starting a breeding program (cold-hardiness)

Hello-

I have been following this forum and others for some time. Last summer I tried my first crosses and am really interested in learning about breeding roses. My goal is to increase the diversity of healthy zone 3 roses. I am originally from Alberta where the availability of roses is, of course, fairly limited compared to what you have in the rest of the (much warmer) world.

To add to the equation, I now live in Vancouver BC. So my program will need to produce roses that thrive in the endless fungus-fostering drizzle here, and then be trialed through prairie winters there.

I would like your suggestions for good-quality roses. I am thinking, for cold-hardiness, Prairie Joy, Thérèse Bugnet, Morden Centennial, Winnipeg Parks, Lambert Closse, Champlain, Frontenac. I would love to play with Prairie Peace but it seems hard to come by. I realize many of the Morden roses are disease prone but I have them on hand and really love them so I will try them, including M. Sunrise. What am I missing here?

Upon these, should they prove willing, I would like to cross a number of the newer Kordes roses- the Fairy Tale series, for example. Plus a number of others that seem very disease resistant here: Julia Child, Livin’ Easy, About Face, others.

I have been doing some reading on the heritability of cold-hardiness but would appreciate any sources you can find- I think Svejda wrote an article about her early experiences. Also I am trying to wrap my head around ploidy but not fully there yet.

I’d appreciate any suggestions. I’ll be advancing slowly as I don’t have much room for all of this at the moment but hope to have access to some property in the next year or two.

Thanks very much. I enjoy learning from you all in this forum.

Don Enright

Best of luck to you in your endeavors, Don!

I’m sure you’ve read our complaining about Winnipeg Parks and Morden Sunrise…but they’re actually very fun plants to get started with breeding. Winnipeg Parks is super fertile, with fat hips full of seeds, and has a lot of lovely (if disease prone) seedlings, while Morden Sunrise (horrible, horrible) has a certain loveliness that is fun to work with. Not a high germination percentage, though.

Hi Don,

You may want to consider breeding the Parkland with the Explorer Rosa kordesii cultivars, since in my opinion not enough work has been done in this respect. For example, ‘Morden Centennial’ x ‘Frontenac’. The former cultivar is very fertile as a pistillate parent (although most of the seeds don’t germinate for two years) and can produce some excellent selections. The latter cultivar is an excellent staminate parent (very floriferous) and was used quite successfully this way at Morden. The new Canadian Artists rose, ‘Campfire’, for example, is a cross of ‘My Hero’ x ‘Frontenac’.

If you want to work with the newer Kordes Floribundas and obtain rose selections crown hardy to Zone 3, ideally you should first develop cold hardy (Zone 3) breeding lines with them. For example, ‘Julia Child’ x ‘Suzanne’. However, as in the example of the successful development of ‘Campfire’, you could experiment by using ‘Frontenac’ as the staminate parent with these roses.

Do you go to the Van Dusen Botanical Garden? There used to be Kordes’ ‘Fritz Nobis’ and Skinner’s ‘Dr. F. L. Skinner’ located there. Both would be useful to use in a Zone 3 rose breeding program. I intend to be in Vancouver the latter part of May and will check it out then.

It’s likely I can locate a ‘Prairie Peace’ rose for you. Certainly, it’s no problem to send you pollen of it.

Paul

I’d consider some of the hardy species roses; R. acicularis, R. woodsii, R. blanda, R. laxa, and R. beggeriana to name a few, and the likes of ‘Ross Rambler’. They may be a longer road, but I’d think you’ll be hard pressed to find better sources of hardiness.

I would add another species rose, R. glauca.

Rob I really like the look of R. glauca, I am going to get one in this year, stick in some place where it can go berserk. The foliage fascinates me as well. This is one I am going to use as a pollinator on the Hulthemia persica.

Hi- thanks very much for the suggestions. Re: Morden roses- I’m sure I will write them off in good time. For this summer I’m still mastering the mechanics of hybridizing so I need some relatively willing subjects.

