as Moyesi. The same result was obtained with other species crosses, the only exception being a cross of Mrs. E. P. Thom x R. baltica pollen, which gave one seedling very dominantly Mrs. E. P. Thom, although with smaller foliage, but double, with bloom-color and remontance of Thom, one true intermediate but not remontant, and one almost identical to the species.”
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/NicolasSpecies1933.html

7

Regarding the original question, I think you are definitely on the right track in seeking to choose the best possible clone from a species population for breeding. I think would make a big difference in the offspring. Seeing one person’s results with a modern x species cross, one could not expect near-identical results from the same cross unless using the same clone of the species.

Paul brings up the excellent point that fertility is a trait that cannot be overlooked.

When I acquired R. woodsii, R. acicularis, R. arkansana, R. carolina, and R. virginiana from Lawyer Nursery, I had to get 25 or 50 of each. I started the selection process by choosing the five least thorny plants of each species to plant out. Who knows what other linked characteristics I was unknowingly selecting for, because I only planted those five of each.

Now, several years later, some differences between the five of each have manifested. Some of the R. carolina have gotten mildew, while others remained clean. Also the R. carolina vary in terms of habit, bloom color, and bloom time. I have one that seems to reach for the sky and blooms early, and my favorite, which I call Carolina #3, is bushy and healthy with dark green foliage, lighter blossoms, and is the latest of the bunch to bloom.

R. acicularis show interesting but seemingly unconsequential variations in blossom color, hip size and shape, bloom time, hip ripening time, and susceptibility to chlorosis. One of the R. arkansana ended up with a fine darker line through the center of each petal. The poor thing is now being eaten by R. carolina, so I don’t know if it will survive, but I will collect some OP hips this fall and see if any of the seedlings have the line.

I’ve been planting out masses of seed in outdoor beds in an attempt to further select towards thornlessness. Only a tiny fraction of seedlings appear to be thornless, and I can think it would be beneficial to continue this process until I get a plant that produces mostly thornless or low-thorn seedlings, so I could assume it was passing those results on in crosses with modern roses.

I may be in good position to make observations about reciprocal crosses with species roses, as I have used R. carolina this year extensively as a seed parent and less extensively as a pollen parent. I haven’t intentionally done any direct reciprocal crosses, but I should be able to get an idea in general of what R. carolina x modern does in relation to modern x R. carolina. Personally I would be happy if my crosses using R. carolina as a seed parent showed a heavier influence from R. carolina…what’s not to like about those characteristics? Just get rid of the suckering and add remontancy and you’d have a spectacular garden rose. I know it’s not that easy to recover rebloom without sacrificing hardiness, but I am going to try.

8

Wish I had the space to grow populations…

Jbergeson - when you grow a population from the more thornless clones is the “fraction” of thornless seedling a higher % than when you use op seeds from a random plant?
If you grow op seeds from the most thornless during a few generations and end up whith consistant thornless trait doesent that indicate inbreeding…?
And would inbreeding a species for a few generations bee a good or bad thing - i suppose most wild populations started out as one hip eaten and moved by a bird to a sutable place and mostly beeing selfs for several generations If isolated, in time some traits would be reinforced as a adaptation to the new location. But still it seems that within a isolated population, variation prevail… of course there will be less shovel pruning in nature. …

Hmm… ok i think i will try go grow a small population and op some generation

Thanks for all your replies

9

Linkage is an important and often overlooked fact of breeding. Traits, and the genes behind them, are not free for the taking. There is always linkage.

When we cross a garden variety with a species selection, no doubt we are expecting to retain some traits of the cultivated sort, and some from the wild form. For example, one might cross a deep red HT with a pink-flowered species, hoping to find some hybrids with the darker color. But the genes related to the red color necessarily bring along other genes, though we don’t know (when we start out) what characteristics they will influence. At the same time, we have implicitly decided in advance to reject all the corresponding genes from the species. The same goes for doubleness, if our HT is double and the species is single-flowered.

It is certainly to our advantage to locate a red-flowered selection of the species. That way the later generation seedlings might derive the “genes for red” from either parent. A double-flowered selection of the species is also useful in the same way. “Genes for doubling” could be had from either parent, along with whatever other genes are linked to them.

A real-life example is Burbank’s ‘Giant Maritima’ plum. The wild Beach plum (Prunus maritima) usually bears fruit that are small, hard and acrid. Any wild specimen might be crossed with a superior Japanese plum, and no doubt some decent progeny might be had in the F2 or later generations. But Burbank started by “growing seedlings of the Beach plum by the hundred thousand. By continuous selection I had produced varieties bearing fruits nearly an inch in diameter, of a pleasing form and color, of delicious flavor. The trees, moreover, had almost incredible productiveness together with increased size and vigor.”

