Species with repeat genes?

Hi Jim. Yes I see these possibilities now.

In my readings on the internet over the years, I have come across a few mentions of practices that may hasten the onset of flowering in the seedlings of fruit trees, like pear, whose seedlings may take many years to flower for the first time, (which makes breeding of new pear varieties very time consuming).

One such method is to remove sections of bark from the stems of the non-flowering juvenile seeldings, without actaully performing it all the way to a ‘ringbarking’, so that the seedling can heal the wound over without a risk of mortality.

I wonder if any physical manipulations on rose seedlings that show juvenile non-blooming could help bring on first flowering earlier…(excluding chemical/hormonal interventions).

Apparently exposing roses to a period of cold will fool them into thinking that another year has passed and that it is time for another “spring” bloom.

Climate makes a huge difference.

For instance Banksia blossoms intermittently all year, along the CA coast.

Many roses said to repeat in other climates blossom here only once or refuse to blossom at all. This is especially true of climbers.

Robert, my hybrid has not produced a hip. I’d like to try its pollen, but it has a habit of blooming when nothing else is in bloom. I may try freezing its pollen the next time it blooms.

Thanks Jim. These roses keep us guessing.

I would have thought you might have a seed fertile one there.

‘Armada’ will make a hip with just about anything, won’t it?

I wish I had time and space to explore some of these parents more fully.

I strongly suspect our experiences with repeat bloom and with “juvenile remontancy” are closely associated with our climates and geographic locations. Species are undoubtedly less plastic or flexible in their bloom season and hip set than hybrids. On the other hand, it doesn’t surprise me that species grown outside their native ranges will flower at “odd” times. These two statement seem inconsistent, but I believe they reflect the strong influence of the genetic imperative confused by environmental factors they didn’t evolve to handle.

In my NorCal garden in Zone 9 low to Zone 8 high, latitude 38.440N, both R. californica and R. clinophylla are constant bloomers from the time of first bloom (which is later than many cultivars) in mid-May through November or December.

The primary difference is that R. californica blooms on and on, despite the production of copious quantities of hips. I’d describe my location is smack dab in the middle of its native range.

R. clinophylla produces only a few hips, which could explain the remontancy.

R. fedtschenkoana doesn’t rebloom here, but I’ve never tried removing hips.

R. sericea/omeiensis (I’ve never seen the latter and subscribe to the view it is a subspecies because they all look alike to me) shows scattered rebloom here: the first flush very early, with complete hip ripening by early June) followed by onesy twosies.

R. nutkana likewise shows scattered rebloom. I’m located at the extreme southern end of its range (maybe).

What Ann said.

I have two plants of R. clinophylla. One blooms Spring only, but quite late. The other starts to flower in August and continues until a hard freeze stops it. The non-remontant one produces some repeat blooming offspring, while the one that blooms through till frost does not. (confused yet?) See URL below.

I have a Rupert hybrid of ‘Orangeade’ X R. fedtschenkoana that is fully remontant, but so far has produced only non-remontant offspring.

I have a seed grown specimen of R. arkansana that blooms three times a year (the last flush in September), but it breeds only non-remontant seedlings so far.

With roses, the rules of inheritance of remontancy are often broken; it often depends on what you mate with what. Expect the unexpected.

Paul

Link: www.helpmefind.com/rose/pl.php?n=67115

So, I have learnt from you all here that there appears to be an inherent repeat blooming potential in a lot of the rose ‘species’, but the expression of this repeat bloom is influenced by promoters and inhibitors both environmental and within the rose itself.

Don,

This year I used R. moschata abysinnica as a hip parent… only one hip took. And it gave me lots of seeds.

The pollen parent was David Austin’s Evelyn.

An unexpected cross, but I’m sure glad that it survived (unlike my previous crosses with rugosa, foliolosa, and blanda pollen.) I’m expecting noisette sort of plants.

I can provide you half of the seeds for your seed extraction/germination experiments.

Enrique, very interesting cross and thanks for the offer. If you want, send me half the seeds and I’ll extract the embryos and send you back half of any seedlings in August.

Mozart, Ballerina and a number of other obvious but unidentified hybrid musks grow in Elizabeth Park. My experience with these has made me a real fan of the hybrid musks.

Off topic I guess… There’s an old Confederate cemetery off of Bonny Oaks in Chattanooga that recently was cleared up and re-done. They have concerts now next door and so I was hanging out there earlier this year and at the edge of the woods I happened to notice an obvious multiflora hybrid (it has the ciliated stipules of multiflora but more round and thick and darker green leaflets than the species… quite subject to blackspot also), anyway I took a cutting home with me and rooted two plants from it. I haven’t seen a bloom yet but I’m excited about it. I’m wondering if it was original to the cemetery. I also have another found once blooming multiflora hybrid shown here that’s really nice:

http://www.heritagerosefoundation.org/discus/messages/257/6260.html?1252640237

Okay, I’ll send you the R. moschata abysinnica X Evelyn cross-- but when’s the best time for you? During this time of year… I get very nervous about sending out rarer seed because I’ve lost quite a few because of the holiday mail. I can send them to you this Monday, rushed, and order tracking number.

Ship them any time you want, Enrique. I won’t get to my own extractions until after the holidays anyway.