What are the rules or indicators for what colour a new rose will be from the colours of its parents? Is it as simple as red plus yellow gives orange? What about purple plus yellow? How best to avoid a washed-out almost white with barely-there bits of colour?
Does it get more complicated with having to cross back a rose with the parent that had the desired deep colour?
Sometimes it seems it would be simple, such as when you cross a mauve HT with a golden yellow HT and create the “copper and parchment” Julia’s Rose. But, not usually. Sometimes a rose will seem to dominate its offspring with its coloring while most of the time, the default color is “pink”. There are color charts, which used to be easier to find. Unfortunately, they are falling off the Net. Hopefully, others can help find them for you.
Thanks for that chart.
It is one big DNA lotery. I have results you may think they are miss labeled but some do not even look like its mom and dad.
Anectdotally, I have to say the chance of a pink rose is dramatically understated for some of those combinations. 
If I remember correctly, the original creator went through “modern roses X” (or whatever, some sort of book registry with stated parentages) and tallied things out…so in some ways it’s likely pretty heavily skewed towards older HT’s and Floribunda and obviously just the “successful” results of a cross (and not their 1000’s of rejected siblings).
Oh. Put in that context, it makes much more sense.
So the chart is limited the selected (not culled) cultivars, and not the average of a given cross? A disproportionate number of the roses i actively cull have been pink. (Mother nature culls the remainder.) Thanks for the clarification.
Is the top the pollen and the side the seed parent?
Hi Elena, it appears the vertical column on the left is the seed (mother) and the top is the pollen (father). That makes the most sense.
Thanks for that. This is my first year.
You’re welcome! You’re going to have fun! Don’t take such lists as gospel. The rose always has OTHER ideas.
There is a variation on a saying in many different sciences that for rose hybridizing would be, “The roses don’t read the text book.”
Mr. Moore, HUNDREDS of times over the 25 or so years I knew and visited him…" Roses can’t read" and “the rose will find the way”.
A little off-topic, but I recall reading a claim years ago pertaining to maternal vs paternal selections when bringing 2 parents together. I believe the claim involved which parent’s attributes you want the seedlings to favor for blossom, vs which parent’s attributes should be favored for bush.
Can anybody speak to that? Any truth that mother plants pass certain attributes more strongly than poppa plants and vice versa? I never took it very seriously, and do not have enough statistically meaningful data to say if there is generally a difference based on which way a cross is goes.
