Schoener's rose-apple, Schoener's Nutkana

Technique Flower Initiation
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1

I have speculated that the Caninae species (irregular polyploids) would be promising parents for intergeneric hybrids.

Chromosome remodeling is a frequent component of adaptation and speciation. Polyploid roses are mostly differential (or allo-) polyploids, meaning that the chromosomes of the parent species are differentiated (probably resulting from chromosome remodeling, among other changes). So, multiple sets of differentiated chromosomes would offer more possible mates for the chromosomes of other genera. Even the pomes (apples, loquats, sorbs, etc.) have chromosomes that were differentiated from the original x=7 of Rosa, Rubus, Fragaria, etc. The x=17 of the pomes should be understood as 7+7+3, where the 3 are differentiated duplicates from the original 7.

The other possible value of the Caninae species is their inherent ability to reduce pairing overall. Thus, any chromosomes that can’t find partners will mostly remain unpaired, and out of the way.

So, I was happy to learn that Schoener’s rose-apple was raised from Rosa pomifera pollinated by the Spitzenberg apple.

The Catholic Digest 2(12): 20-23 (1938)

The Rose Wizard

Frederick M. Lynk, S.V.D.

By hybridizing rosa pomifera with a Spitzenberg apple, he obtained a better-sized fruit than that of rosa pomifera. It had a decided apple character and delicious flavor.

As for ‘Schoener’s Nutkana’, it is well known that it resulted from a cross of Nutkana and ‘Paul Neyron’. However, the cross was not as easy as one might assume.

Today 7:21-21+ (Feb. 20, 1937)

Padre of the Roses

Harold D. Jacobs

He chose the hardy wild Nutkana as a parent stock because it could withstand the cold northern climate and it bloomed early. He selected the Paul Neyton [sic], an old and large French rose, as its mate. Working literally like a bee, he pollenized 1,500 blooms the first spring. But the only result was to prove what he had learned in his botany classes: that a wild rose will not take pollen from any other species.

Then his next step was to graft the Nutkana onto the vine of the Paul Neyton as a sort of blood transfusion. It worked! –and after fertilizing this plant, he obtained five perfect fruits. The product of this seed is Schoener’s Nutkana, well known to rose lovers — a large, single pink rose, which sends up shoots seven to eight feet high each year and produces bunches of flowers from every eye along the stem.

Literary Digest 123(16): 25-26 (April 17, 1937)

One of his triumphs was crossing a tame and wild rose. Experts said it couldn’t be done. He did it by splicing a wild rose cutting and pollenizing the cutting’s flower from a tame rose. “I worked at it from above and below,” he chuckled last week.

It is worth noting that Nicolas used ‘Schoener’s Nutkana’ as seed parent with ‘Souvenir de Madame Boullet’ to breed ‘Leonard Barron’, an unusual but reblooming HT.

Karl

2

If you want to read these here they are. Interesting history piece at least. May not be too informative.

popular mechanics

arkansas catholic

floriculture digest

3

But the only result was to prove what he had learned in his botany classes: that a wild rose will not take pollen from any other species

…errr is this a fact?

4

By that did they mean from any other rose species?

5

Two things to consider when reading the various reports of Schoener’s work (and of other breeders).

  1. Journalists can screw up facts without really trying

  2. What was believed to be absolutely true in the 19th century often turned out to be wrong.

I have a bibliography of articles by and about Schoener. Some of the articles are incomplete because I can’t get everything through Googles “snippet view”.

Karl

6

As I said may not be too informative on these three articles. That these are more of historical value. But what can you expect from something written for the main stream public at the time. Even scientific papers you have to read with a discerning eye. All things are products of their time. One day people will look at what we wrote and probably feel the same way. I do like some of the quote from him a lot. They still have value today.

I do think he probably did create such a hybrid. He was a very experienced plant person. Framilar with the species around him and I would assume he know the difference between a successful hybrid and a species variation. Plus crossing between different rosa species is not a unheard of thing.

Karl if your ever in Santa Barbra California apparently the university down there have a complete collection of articles and papers about him and by him. I have not seen it myself so can not verify. I wish all things like this written at such a late date would be scanned and put online.

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“All things are products of their time.”

I think that statement of Adam’s is such a truism regarding so many things including roses which are being created today and those which were created before our time… It always helps to look at the broader picture.

JimP

8

Yea I would agree with y’all…

The posting is thought provoking, it had me thinking all the way down my 3 hour walk yesterday !

:O)

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Karl, do you think that the putative Schoener technique of grafting the species seed parent to the domesticated pollen parent is the reason for his success?

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Don,

I’ve read similar reports, so I’m willing to take Schoener at his word. Contrary to the Mendelianist dogma, there is more to heredity than presence/absence of “genes”. It is now well established that root stocks can alter gene expression in the scions (and vice versa) and that such alterations may sometimes be inherited. There was Richmond’s (1926) fascinating work with grafted beans. And Lucien Daniel also bred from grafted plants. Van Mons (1835), however, did not use grafted plants for breeding because the influence of the stock was not always beneficial. Michurin also warned against breeding from apple trees grafted to seedlings of the Siberian crabapple (Malus baccata) because the offspring tended to be too much like wildlings (i.e., long juvenile period).

