“Species preference for soil type has nonetheless been reported. R. villosa was reported to grow better in a dry soil with low calcium content whereas R. canina and R. dumalis prefer more calcareous soil. R. rubiginosa also prefers more calcium and grows well in a relatively heavy soil. R. palustris grows in marshes and R. nitida in bogs. Similarly, R. virginiana likes salt marshes and salty soils (Joly, personal communications). In Prince Edwards Island province (Canada), wild rosehips are found in a variety of habitats including hedgerows, wet and dry pastures, thickets, swamps and uplands in dry orthic humo-ferric Podzol sandy soils.”
Baron de Soutellinho, Entre Quintas, Oporto, Portugal, sent a couple of notes to The Garden in 1907. He observed that Rosa gigantea produced 5-6 inch flowers in his garden [sandy loam on granite], but in Lisbon [reddish clay over limestone] the blooms were 8 inches. The complete accounts are on HelpMeFind under Rosa gigantea.
Van Fleet (1919) added another item regarding soil preference.
“Owing to its poor seeding abilities when grown as grafted plants on heavy soil, less progress has been made than was hoped for with R. Moyesii, notable among wild roses for the deep red coloring and waxy texture of its widely expanded blooms. Now that our plants have been transferred to the sandy loam of Bell Experiment Plot, and have become established on their own roots, seeds are more freely borne, and a fair number of hybrids are under way. Pollen was plentifully produced, even when the fruits failed to mature, and a few early crosses, the result of applying it to the stigmas of other species and varieties, have sufficiently developed to show prospective value.” http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/VanFleet/VanFleet1919.html
Have you or Jeri tried ‘La Reine’ budded on ‘Gloire des Rosomenes’, or vice versa? I’m just wondering whether the roots themselves are at fault, or some quality of the soil (mineral composition?) that affects the plant as a whole.
No sir. La Reine has never been worth the effort. We both, butJeri, in particular, have focused on roses which flourished where we are without the added effort. I’ve played with budding. She’s happy to grow the roses which are “happy” to be with her.
I posted the Hibberd quote to HelpMeFind last year under ‘La Reine’ and got a supporting response (6 MAY 13) from Tessie.
This is very interesting as I’d come to the same conclusion recently myself but due to the performance of entirely different roses. Now I find someone knew all about this phenomenon long before I was even born!
In my case what I’ve noticed in Southern California is that those people who have teas and chinas perform superbly for them, generally have terrible trouble with albas, damasks, gallicas, hybrid perpetuals, and rugosas. Whereas for me it is the exact opposite. I can’t grow teas and chinas to save my life, in spite of trying multiple different ones from different sources for close to 20 years. They arrive healthy and quickly become afflicted by one or more diseases, grow backwards, and most die within a couple years or so. The other categories such as albas, damasks, gallicas, hp’s, and rugosas are very, very easy for me, grow like weeds, and flower like gangbusters. All with no trouble at all, little to no fertilizer or mulch, and no soil amendments. Both the water and soil here are alkaline too. In addition, roses grafted on multiflora or with lots of multiflora genes also flourish, whereas wichuranas struggle. And in case anyone is curious about “winter chill” this area gets very little. Apple trees perform notoriously badly (don’t fruit).
Btw I grew La Reine (from Antique Rose Emporium in Texas) in the past on a piece of property I no longer own but in the same city as my current garden. It was wonderful. Healthy as could be (absolutely clean leaves), treated the same as my other roses (low/no fertilizer/mulch), bloomed heavily with fragrant flowers and was densely foliaged. I haven’t tried Gloire de Rososmene…
Some day we’ll have to consider the soil preferences of Rosa spp. and learn more about their inheritance. For instance, the article about the Prince Edward Island roses informs us that R. virginiana “likes salt marshes and salty soils”. And in my limited experience, R. suffulta/arkansana (in Kansas) favors full sun, and does well pushing through the gravel alongside country roads and railroad tracks. If we crossed these two species, we are likely to get somewhat different results if we raise the F1 hybrids and their F2 progeny in limestone gravel as opposed to salt soil. And we should expect different patterns or reassortment, because factors favoring one or the other soil-type are bound to be linked to more obvious characters of leaf, stem and flower.
