53-08-09 revisited.

I should be writing something substantial, meaningful, educational, but today I'm not in that frame of mind. However, I will share with you today's new photo of my current favorite seedling: 53-08-09 ('Midnight Blue' X L83).

Click on the image for a much larger view.

This is a Kordesii hybrid and as such, it may exhibit both superior Winter hardiness and disease resistance. It's still very young, and only recently transitioned out into the garden, so these aspects of its nature are yet to be determined. In the meantime, I am going to admire its wonderful color (no photo I take does its hue justice: it is a much richer, more vibrant purple/magenta than it appears here) I have learned that it is remarkably easy to propagate as well, something many modern roses sorely lack.

Fedtschenkoana hybrids: 20-09

20-09: L83 X (Orangeade X R. fedtschenkoana)

I was genuinely surprised to see these seeds germinate this Spring, and even as they grew I expected them to turn out to be selfs of L83. Now that they are a couple months old, its quite clear these are R. fedtschenkoana hybrids, with the matte bluish foliage that smells of Pine when rubbed. All three of these are remarkably intermediate in look between their parents. I can see distinct L83 qualities, and clear R. fedtschenkoana traits in all three. Of course, none of these has bloomed yet and I don't expect to see flowers until next Spring, but in terms of their pedigree, these represent potentially remarkable hybrids, unlike anything else before them.

Its curious how, after 15 years of hybridizing, I am now paying so very little attention to the flower style and color, favoring instead the development of unique and sturdier shrubs with better hardiness than their predecessors. (Click on the thumbnails for a full-sized image)

Shown here are a few images of all three plants, their overall appearance, foliage and thorns.

77-07-12: update.

I have been so busy trying to keep up with the hundreds of tasks that all have to be done in May and June and regrettably, blog posts often get dropped from my "to do" list. Tonight, however, I will make an effort.

This is one of about six selections I have now culled down to from the cross made in 2007 of ('Penny Ante' X 'Tradescant') X L83. The seed parent is a proprietary hybrid of mine that I often use for breeding to get both good color and vigor into my work. It turns out to have been an excellent choice with which to mate L83, the AgCan Kordesii breeder.

Seedling #77-07-12 is my favorite of this group, with its heavy, dark glossy foliage and the 4" double red and purple blooms, reminiscent of a slightly less double 'Charles de Mills'. It has a modest "modern rose" fragrance that is neither strong nor remarkable, but pleasant just the same. The foliage has so far been completely immune to Blackspot, whereas other seedlings immediately next to it have lost 80% or more of their foliage to the disease. While I am considering this as a "finished" variety (IE: headed for market) I am also working on proceeding with it as a breeder, crossing it with its siblings and one of the yellow L83 hybrids, the idea being to improve further on the excellent disease resistance of these L83 seedlings.

04-07-05: making progress with L83

In 2007, thanks to David Zlesak, I began working with the AgCan Kordesii breeding variety L83. My main interest in working with L83 was to improve Blackspot resistance in my work, but there was a likelihood that improvements in Winter hardiness might be had as well.

From the 2007 crosses I made, two groups stand out as having at least two or three selections that show both extremely good Blackspot resistance (near immunity) and apparent Winter hardiness (based on my limited experience). It should also be noted that several selections have good to excellent color and attractive bloom form. All have excellent vigor and attractive foliage. About 5 plants have been kept from the cross of ('Penny Ante' X 'Tradescant') X L83, including the fire engine red 77-07-23, which was used to a limited degree in 2009 breeding.

Illustrated here is the best yellow selection from 'Golden Angel' X L83, numbered 04-07-05. Some of you have probably noted that this is a cross of a triploid X a tetraploid, and so it is possible that the 04-07 selections are a mix of triploids and tetraploids. Some of these set open pollinated seeds last year (which I allowed to happen in order to determine fertility) and seeds were saved and a percentage have germinated. I am now starting to put select pollens on this yellow cultivar with the hope of moving forward with a Kordesii derived yellow breeding line. There is certainly a lot of room for improvements in both Winter hardiness and disease resistance in yellows! For now, I am limiting myself to using other first generation L83 hybrids to breed with this selection, and in fact will be crossing most of my best L83 selections with each other this year. Most are strong reds and medium yellows, so color results should be bright and rich with any luck.