Experiment Station Record, p 549 (February 1898)

Improvement of the wild carrot by grafting it on the cultivated carrot

L. DANIEL (Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci. Paris, 127 (1898), No. 2, pp. 133-135).

The author reports the results of grafting the wild carrot upon a well-known variety of cultivated carrot having red roots. The stock exerted an influence not only upon the scion itself, but also upon the seedlings of the scion. The seedlings presented anomalies in the number and form of the cotyledons, the young plants from the grafted wild carrot were larger, greener, and less villous than those from the ungrafted wild carrot—i.e., in general intermediate between the wild and cultivated carrot. As the plants became older some of them followed the spreading habit of the wild carrot and others the erect habit of the cultivated carrot. The roots were white, like those of the wild carrot, but with a diameter from 2 to 3 times that of the latter and from one-fourth to one-third that of the cultivated carrot. Out of 30 plants from the grafted carrot 8 ran to seed the first season, an occurrence which, though fairly common in the cultivated carrot, is very rare in the wild carrot. The author believes that these results demonstrate the possibility of improving wild plants by grafting, followed by an intelligent selection of the offspring of the scion.

It would certainly be worth the experiment when breeding with species, if one has time to bud the species to reblooming garden roses.

Karl

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Schoener, Michurin and Daniel where simply doing their best to report their best scientific observations and not be biased by what others thought about what they reported. These observations are not so far off from modern day findings that organ transplant recipients often (I’ve seen different numbers, from every major transplant, to one in ten) experience cellular memories and inherited personality changes, i.e., the woman who never drank suddenly craving beer after receiving a transplanted heart of a truck driver. This is so common that it has been accepted as ‘cellular memory’ by some neuroscientists, but there are still others that blame this on the recipients’ delusional state following heavy medication and other states of suggestibility. Had Schoener et al lived today, they might not have made this observation in light of the fact that we still have congressmen who catagorically deny that the earth might be older than 6-9000 yrs old. I say if people can experience changes in cellular memory after transplant, why wouldn’t plants?

12

In light of what we know today about plant growth hormones, chemical regulators and even the movement of photosynthate I can see how it might be possible to improve fertility by grafting.

It will take far more than anecdotes to convince me any such effects are heritable. The carrot phenotype story is just plain hogwash.

It would certainly be worth the experiment when breeding with species, if one has time to bud the species to reblooming garden roses.

Years and years but I might try it anyway.

13

My canina and rubiginosa hybrids, which were all root-stock originatations, produced bloom in their 2nd year of life, and the 2nd generations are all repeat blooming.

14

I would not rule out anything to be possible in “nature / the universe”… need to consider frequency and probabilities of certain events taking place.

15

A few thoughts on what it takes to wash a hog. Actually hogwash is the swill that you feed them, I know.

But the key point we need to carefully consider is one I was discussing with colleagues just yesterday. Plants unquestionably transfer proteins and interfering RNA molecules through their vascular system. That is in addition to the usual plant hormones. Those RNAi molecules interfere with the expression of genes, certain specific genes, depending on which RNAi it is that is being transferred from one place to another. If the vascular systems connect, the the RNAi presumably can be transferred to a grafted scion, and from scion to rootstock. I don’t know what this might do but it may well do something interesting.

More interesting, think of an aphid sucking phloem sap from a plant. Maybe one way the plant resists ~99% of all aphid species, is to make something that inhibits it, like RNAi. And the 1 % that can attack roses have a means to block that RNAi. And what do aphids transmit to plants other than mycoplasmas (e.g. rose rosette) and mosaic viruses?? Do genes get taken up by the aphid or its bacterial symbionts and incorporated into their genome? If you look at the info on the pea aphid proteome you’ll find at least one gene product whose closest homolog is found in a plant genome. Accident?

Tukey, at Michigan produced a book years ago about dwarfing fruit trees. A short interstem piece can have large effects. In his day it was attributed to constriction of the vascular system. Or plant hormone production or degradation. But it may well be activation or degradation of RNAi. We don’t know because so far as I am aware that kind of research has not been done on the trees.

We do know that florigen moves from leaves to shoot tips to induce flowering. Florigen is a protein (and perhaps a messenger RNA too). So with good graft design you might get flower induction where you wouldn’t ordinarily expect it. Like in a once-bloomer on a repeat-bloomer. On the other hand the repeater may just have a mutation in its response circuit and not a high level of florigen production. We won’t know until a careful trial is done.

There is no doubt that methylation and acetylation of chromosomes is happening all the time to control gene expression. That’s how plants know it is winter, or spring. There is also imprinting from the parent during reproduction. And much as we might like to resist it, there is evidence that there is inheritance of the effect for one or more generations for some of the DNA methylation patterns. These all go under the title of epigenetic, a huge catch-all term for anything that isn’t the classic DNA-> RNA-> protein kind of genetics. People are making a good case that obesity in rats is transmitted with mother’s milk- a reset in the feeding habits that results in excess weight and that then transmits to the next generation. Various cross-fostering studies suggest that it might be something epigenetic in the DNA, not just habits.

I’m generally skeptical of some of these strange reports of odd phenomena but can’t really rule them out because now we can see how they could actually happen. Flowering time, inflorescence architecture, even flower petalage might be transmissible through the vascular systems, in some species under some conditions at some times. I have no clue about carrots but I’m not ready to bet one way or the other.

16

That’s what I get for washing my hogs at the Dog-a-Matic.

Here is a link to a paper describing graft transmissible flowering factor.

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Hey Don, since YOU caused it, what’s good for getting iced tea out of a computer keyboard? LOL!

18

LOL this thread is sci fi /sci fact / PLUS everything else in one !

19

Epigenetic transmission is a fact with many possible pathes.

Doing analysis, inclusion of viral DNA sequences is often found and knowing that viruses not so rarely borrow host DNA; everything is possible. Stinging insects helping.

A fact that is more obvious for non americans is that so many western US not sexually compatible conifers have a strong citrus scent.

Something not shared by these conifers sexually compatible closer relatives that are native to other parts of the world.

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Are there retroviruses, riboviruses, or other RNA based viruses that infect roses that might be able to incorporate vascular RNA into L2 DNA?