Species-Modern Crosses

Rose Genetics Ploidy Level
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81

Prof. L. H. Bailey (1892) discussed the Russian Rugosas that Budd brought back from his travels.
“The double form of the rose shown in fig. 2 is also an introduction by Professor Budd from Russia. It seems to belong to the rugosa strain, and is known as R. cinnamomea. The blooms are six inches across, quite double, crimson in color, not quite so glowing as the type of rugosa, but more fragrant. The leaves are slightly serrated, bright green and leathery.”
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/BaileyRugosas1892/BaileyRugosas1892.html

It is suggestive that this rose was known as R. cinnamomea, because both Ventenat and Lindley commented that R. kamschatica was NOT very much like that species.

And another thought. John Fraser, the plant explorer who took the Pink Musk hybrids (presumably Champneys’) to England, also took these roses, and a choice collection of other American plants to Russia in 1796. He sold them to Empress Catherine. He must have returned to England the same year, because the following year, when Catherine died, he received an invitation through Count Woronzoff to bring another collection of plants to Russia for the Imperial Garden of Empress Maria.

I have not found any report that Fraser took Russian plants back to England (how could he not?), so it may be just another interesting coincidence that Rosa ferox reportedly turned up in England in 1796.

Just found it: “While there, he bought Black and White Tartarian cherries in 1796, thereafter introducing them for the first time to England.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fraser_(botanist)

Karl

82

Karl - I’m curious, if I’m following this thread accurately, why you don’t also suspect thunbergia of being a hybrid. It’s very drought tolerant. I think that’s true of any plant adapted to the desert-like conditions of the beach. Fru Dagmar Hastrup strikes me as the most regeliana-like rugosa on the market, with its larger flowers, larger, lusher foliage and smaller stature. I have a hedge of 50 FDH and it not infrequently sports (or reverts?) to a consistent deep purple. I can’t shake the suspicion that it’s a sport of regeliana.

83

Thunbergia? I seem to have missed something.

I would be very interested to see your purple FDH sport.

Today I found another surprising item:

The Garden: An Illustrated Weekly Journal of Gardening, Volume 56, page 2 (July 1, 1899)
Rosa ferox > from Canon Ellacombe, though not in flower, was interesting. It has tiny foliage, smaller than in Wichuraiana, but in appearance much resembles the hedge Briers.

So, I went back and read some descriptions. The Rosa kamtchatica described by Ventenat had leaflets 1.1 inch long (26 mm) and .6 inch wide (15 mm). These are very dainty Rugosas, I think.

I’m still trying to learn how Miss Lawrance (1799) came up with the name Rosa ferox, because I cannot find any earlier use of it. Bieberstein (1819) apparently got it from her, and used the name (and her illustration) for a species that was (somehow) also synonymous with R. provincialis and R. horrida.

I just added a picture showing the prickles and leaves of self-seedlings Erlanson (1934) raised from a single specimen of R. californica. The variation in prickles among the seedlings is at least as great as in the Ferox-Kamchatica group.

Karl

84

Sorry, Karl - My fault for typing on my phone: thunbergiana. I’ll post pics of the sporting FDHs this spring. One, that I’ve been meaning to dig for a few seasons, has virtually no pink left. I obtained some regeliana seed this year. It’s markedly smaller than any other rugosa seed I’ve seen.

85

Kevin,
I’m still confused. I have found mention of Rosa multiflora thunbergiana and R. rugosa thunbergiana.

I have read that R. thunbergiana Don was described by George Don in the 1830s, but I can’t find it in his "A general history of the dichlamydeous plants’. However, he did list Rosa multiflora var thunbergiana. (vol. 2, 1832, p. 583)
“Var. β, Thunbergiana (Red. ros. 2. p. 70.) flowers white; petioles prickly. Native of Japan. Flowers small, double, clustered.”