This sort of thing has been documented among the Louisiana irises, where the descendants of crosses between Iris fulva and I. hexagona var. giganti-caerulea generally favor one or the other parent according to the conditions of the soil. In areas where humans have greatly modified the local conditions by plowing, draining, cutting brush, etc. the populations are much more inclined to “Mendelize”, because most of the different forms can find a suitable place to grown. http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Heredity/Anderson/Anderson_Introgressive/anderson01.htm
What Tessie says is very similar to my own experience, except that in the northerly coastal areas, sometimes it’s hard to find anywhere where chinensis hybrids do great. Ragged Robin is essentially unstoppable here, and Damasks and Albas aren’t much worse. But the same cannot be said for Ragged Robin’s 12,700+ descendants. Geant des Batailles, for example, was long a joke at SJHRG, where it stayed under two feet tall, and did not look very well. I think that Ragged Robin has some crazy triploid vigor going, and while it easily transfers its (good, but hardly perfect) genes, the vigor isn’t included, so its offspring are inevitably less happy roses than it is.
Ragged Robin develops a big, shaggy taproot very quickly, and I have never succeeded in containing it for long. While good roots in a pot may equal good roots in the ground, with roses like it and canina, the best roots in the ground may be those that force their way towards the water table, and won’t stay within a pot. If there are to be xeric landscape or garden roses in the future, I think they may need different roots than the patio roses will want.
Thanks Paul for bringing up the subject - excellent discussion, and great ideas!
I agree that a vigorously growing and floriferous seedling will have a good root system. Also, as Kim mentioned, in the U.S., there is little commercial value for a rose that cannot grow and show well in a pot since the market appears to be solidly headed in that direction. Also worth mentioning, something that I have seen in seedlings is that a vigorously growing seedling with a vigorous root system does not mean that it will root well from cuttings - these are two separate traits.
When considering parent plants, you may want to make sure that a least one of them roots well, and that both of them can grow well on their own roots. I am still working on breeding healthier HT’s and was very pleased to see that my favorite HT seed parent, ‘Gemini’, grows well on it’s own roots.
There were a few apparent exceptions that retained the vigor. The one that comes to mind is ‘Enfant d’Ajaccio’.
The Gardeners’ Chronicle. Feb. 18, 1843. p. 100
THE ROSE GARDEN.—No. IV.
“Z”
One of the best, and nearly the first, raised from the type [Gloire de Rosamene], is well known as Le grand Capitaine, with flowers of equal brilliancy, but more double than those of its parent. It is to be regretted that it has not the same peculiar luxuriance of habit; but this we have in an eminent degree in Enfant d’Ajaccio, lately raised at Lyons, having flowers nearly or quite double, with the fine laciniated foliage and robust habit of Gloire de Rosamene, and, above all, possessed of fragrance in a high degree.
At the end of an Earth-Kind trial in Texas and MN we dug four cultivars (4 plants each at each site) to try to document root characteristics and associations with drought tolerance and general performance (these roses represented a range in performance). We looked at root numbers and diameters near the crown of the plant, overall root and shoot dry weight and some other characteristics. It was a lot of work and that is why we only did it for the limited number of cultivars. The idea was if we found some good leads we could do more work with future trials as they ended in the future. We presented an abstract at the ASHS conference in 2012 and have a paper under review.
Unfortunately, we didn’t find a lot except the overall biomass of the root system was important for greater drought tolerance and performance. How the roots were branched, etc. in this study did not result in finding a pattern of root architecture that was associated with better outcomes. The roses did experience significant drought in Texas the season before harvest.
There definitely are key root architecture features that have been important for Dr. Buck’s rootstock breeding for number and flexibility of roots. That makes sense as roses are lifted from the field leaving much of their root system behind and what the consumer gets is important for how well plants survive. Different roses of course have different capacities of nutrient absorption based in part on overall size of the root system (surface area), but also ability to change the biosphere right by them and coax nutrients off of soil particles with humic and other acids and exudates.
I am very impressed with the root system of Above and BeyondTM. It is a cross of a yellow mini and a hybrid of two species (R. virginiana / R. laxa). The roots are very robust. It doesn’t sucker typically, but if the roots are injured with a shovel will send up a shoot. I remember one year having to move a plant of it and it was incredible how extensive the roots and crown were. I even saved stray roots to make root cuttings and it worked.
