Alessandra,
In my family, the Dutch name was on my mother’s side. I’m not sure what breeder code I’d assign to that, but the patrilineal model was applied, and I’m a Harris. But my first name was my Dutch great-grandfather’s first name. Coincidentally, he was a gardener. I have his wooden shoes. My feet are bigger than his were. I don’t know whether he grew roses, but I suspect he grew mostly perennials, annuals, and food crops of various kinds.
When I began hybridizing roses in 1972, I used a simple code–a number for each cross. I believe I used that system for 2 years, labeling crosses of 1973 with the next number after the final number used in 1972. When seeds germinated, I labeled each seedling with the last 2 digits of the year, the cross number, and a number for the seedling. Thus, the 10th seedling from that cross was 72-13-10. It worked, but I frequently forgot the names of the parents in the cross.
Then in 1973 or 1974, I think, I read a suggestion (I don’t remember by whom) in the RHA Newsletter. The suggestion was to use a letter for the seed parent and a number for the pollen parent so that it would be easier to remember the parentage of a particular cross. I’ve used some variation of that idea ever since. For 2 years I used single letters (A, B, C, etc) + a number. After the second year I had mostly exhausted the alphabet and had begun doubling letters for the seed parents (e.g, GG17). I could see that this system would lead to unwieldy codes, so I switched things around for the next 2 years, putting the number for the seed parent and the letter for the pollen parent. It was just a convenience for me in labeling the crosses both on the bush and on tags in the flats where I sowed the seeds.
If you look in HelpMeFind, you will find some of my roses–not all, by any means, but some–K16-01, 11D-01, F5-01, and others. R15, which you mentioned, is also one of mine from a cross 30 years ago. In that year (1978), I had almost finished my crosses for the season when some pollen (of ‘Hazeldean’) arrived from Canada. I had only 2 roses in bloom, ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and ‘Golden Showers’. I had used only 14 kinds of pollen that year, so ‘Hazeldean’ became 15. ‘Queen Elizabeth’ was already seed parent Q and ‘Golden Showers’ was already parent R. Thus, all the seedlings from ‘Queen Elizabeth’ x ‘Hazeldean’ were Q15 + a number. The first one was the best, Q15-01. Likewise, with the R15 cross (‘Golden Showers’ x ‘Hazeldean’), the first seedling to bloom was the best. R15-01 has proved to be a worthwhile parent despite 1ts being triploid (which I didn’t know until this year) and its blooming only once.
There you have it, in far more detail than you’d dreamed you wanted. Some people put a lot more information in their codes. The important thing to remember, if any of this is important, is that the code is there for your convenience and information. If a rose company decides to test your rose, the rose company will have its own code for the rose. And if the rose is entered into a competition, it may gain yet another code. If the rose is registered with the IRAR, it will have a code beginning with a 3- or 4-letter code for the name of the hybridizer or the company that registers it. You can find these names in HelpMeFind (HMF) for each rose that has been registered. In addition, roses that are introduced usually get what is called a commercial synonym. Brief example: The Kordes rose originally given the breeder’s code/name Korp (which doesn’t sound very good–like maybe the manifestation of a digestive problem) is better known as ‘Prominent’. And commercial synonyms may be different from country to country, as you’ll see in HMF.
After reading this you may develop a “code” in your head. If you do, I hope you get well soon.
I see I’ve forgotten to write about where to find ploidy numbers for garden roses. Some are listed in HMF; others, in articles by Anne P Wylie and others. I’ll put a link for one article which you may find useful. And you can find some more recent counts by searching this forum.
Peter
Link: www.rdrop.com/~paul/genecount.html