I am not experienced at hybridizing, but I’ve collected OP seeds and sprouted them. I collected over a hundred seeds from Jeanne LaJoie and of the six or so surviving seedlings all are miniature and some are thornless.
I guess I should look on Helpmefind to see where it comes from in JLJ’s ancestry. I just thought it interesting that a thorny rose could have a fairly high proportion of thornless offspring.
I know Enrique is interested in thornlessness so I thought he might enjoy this bit of data.
Yes, this did get my intrest. Seems that there are several roses that are thornless that came from thorny parents, Pacific Serenade and Golden Cinderella being two of them. I believe that thornlessness maybe a dominant trait, not recessive as some people have suggested. Maybe we think it is a dominant trait because the thorny trait has been well breed in roses. You know, like male baldness. Baldness is a recessive trait, but it has been so breed in by people that it seems to be a dominant trait. OOC Knowing that, I smile alote because my family history reveals to me that I have a huge possibility of not being bald. . . BTTP. So this year I’m going to cross Basye’s Legacy with the thorniest roses in my garden. Today I’ve done one with Kazanlik, the most thorny rose ever in my opinion next to the moss roses. I am wondering if they will be thornless.(Hey Jim, how are those Scarlet Moss hybrids? Thornless?)
If the number of thorns is controlled by many different genes, then the offspring of most crosses would show a range of levels of thorniness. This might include individuals with either more or less thorns than either parent.
I have occasionally found no thorns in my modern rose x R. virginiana seedlings. My theory is that these roses make different kinds of thorns, so the offspring may not make either kind. The clones of R. virginiana that I have used have only the two major thorns at each node, while most modern roses make thorns that are more or less randomly scattered on the stem. Some offspring may lack the genes to make either. When they do have thorns, they usually have smaller versions of both types.
For what it’s worth, the most common form of male pattern baldness is recessive, but the gene is on the X chromosome, of which men have only one. If a man gets the baldness gene from his mother, the Y chromosome from his father cannot suppress it because the Y lacks the gene completely. Women can also be bald for this reason, but they have to inherit it from both parents, which is far less likely. This is an example of sex-linked inheritance, like hemophilia. Since roses don’t have sex chromosomes, there probably isn’t any analog in roses.
Sigh… Aren’t you such a bubble buster Roger. I’m ready to buy Rogain… I hadn’t known that baldness is a sex-linked inheritance.
I do not think the thorns are controlled by many genes. I once thought that about mini roses. I once believed that all mini roses had at least two genes, one that makes it small, and another that control the size of the smallness. Hence there are so many true miniaturized roses and larger bush types. Karl King (if memory serves right) proved me wrong, and he said that this is a problem with rose genetics; there are always something for use to think that there are more genes. Let me investigate what he said.
Enrique, I could not find anything about Golden Cinderella.
Are you refering to Cinderella Gold?