Thank you Jpkrvi for the great list of Persian Yellow descendants. I should get more of them and try them. I have and love Hazeldean and Kilwinning. I tried Hazeldean as a pollen parent quite a bit, but unfortunately the seedlings I have gotten from it haven’t been vigorous. I probably am using the wrong parents. Peter Harris has R15 which is a very beautiful rose. Hazeldean is very healthy by me fortunately and also very cane hardy. My vision or hope for going back to Persian Yellow is to gain that rich rich yellow (and also relatively good hardiness for my climate compared to most modern yellows). With the challenges with Hazeldean as a male parent for me (as well as trying Harison’s Yellow and others) I wonder what would happen by taking Persian Yellow and avoiding R. spinosissima parents (even though it crosses it seems pretty well with them) and go to healthy modern shrubs asap. I suspect Austrian Copper has a pretty rich yellow too in its makeup. It is just hard for me to tell with the anthocyanin pigment overlaid the carotenoid pigments to tell making it more of an orange-red (which is nice too). Years ago on the plant at Lyndale Park Rose Garden there was a yellow branch sport. I wish I remembered it better. It seemed to be a rich yellow when it opened. I don’t remember if it faded as fast as Persian Yellow or not.
I suspect someday there will be enough evidence that most will feel R. foetida may not deserve species status (something that is naturally occurring and able to perpetuate itself with fertile offspring, etc.). There have been some genetic analysis that point to very few clones in the middle east likely spread by cultivation and that it is of interspecific origin from R. hemisphaerica and another species. Rix and Martin I think were the ones that suggested perhaps R. roxb. Here is a link to one of those articles IN SEARCH OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN ROSA FOETIDA HERRMANN IN IRAN Definitely Perisan Yellow and Austrian Copper have such low fertility that it would be consistent with them not being very viable members of their species for sexual reproduction and perpetuating the species and perhaps of interspecific origin. There probably is a lot of history we are unaware of with this group of wonderfully colored roses and the horticulturists that cultivated them over the centuries allowing them to still be available to us today. The same can be said for the great hybrid China and tea roses selected out of the wild and perpetuated.
David, would it not be possible that Foetida might remain considered a “species” even though it is sexually infertile? Look at Minutifolia. There are two populations, one Californian and one Mexican. The Californian variant appears sterile as it seems incapable of producing hips and seeds “in the wild”, though domesticated in one California garden, it is reported to set self hips. The Mexican variant is reported to set self hips, though I’ve not found any reports of discovered seedlings, only tip rooted “runners” which is its preferred method of spreading. I doubt anyone could prove hybridity in Minutifolia. Stellata has long appeared to be as infertile, though it has produced two seedlings for me, in all the MANY years I have messed with it. I’d love for someone to be able to test both “species” and my repeat flowering seedling to see what DNA information could be determined.
That’s a great question! The use of a species by people can be a little bit ambiguous. Every 6 years there is an International Botanical Congress where people “arm wrestle” taxonomic issues. Typically people think of something as a species when there is a population of intermating individuals capable of producing fertile offspring and sharing a group of common morphological, physiological, etc. features and sometimes geography. I think rose lovers will be calling Persian Yellow and Autrian Copper and Gold variants of R. foetida for a long time even if taxonomically they are reclassified as we have more DNA and other data as just a few direct interspecific hybrids that have compromised fertility and persist as clones. Minutifolia and Stellata are sure interesting!! It sounds like all these rose groups (with or without human intervention) are pretty limited in their genetic diversity.
With respect to AC/ R foetida, consider that they at least have self-incompatibility. If we have only one clone, it will seem sterile. That would be true for minutifolia or stellata too. If we are looking at relict populations we may have only one clone. Pollen fertility of AC is fine. I crossed it decades ago onto Carefree Beauty, and then again last year onto some other tetraploids for curiosity sake. Others have done the same. Going the other way is really hard though at least in our climate. But the same was true with Frau Karl Druschki for the first 35 years I grew it. Very odd for a reputed prodigious mother as posted in HMF and old rose books. No hips at all OP, or in a season of testing decades ago. But last year and this it has OP hips, and readily took pollen of Rainbow KO. Weather change? or perhaps a change from juvenile to adult phase? Always in past it had frozen back severely, but recent few years it keeps building the plant bigger to 12 ft. Many tree species wait a decade or more to set fruit, or even to flower. Who knows, for some rose species if that might be the case.