And while I’m on George Don, he wrote that R. ferox flowered July, August and R. kamtshatica June, July. He did not mention the flowering time for R. rugosa. He mentioned no var. Thunbergiana for R. rugosa.
Karl

86

Karl - If it helps, I’ve seen Rosa rugosa thunbergiana, Thunberg, var. Thunberg, and Thunberg ex. Murray, all used interchangeably. As I’ve seen these used, they’re generally to set themselves apart from regeliana - as in this attachment from your site, thank you. I’ve taken that to mean Thunberg refers to the Japanese forms.
Screenshot_20170214-154624.jpg

87

Kevin,
Quoting from my web site. That’s sneaky.

OK, I’ll accept “Thunbergiana” as the Japanese “variety” of R. rugosa.

I do wonder whether the unimproved wild Japanese form reblooms as freely as our garden varieties. And how about the Korean form? I have no info, yet, on whether it reblooms.

“Rugosa-ness” seems to behave almost like a unit character. That is, a hybrid Rugosa back-crossed to garden roses tends to produce offspring that segregate as hybrid Rugosa and non-Rugosa. This allows the possibility that the existing, reblooming Rugosas of our gardens are the products of breeding work that is lost (or temporarily misplaced) to published memory.

And I’m still wondering why the double-flowered Rugosa that Budd brought back from Russia was called “R. cinnamomea” (presumably in Russia). A bloom 6 inches across? That’s a whopper of a Rugosa, and far removed from the 2 inch blooms of R. kamchatica.

Has anyone raised seedlings from ‘Calocarpa’ or some other hybrid of Rugosa x China/Tea?

Regarding this “Rugosa-ness”, I have a discussion of the phenomenon from an article on Penstemon breeding by Glenn Veihmeyer, Penstemon in your Garden (1944):

The amateur or professional breeder should be aware that the breeding behavior of the interspecific hybrid is considerably different than that of intraspecific hybrids in that characters are inherited in entire chromosomes or blocks of chromosomal material. As a result, genes are linked in inheritance and do not assort independently. Such linkage may persist for generations.

Examples of this are found in the Fate hybrid of > P. grandiflorus > x > P. murrayanus> . In the Fate hybrid the narrow corolla, perfoliate bract and elongate inflorescence of > P. murrayanus > has persisted through 15 or more generations as have the inflated corolla, non-perfoliate but clasping bracts and more compact inflorescence of > P. grandiflorus> . The two forms are interfertile but the three characters retain the original association without recombining.

In the case of the Flathead Lake complex, the “shark head” corolla shape of > P. barbatus > and > P. labrosus > dominate flower shape to the exclusion of the spreading lobes of all blue flowered parental species. Only by repeated backcrosses to a species having spreading lobes are the erect upper and reflexed lower lobes replaced by the character of spreading lobes.

Karl

88

Thunberg (1784) wrote that the Rosa rugosa of Japan had solitary flowers (Flores solitarii), and bloomed in May and June. This suggests that R. Regeliana, with its “Flowers numerous, in magnificent terminal corymbs on vigorous branchlets”, and repeat bloom is of hybrid origin, rather than a “variety” of, or synonym for R. rugosa.
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/AndreRegeliana1873.html

89

Would this hypothesis then also assert that the multi-flowered repeat-blooming rugosas naturalized in New England, Washington State and Alaska are a hybrid and, more specifically, regeliana? That would run counter to common understanding. I admire your stamina on this subject, Karl! I agreed it’s a mire. I waded in to a point and stopped at thunbergiana vs. regeliana for my own peace of mind.

90

Kevin,
All I can say for certain (at this point) is that the wild forms did not bear clusters of flowers, and did not rebloom reliably. But I would not call the modern types “hybrids”. More likely they are derivatives of hybrids.

