Bracteata line breeding.

It seems to me that line breeding is rarely pursued in the breeding of roses. In part, I expect this is because undesirable recessives start to show up and loss of hybrid vigor becomes an issue as well. Still, many of the Canadian Explorer roses rely heavily on line breeding, making extensive use of the 'Red Dawn' X 'Suzanne' line and the 'Kordesii' line, and with great success.

Well, I have been working with the Moore line of Hybrid Bracteatas for several years now and it has become very clear that the biggest battle with these is getting decent color out of them. Ralph Moore's most attractive hybrid of the group (for me) is 'Out of Yesteryear', whose parentage is 'Sequoia Gold' X 'Muriel'. 'Muriel' is Moore's first successful cross using R. bracteata (crossed with 'Guinee') that was fully fertile and able to carry forward the line. 'Muriel' is a tetraploid, as is 'Sequoia Gold', but when these two were crossed, 'Out of Yesteryear' resulted and it turned out to be a triploid! How two tetraploids mated to produce a triploid is a bit of a mystery, but there you have it. Even more interesting, 'Out of Yesteryear' is a fully fertile triploid, contrary to the mytholgy of triploids being infertile. You can use its pollen on pretty much anything and get loads of seedlings from it.

I've done plenty of crosses with 'Out of Yesteryear' over the years and there are some excellent traits it passes on, and some not so great ones. Its offsrping tend to have excellent vigor, beautiful foliage and often very beautiful blooms packed with petals. Many are often fragrant as well. However, seedlings can be very thorny, the petal texture too thin and rarely do you get anything with strong coloring. Many seedlings are just white. So when I get a seedling that has decent color, I'm inclined to explore it as a stepping stone towards Bracteata hybrids with good color, which leads me to these two.

174-02-17 = 'Sheri Anne' X 'Out of Yesteryear'. One of its siblings tested as a tetraploid and I suspect this is also. It is a thorny plant that is more horizontal than vertical, with smallish glossy foliage. It blooms at many nodes along the previous season's canes and can bloom in large clusters sometimes. Blooms have a vaguely HT shape when in bud (see photo) but open to a flat 2.5 inch shape. Color is a medium red in bud, fading to a pale red/pink. It sets seed with most any pollen, but seed fertility is low at about 10-20%. However, when it does produce seedlings, a high percentage of them has something about them that warrants further evaluation. Offspring tend to bloom in big clusters with compact, graceful architecture and good color. One of my favorite new shrubs came from a cross of 174-02-17 X 'Hot Cocoa'. (More about this soon)

33-03-03 = 'Twilight Skies' X 'Muriel'. Why, you might ask, did I select the mauve miniature 'Twilight Skies' as the parent for this cross? Because it was there! I had grown it for two years when it was new and it set seed readily, bloomed like mad, so I thought why not? It was untested and might have qualities that would make it worthwhile as a parent. The seedlings from this group were mostly lavender/pinks with one coral colored one in the mix. Several were grown for two years and all but 33-03-03 were discarded for poor vigor or unattractive blooms. 33-03-03 is a semi-climbing plant with dark green glossy foliage and 2.5" medium red blooms that fade to a reddish pink with age, about 25 petals, cupped in form. It blooms in clusters all along the arching canes, repeating in flushes through the year. David Zlesak kindly did ploidy tests on some of my Bracteata seedlings for an article we were co-authoring*, a few years back and it turns out that 33-03-03 is a tetraploid. It is fertile in both directions and should be compatible with most other tetraploids.

174-02-17 and 33-03-03 happen to be growing side by side in one of the greenhouses, both descended from R. bracteata through 'Muriel', and both were selected for their relatively strong coloring. Yet it never occurred to me to cross the two together....until now. The idea (and hope) here is that some of the more interesting Bracteata traits might be reenforced while retaining the vigor, repeat blooming habit and red coloring of each. Anything could happen of course. I might end up with a load of diseased seedlings with no vigor and no rebloom. Its possible the seeds might not even germinate, assuming I get seeds at all! We shall see.

*See: Bracteata Gene Counts Article