He then crossed the improved Maritima with a Japanese plum. In the F2 generation he raised a new plum with fruit sometimes 8.25 inches in circumference.
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Heredity/Burbank/BurbankMaritima1914.html

If one could find both a red-flowered and a double form of a given species, and cross them, the progeny would more promising candidates for crossing with a garden rose than a typical form of the same species.

10

Paul,
Some species are more capable of inbreeding than others. I happened to read an article just yesterday about Rosa rugosa escapes crossing with the native R. blanda. Blanda has a more rigid barrier to selfing than Rugosa.

Inbreeding is not always as great a problem as one might suppose. There may be no "shovel pruning’ in the wild, but there is competition and predation that will favor the stronger growing seedlings. And we should distinguish “close breeding” (pollination between closely related plants) and strict inbreeding (selfing).

In either case, we can expect an increase in the frequency of traits that are being selected. If thornless is important to your breeding program, you will be ahead of the game if you have a selected strain of the species that always (or almost always) gives thornless seedlings.

Basye (1985) commented on this matter:
“Selfed seedlings of 65-626 are generally thornless with smooth midribs. Rarely a thorn will appear. But roughly half will have a few fine bristles low on the canes, close to the base of the plant. This is clearly a throwback to R. carolina, which has a generous supply of these base bristles. To prevent the frequent reappearance of these latent (recessive?) bristles in later crossings, I would suggest several recessive selflings of 65-526. This was one of my oversights as an amateur.”
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/basye/gillette.htm

In other words, eliminating undesirable traits early in the program can make later progress more certain.

11

I have several examples where close breeding that proved successful to me. I have a Marie Pavie x (thornless) R.blanda that I tried it’s pollen on numerous plants with no success. Finally I tried it on a half sibling (Showy Pavement x R.blanda) with some of the pollinations taking and I got 11 seedlings from the cross. One has repeat bloom and I have made multiple crosses with it as well. I also had Catherine Guelda (seedling x Therese Bugnet) which I had been told was not fertile. I tried it’s pollen on the same (SP x Rb) as above but none of the pollinations took. Encouraged by the above results I decided to try it on a half sibling as well, that being Metis (R.nitida x Therese Bugnet). Some of the pollinations took and I now have 6 seedlings from that cross. I had more but lost quite a few seedlings this year from Downy Mildew this year.

1 Like
12

Paul J,

I am certainly hoping that there will be a higher percentage of thornless seedlings in the next generation, but my first round of selections have yet to bloom and will take some time to build themselves up to bear large quantities of hips, so this is going to be a long process. I remember Pierre mentioning something that inbreeding isn’t as much of a problem when working with species.

13

I understand why some rose breeders want to develop roses with few prickles or none at all, but I could never relate to this. No doubt because I see them from a landscaper’s point of view. Meaning that plant materials are attractive because of their form, colour and texture. The texture of a plant’s stems and foliage is often overlooked when designing a landscape. If prickles are few or absent from a rose stem, the texture of them is, of course, much reduced. Furthermore, the colour of the stems is also decreased.

Many years ago while visiting Skinner’s Nursery in Manitoba, Hugh pointed out a Rosa acicularis he had collected that had stems that were densely prickled. When the rose was dormant, I agreed with him that the shrub was quite attractive because of the yellowish colour of the prickles that dominated the shrub. I wonder if he still has this shrub.

In my opinion, a rose having no prickles or very few on a stem is less of a rose. Of course I’m influenced in this view by having lived in cold climates (Zone 2 and 3) much of my life, where the native rose species and foreign rose species cold hardy to these climates generally have stems that are well prickled. Thus they are adapted to survive cold and harsh climates. It works to the rose breeder’s advantage living in these climates to maintain this characteristic of the shrub in their programs, because venturing into breeding roses having no or few prickles can mean a loss of cold hardiness. And perhaps also a loss in disease resistance.

14

Perhaps, Paul, but from an “endless summer” landscaping perspective, the freedom from prickles opens many new doors. There are many landscapers here who refuse to touch roses due to the injuries prickles can cause. Removing the prickles opens them to being planted where suitable. Of course, we don’t have the arctic hardiness requirement nor are deciduous plants in that great a demand where many plants are required to flower thirteen months of the year.