Hardy Roses for South Dakota p. 13 (June 1929)
N. E. Hansen
Rosa rugosa Flore Plena> .–For more than twenty years this double red-flowered form of Rosa rugosa has blossomed freely and proven very hardy at this Station. The flowers are intensely fragrant, dark purple red, very double, with up to 49 petals, and many stamens. The flowers are 2 1/2 inches in diameter, and open up flat; in the bud the petals are somewhat erect. The leaflets are smaller and narrower than in the type. Plants thorny, very vigorous and hardy. No record is available as to the origin of this rose, or when it was first imported. The plants described were selected by N. E. Hansen, In 1906, in the Regel Kesselring Nursery, St. Petersburg, Russia, > Rosa rugosa rubra plena > or Empress of the North is credited to Dr. Eduard von Regel 1815-1892, Director of the Botanic Gardens, St. Petersburg, Russia. Dr. Leopold Dippel in Laubholzkunde, Berlin, 1893, mentions what is probably the same as > Rosa Rugosa plena> , Empress of the North, (Kaiserin des Nordens) with double purple red flowers. W. J. Bean of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England, calls this rose > Rosa Rugosa > va > flore pleno> .

So, Regel is the prime suspect for the breeder, at least for the moment.
Karl

91

Flora of Japan (1965) pp. 540-541
Jisaburo Ohwi

  1. Rosa rugosa Thunb. R. ferox Lawrance; R. kamtschatica var. ferox (Lawrance) Géel; R. rugosa var. thunbergiana C. A. Mey.; R. rugosa var. ferox (Lawrance) C. A. Mey.—HAMA-NASU. Erect bushy shrub with stout densely short-pubescent branches with needlelike slender spines and stout flattened short-pubescent prickles; stipules broad, membranous, the free portion broadly ovate or deltoid; leaflets 7-9, nearly equal, oblong, elliptic or obovate, 3-5 cm. long, 2-3 cm. wide, obtuse to rounded, glabrous and minutely bullate or rugulose above, densely cinereous hairy and with sessile pale glandular dots; flowers 1-3, terminal, 6-10 cm. across, deep rose, the pedicels stout, erect, 1-3 cm. long, with slender prickles; calyx with a depressed-globose tube, the lobes 3-4 cm. long, appressed-pubescent and with slender prickles, sometimes with short stipitate glands; fruit subglobose, yellowish red, 2-2.5 cm. across.—June-Aug. Sandy shores; Hokkaido, Honshu on Pacific side south to n. Kantô and on Japan Sea side south to San’in Distr.).—Temperate and northern parts of e. Asia to the Kuriles, Kamchatka, and Sakhalin.
    Flora of Japan : in English : combined, much revised and extended translation : Oi, Jisaburo, 1905-1977 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

In this account, R. rugosa has larger flowers than the plants raised in western Europe as R. ferox and R. kamchatica. Furthermore, the author wrote, “flowers 1-3, terminal, 6-10 cm. across”. The leaves are also larger than mentioned by English and French writers.

This bit is just for fun:

A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere, vol. 4, page 121 (1784)
By James Cook, Rev. James King

This peninsula [Kamchatka] produces great abundance of the shrub kind, as mountain ash, junipers, ras-berry bushes, and wild rose-trees. Also a variety of berries, as partridge-berries, blue-berries, black-berries, cran-berries, and crow-berries. These are gathered at proper seasons, and preserved by mashing them into a thick jam. They constitute a considerable part of their winter provisions, serving as a general sauce to their dried fish. They also eat them in puddings, and in various other modes; and make decoctions of them for their common beverage.

A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, for Making Discoveries in the Northern ... - James Cook - Google Books

This expedition carried botanists who made collections of botanical specimens, but I don’t know yet what they collected, or whether any seeds where sown after the crew returned to England.
Karl

92

This peninsula [Kamchatka] produces great abundance of the shrub kind

The British were usually late to the exploration game and Kamchatka is no exception, the Russian Krasheninnikov having been there by way of Siberia and the port of Okhotsk in 1737. If you can find Greive’s translation of Krasheninnikov’s tome on Kamchatka I would not be surprised if rugosa is mentioned in it and I suspect herbaria might exist of it from the expedition if not descendant plants.