Paul- thanks very much for the suggestions re: crossing Parkland with Explorers etc. I’m very interested in learning which avenues haven’t been fully explored yet. I wasn’t aware that Suzanne had such an influence on the Explorer series. I might try to acquire that one too. And yes, I’d be overjoyed to get either a cutting or pollen from Prairie Peace. Are you in Canada?

I do get to Van Dusen once in a while and will look for those roses.

Jinksy and Rob- I am also interested in working with the species- though it does seem a bit daunting at the moment. I will try to pick up a woodsii next time I’m back home. I find these species extremely invasive in a garden. I guess I could bud a woodsii high up on a non-suckering rootstock- is there any reason that wouldn’t work?

Anyway- this is very encouraging. Thanks very much.

I can’t see why budding woodsii should be a problem. So long as the bud is above the soil level it shouldn’t give you any trouble, so you wouldn’t need to bud it to far up. Another option would be to just grow it in a pot.

Don,

Yes, I live in Canada (Edmonton, Alberta).

Are you aware of Brentwood Bay Nurseries, located near the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island? They have a very large selection of own root roses, including some cold hardy to Zone 3. Also, a fairly good selection of species roses. I usually send them softwood cuttings of shrub rose cultivars each year for rooting. I believe they may have, for example, Robert Erskine’s ‘Caroyal’ that I sent to them a couple years ago. Although it only blooms once, it’s a wonderful rose (the red-purple flowers are spectacular when in full bloom) for even a Zone 2 climate. I have used it in breeding programs but have nothing to show for it yet. I’ll continue with it this year to help maintain my breeding work at the diploid level.

It’s no problem to obtain ‘Suzanne’ for you.

Hi Paul- yes I’m aware of Brentwood Bay- they introduced Michel Trudeau recently, didn’t they? I might make a trip before too long. Thanks for the tip.

Suzanne would be great. Let me know what arrangements we need to make.

Re: Prairie Peace- does anybody know why it appears to be a dead end, IE no descendants on HMF?

thanks

Apparently Prairie Peace will set seeds, but the seeds don’t germinate unless you extract the embryos. It’s pollen does work, however. I have a cute little seedling of All A’Twitter x PP growing right now.

The issue with crossing PP (or any species rose) with a less hardy modern rose, however, is that the seedlings will all be once-bloomers like PP, and if their other parent is less hardy you’ll end up with a rose that can never bloom naturally outdoors in a cold climate. It will die back each year, but needs old wood upon which to bloom. I’ll have to decide whether to keep my seedling in a pot and bring it in in the winter, or to put it out and see if it comes through the winter with enough live wood to bloom. The road from once-blooming to everblooming is a long one.

Another possibility for the lack of descendants is the relatively sparse distribution of PP up to this point. I don’t know of a supplier in the US, and I think I was lucky to get one across the border from Sheila Holmes.

Vancouver is probably a mild enough climate so that you’ll be able to grow out seedlings of PP that will bloom. Unfortunately you won’t be able to give your seedlings a test of adaptability to truly cold conditions. However, using genetics like PP is a good start! It really is a lovely rose, too. So far I love the foliage on my little seedling, too.

Does anyone remember, by the way, the percentage of rebloomer one would get from a self-pollinated F2 of Prairie Peace x Modern Rebloomer (both tetraploids)? For instance, if my little seedling grows up to be hardy enough to bloom and set hips and I planted seeds, what percentage could reasonably be expected to end up with rebloom? I seem to remember it calculates to about 1.5 percent.

Joe and Donald,

Joe, you sent me some pollen from Prairie Peace last year, at a time when quite a few different roses of mine were blooming. Almost every cross took, and I have had many germinations early this spring. So far, I can see that some of the crosses were much more successful than others, and in almost all of the crosses there are about 15-30% of the seedlings that are very miniature and just flat out failing to thrive. I give such a range because it has had a better/worse result with differing seed parents. The ones that are thriving look like they will not bloom this year, but have very spin type leaves and bristled stems. The ones that are much smaller and not doing much (a small number have died) are totally different-very few thorns (I realize they are young and could change-this is just a juvenile comparison) with very fragile stems and pointy, smooth leaves-I almost thought that these were not PP offspring until they all started to have about the same results, regardless of the seed parent. I am looking forward to seeing what the ultimate outcome is with these seedlings.