15

I looked many years for a completely thornless R.blanda and was estatic when I finely found one. I think the smooth red canes of R.blanda are very striking and would really like to get them incorporated into a repeat blooming rose. But I must admit that I really like the look of the red stems covered in prickles of Metis.

As for hardiness, the thornless rose I found was in Zone 4 but I’m sure it’ll be hardy in Zone 3 and the thornless Helen Bland is hardy to Zone 2.

16

I must respectfully disagree with you, Paul O., in regards to the value of thornless roses in this cold climate that we share.

A landscaper is like a hit and run lover, not having to deal with the consequences of his choices, whereas a gardener must deal with her plants from year to year. Many of these arctic hardy prickly roses like to send up suckers, forcing one to periodically struggle with an armed enemy. Every rose has the potential have a dead branch here or there come spring, as well, making the inevitable pruning a painful chore.

I think it is not too far off to get a thornless R. carolina or R. virginiana, and their hardiness, while not on par with a rose like Suzanne, is not too bad. Likewise R. acicularis, which is hardy to the smallest tips, I think has the potential to defy it’s nickname of “Prickly Rose” and become thornless.

When comparing seedlings of modern roses crossed with R. virginiana or with Suzanne, those crossed with R. virginiana tend to have better health and fewer thorns.

If one plans to cross these roses with repeat blooming modern roses, thornlessness becomes even more important because the resulting seedlings will almost always have some dead wood in the spring.

I haven’t had a chance to fully evaluate Commander Gillette/Basye’s Legacy’s effect on hardiness and disease resistance, but my plant of CG is so far very healthy and of above average crown hardiness compared to modern rebloomers. I love working with such a smooth rose and the total lack of fear with which one can reach down, grab a stem, and slide your hand all the way up the branch.

I have to admit that I love the look of the red thorns on R. xanthina.

Thornlessness is about the fourth priority on my list of hybridizing goals, after hardiness, health, and aesthetic appeal. I think it is an important characteristic to help bring roses to the masses in this northern climate.

17

Joe,

As I previously mentioned, I like a rose that looks like a rose, which means it should be prickly. But that’s my conditioning and generally the product of cold hardy rose culture that I’m most interested in. So my preference can’t be debated with.

As well, basic landscape principles can’t be debated with either. For example, the value of repetition of plant materials in the landscape. As I pointed out, the texture of plant materials is very important to the aesthetics of a landscape. A Rugosa rose, for example, would be less attractive in the landscape if it didn’t have foliage texture (the rugose characteristic). I think it would be unfortunate to take away the natural characteristics of a rose just to make them easier to handle? If this is done, the landscape loses. The large rose nurseries, of course, couldn’t care less about this. I have no doubt they would prefer to have all the roses they sell thornless, so they could use it as a marketing tool.

I think it’s highly unlikely a thornless Rosa acicularis will ever be developed. Unlike Rosa woodsii populations, there isn’t a high variation in the characteristics of their canes. This species is very consistent in having a high amount of dense prickles on the lower part of its canes. Indeed, it’s the easiest way to identify it compared to Rosa woodsii.

Developing roses for a changing home landscape should also be a priority for rose breeders, including those who live in cold climates.

18

20150726_102200.jpg
Paul
Regarding acicularis i think this species is one of the most widly spread roses, wild in europe, asia and north america… May be really hard to find but less thorny clones ought to exist somewhere.
Possibly acicularis could be used in breeding with thornless roses ?

If the photo is attached, this acicularis is quite smooth on flowering branches
I do not know where this is collected or If correct labeled… but not to thorny at least

19

I also place thornlessness low on the list of evaluation criteria- not because I don’t desire it (it would be nice for marketing purposes in most cases) but because once you select for health, zone 3 hardiness, floral beauty and fragrance, you pretty much have to take what you can get.

I’m surprised suckering hasn’t come up as a trait to eliminate in species roses. In a well-fed, well-watered garden, some of the species and near-species roses are highly invasive. I remember my mother was so delighted to have an acicularis in her garden, until it started suckering up across her yard. It took a few years for us to get rid of it. Another one that suckers terribly is Metis, an otherwise spectacular and truly unique cultivar.

don

20

Don - Suckering is on my elimination list but apparently isn’t a problem for some. This photo is the last of a second-year Fru Dagmar Hastrup x Rosa glauca cross that I discarded. The measurement is a yardstick, not a 12" ruler. Very vigorous but too much so underground. One runner is five feet long with no sign of stopping.
20150621_164656.jpg