It is, indeed, fun to read about these adventures but the appalling conditions that prevailed for the explorers is no joke. The theme of Lincoln’s Conquest of a Continent - Siberia and the Russians seems to be that Siberia devoured everyone who stepped foot in it. It’s a bit ironic that Cook survived it only to meet his demise in a paradise. Maybe that is because he didn’t get into it too far or hang around long.

Charles C. Mann’s poorly titled 1493 gives a sobering retrospective outlining the unintended consequences of the exchange of biota between East and West, what his predecessor Alfred W. Crosby called the ‘Columbian Exchange’. Roses are not mentioned although they should be - Japanese beetles, multiflora and even rugosa can be counted among the invasive macro species we deal with and, I guess at this point, the many microbes that infect them are too.

93

Don,
The “Voyage” report was indeed enlightening, reminding me of some matters I had not been thinking about regarding roses. For instance, I was momentarily surprised that a voyage of discovery in the northern hemisphere should return to England via the Cape of Good Hope. Of course! How else could they get back?

And the hardships. Sitting here in the 21st century, it seems a bit quaint that they would fuss so much over a dirty watch. But the watch was an important instrument for navigation.

It is perhaps helpful to know that a foreigner visiting the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) should not shoot at a native. The other natives might take offense and stab the offender in the back. That’s what happened to Cook. Many years later, Queen Victoria understood that when Queen Liliuokalani told her to get out of the flower garden, she should obey.

I was also reminded that the pace of plant life in the far north is very rapid. The season is short, but the days (light period) are long. That is probably why Rosa kamchatica has smaller leaves than its more southern kin. We see much the same thing in corn (maize). The Northern Flints have fewer leaves than the Southern Dents, and are earlier ripening. Much of the “hybrid vigor” present in the Corn Belt Dents is derived from early hybrids of the Northern and Southern races.

I also copied a map of the distribution of Rosa rugosa in China. Not all are coastal. One can only wonder about the variations that might be found in the inland regions.
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Roses/breeding/OhwiRugosa1965.html

Karl

94

Hi, I purchase this species cross in Canada. The tag said “Northern Canada Rose” Of my many roses this is the best performer. Always lots of repeat bloom. Fragrance, healthy and no hips. I know it looks like Therese Bugnet but it is not. The shape is different, no red in the stems and the color is more crisp and way too much repeat compared to Therese. It may make a great pollen parent and I am sure many in colder zones would love it. I have looked everywhere to identify it and no luck. Any help is appreciated.
IMG_0660.jpg
IMG_0729.jpg

95

Looks like Martin Frobisher but that would not have remontancy. Check out Svejda’s other Explorer roses at helpmefind.com.

96

Thank you. I am familiar with most of Svejda’s roses. I also searched for it at the Central Experimental Station in Ottawa where she did her work. I have looked at many of the roses bred in Alberta and Manitoba and it resembles none. In my zone 4a garden I grow well over 200 roses hardy to my zone. It looks most like Therese Bugnet with distinct differences. Perhaps a sport?

97

I just had a thought, I acquire “Jamie” from Robin Dening of Brentwood Bay Nersery last spring.
As HMF listing shows, “Jamie” is a sport of Therese Bugnet.

Chuckp

98

I have Jamie. It is low to the ground , lilac colored and unfortunately not at all like this one. I have researched lost Skinner, Bugnet and Erskine roses but none are matches. What astonishes me about it is its’ health, re-bloom ability and the length of bloom season. I cannot recall a day without blossoms usually many. Non stop from the time my last daffodil fades until heavy frost.

99

Hmm the closest thing I can think of to those photos is Wasagaming, but it usually isn’t that floriferous, and the blooms should look a little more formal than the ones in your shots. Where are you located? Do you know how cold hardy it is?

100

I’ll take a shot at this.

Initially I thought it could be ‘Frontenac’, but this cultivar can set hips.

So my next guess is ‘Lady Elsie May’'. Outstanding repeat bloom and it can be crown hardy to a Zone 3 climate. But I’m not familiar enough with it to know if it sets hips or not.