Joe,

I don’t know if the road to hardy repeat bloomers is as dire as you think it is, at least in zone 4 anyway. I have two first generation R.arkansana hybrids that are once bloomers and bloom every year. Both of them have around 40% to 50% dieback in harsh winters but enough of the canes survive to bloom. In more mild winters like the past two, 100% of the canes survived. I also have Scharlachglut which is Poinsettia x Alika and it also blooms just about every year. It’s not quite as hardy as the R.arkansana hybrids but it’s pretty hardy itself. I have seedlings from both of the R.arkansana hybrids and also from Scharlachglut that are once bloomers but do bloom every year. I even have seedlings from these plants.

Assuming the F1 plant has two repeat blooming alleles (from the modern) and two non-repeat bloom alleles from PP, then a F2 self pollinated seedling would have a 1/36 or 2.77% chance of being repeat bloom.

Don

Thérèse Bugnet is sterile. And this is a great pity.

[quote=lrojewski]

Don

Thérèse Bugnet is sterile. And this is a great pity.[/quote]

Perhaps it has not set seeds where you are, but it does set OP hips here in West Virginia, and it has been used as a parent by others (including Bugnet).

Betty Bugnet

Louise Bugnet

and others.

HelpMeFind lists 12 unique descendants.

Lukasz,

Right now I have about 35 op seedlings from Therese Bugnet–it was loaded with OP hips last fall although I had not been using it as a female in crosses. It also has some effectiveness as a pollen parent. Don’t give up on it.

To make things difficult for some reason that I have never heard a good reason a diploid.carrier.for the rebloom crossed with a rebloomer will give about 1/8 reblooming seedlings not the 1/2that Mendel predicts. There was a guy who did a masters thesis on this. Imagine the amount of tetraploid seedling needed when working with a cross that predicts 1/36? does this give 1/36 X4 =1/144? I don’t work with tetraploids so If I am wrong please correct me.

Johannes,

I think the more accurate way of looking at it is that the probabilities are for each seed and only as the sample size gets to be sufficiently large does the probability match those of the individual seed. So this master thesis may be correct in that it’ll take a sample size of 4x the probability to get a sufficient number of plants with the traits you’re looking for, but I’m not sure what that actual number is.

I have a number of seedlings this year that are (Showy Pavement x R.blanda) x (mix of polyanthas pollen) and I’m expecting 50% of these to have repeat bloom. But the sample sizes is so small that who knows what the actual percentage of repeat bloom will be. I don’t expect them to bloom until next year so time will tell. I also have seedlings from a cross last year that are a diploid version of what Joe was asking about; a cross of two first generation R.blanda hybrids (Showy Pavement x R.blanda) x (Marie Pavie x R.blanda) and the probability is 25% of the seedlings should have repeat bloom. But again the sample size is pretty small so who knows what the actuall percentage will be. I’m hoping most will bloom this year. You can see the advantage of working with diploids; 25% diploid with repeat vs. 2.77% tetraploid with repeat bloom of the F2 plants. The very low recapture rate of repeat bloom from self pollination or a cross of tetraploid first generation species F1 plants is why I’ve always suggested to cross them to a repeat blooming plant.Then the probability of recapturing repeat bloom is 1 in 6 or 16.7%, much higher than 2.77%.

I’m sorry, I was firmly convinced that everywhere is the same. I also talked with large nurseries, everywhere Therese Bugnet does not bear the fruit here in Poland. I understand that the climate is of paramount importance. Also trials of pollination are not successful.

Mine sets OP hips here in Oregon. I actually plan on using it this year with an odd hybrid Robert created from diploid minis and teas, lol.