More research can be done, but it is generally thought that the plant hormone cytokinin is especially synthesized in roots. It leads to cell division and shoot breaks. It makes sense that roots that are active and growing well and producing good amounts of cytokinins have resources that should contribute to signalling the upper portion of the plant that more can be supported and contribute to growth at that end.
I love that own root roses are gaining in popularity for a number of practical production and end consumer reasons. It encourages selection for roses that are well adapted to regions they are evaluated in and have the kind of root systems important to support quality overall plants.
David, that’s a very interesting project you all did with the root study. I look forward to reading the paper when it gets published.
I am very impressed with the root system of Above and BeyondTM.
I’ve been watching for it to show up but, so far, none of the nurseries I know about have it. Can you shake loose from Bailey’s the names of any mail order retailers (or central CT/western MA nurseries) who have ordered it from them?
The root system of my R. Bhutan (Clements), shown in my recent posting, is super vigorous and has burst out of its box and plunged into the ground, with roots 3/4" in diameter like a jungle plant. Might this be a good root stock for grafting other roses, since there is no suckering after four years in the ground?
Joe, thanks, if I can’t locate one commercially I will gladly accept the offer. BTW, I’ve got my data transcribed now and am about to get started whittling on seeds. These apparently successful survey crosses may be of interest to you:
Hips Seeds Female Male
1 1 Dakota Song x Rosa virginiana
1 2 Flirt x Roxina
1 5 Lemon Fizz x Castle Bravo
1 12 Lychee Lemonade x Roxina
1 1 Poseidon x 922-1
1 1 Poseidon x Cannikin
3 9 Solero x Roxina
1 1 Aloha x Flirt
1 8 922-1 x Lemon Fizz
2 6 922-1 x Lychee Lemonade
1 2 1072-1 x Poseidon
2 5 613-4 x Poseidon
2 13 922-1 x Winners Circle
922-1 is Cannikin x Incantation.
1072-1 is Sundowner x Scarlet Moss.
613-4 is Carlin’s Rhythm OP.
Roxina is R. roxburghii normalis x Carefree Delight.
Some of these will hopefully prove to be viable and actually hybrids.
[attachment=0]Watermelon Wine.JPG[/attachment][attachment=1]Texas Sunset (3).JPG[/attachment]Yesterday was quite nice here in Central Texas so I spent the afternoon potting up cutting I made last October. These two, Texas Sunset and Watermelon Wine, have passed the test for ease of propagation and good roots. Each one had a bud for new basal break. I have them posted on HelpMeFind.
I wonder if there is any significance to measuring the characteristics of the root system for those rosarians that grow their roses in soil that resembles a chemical dump. So far no one has mentioned the amount of MYCORRHIZAL FUNGI observed on their root systems.
Rob, I did not germinate any of these embryos this year - everything is still in the fridge - so I don’t yet have any seedlings with Lemon Fizz parentage. While I did manage to execute a decent number of pollinations this springtime and have collected hips I have not yet transcribed them into my database so can’t report those yet either. Remind me again in the wintertime and I should have the crosses and yields data to report.
I have some Lemon Fizz x Petit Pink and LF x Music Box that look pretty nice in the field. They haven’t faced a winter yet. This year seeds on LF from a few other pollens. It doesn’t have too many seeds per hip, but otherwise not bad as a female. I don’t think I’ve tried it too much as a pollen parent but it seems like it would work.
Good to learn that you have had some success with LF as a parent Joe. In the patent it states no hips observed so it’s mice to know otherwise. Thank you.
Adaptiveness of roots can involve the production of specific substances that are excreted from the roots to aid in extracting minerals.
In lime-rich soils, plants may exude di- and tricarboxylic acids; the former liberate phosphorus, while the latter are good extractors of Fe and Mn from calcareous soils. Lime-hating plants exude mostly monocarboxylic acids (poor in mobilising P or Fe from calcareous soils). http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/RengelRootExudate2002.html
I did a preliminary search through the articles on my web page, then made a biblio of references to soil preferences … and related matters. http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/KKing/Roses_Soil.html
I’ve never had to deal with soil that is almost constantly moist, but if I should ever have to face it I’ll know that the cabbage is particularly good at tolerating stagnant water.
Karl