53-08-09: 'Midnight Blue' X L83

This is the first of a group of 'Midnight Blue' X L83 seedlings to flower, last year's crop of seedlings. L83 seedlings rarely flower in their first year, undoubtedly a trait carried over from its R. rugosa ancestry. This is a particularly richly colored flower and I am picturing a 4 X 4 foot shrub at maturity, loaded with hundreds of these intense magenta-purple flowers. If it repeats decently, this just might be worth space as a garden shrub! (as opposed to being used strictly for breeding, which is how I see it at the moment)

Speaking of freeze hardiness...

I have a number of seedlings bred from John Davis and L83 currently living in five gallon pots outdoors. These selections are from 2007 crosses and so will be two years old this Spring. I chose to leave these plants outside during the recent cold snap, unprotected, to see how they handled the cold. Crosses involving 'John Davis' and L83 were made to improve Winter hardiness (and disease resistance) and I figured it was time to start testing them for this trait.

I am happy to report that all of the L83 seedlings and all of the 'John Davis' hybrids came through with no damage whatsoever. Canes are green and healthy right to the tips. I recognize that compared to the mid-West regions, a cold snap like our recent one (a week of night temps down to 7 degrees F) isn't much of a test, but since I have seen significant damage to other seedlings (and some appear to have died completely) this tells me these hybrids have inherited some degree of freeze tolerance.

Shown above is a cane of 'Golden Angel' X 'John Davis', one of the pale yellow selections from this seedling group. As you can see, not only did the canes survive without damage, even some of the foliage that grew in late Fall stayed on without any damage! I hope that's a good sign.

PS: today I am processing seeds in preparation for sowing. Next is 'Midnight Blue' X 'Veilchenblau'!

Fall color.

A few days ago I snapped a few informal pics of the Fall foliage colors on some of my L83 hybrids. Then last night a friend sent me photos of some of his R. rugosa Fall foliage, and those were quite spectacular. So, that prompted me this morning to collect a few nice leaves and take them into the "studio" and do proper pics.

The first image shows a group of L83 seedlings, several of which displayed very rich yellow coloring, and a few had good reds as well.

The second image is a selection of leaves from R. carolina, which typically puts on a brilliant Fall display. The one leaf at lower right in the. R. carolina image is a first generation R. foliolosa hybrid (R. foliolosa X 'Little Chief', in fact) and this cultivar always produces great Fall color.

Normally my plants of the F2 'Basye's Amphidiploid' hybrid produce excellent Fall color also, but this year they haven't done as well. Most of the garden is not coloring particularly well, in fact, likely because we have had only one mild frost so far.

I think that breeding for the feature of good Fall coloring in rose foliage is worthwhile and generally overlooked entirely. Don't you agree? ;-)

Inheriting doubleness.

Looking at the AgCan breeder L83 you would never guess it would be capable of producing double offspring. And yet, it frequently does. Many of my selections from three crosses made in '07 are at least semi-double (15 petals or more) and some are intensely double. Take this seedling 77-07-03 for example; double in the style of many of the Old Garden Roses displaying "quartered" blooms, packed full of petals arranged in a swirl. This seedling also happens to be a pretty good repeater (compared to its somewhat reluctant siblings), grows with abandon and yet is maintaining a shapely, restrained architecture. So far it has shown complete immunity to all diseases. If that continues to be the case, then this selection may have a future in commerce. If it has Winter hardiness, as many L83 seedlings do, then even better!

FYI, as the tedium of my routine settles in, what with all the weeding and watering and dull chores to do, I am posting less and less often these days. I need a vacation, to be honest, and yet I have to maintain things. So, don't expect a lot of detailed blog posts in the next month or so; I'm just not enthused about adding yet another task to my to-do list at the moment!

Things slowing down

At this point in the season things are settling into a routine of maintenance more than anything, which becomes both monotonous, and yet allows me more time to relax, something I need. Most selections have been moved up into gallon cans and many seedlings have been culled and sent to compost. A lot of tidying up getting done.

It has become glaringly obvious to me, especially this year, that the most interesting plants (evaluated on foliage, architecture, vigor and health) are coming out of the species, the Canadian Explorers and L83. In comparison, the "cookie cutter" crosses, IE: modern shrub X modern shrub and that sort of thing (aka: stirring the same old pot 'o' genes) rarely results in something unique, vigorous or particularly healthy. This is an important reminder to me illustrating just how stale the modern rose gene pool has become, and how badly an injection of widely varied genetic material is needed. It has become very clear to me just how much roses like 'William Baffin' and 'John Davis', to name but two, really have to offer us in the search for improved garden roses. Crosses using Kim Rupert's 'Orangeade' X R. fedtschenkoana hybrid are even more remarkable, with their feathery, bluish matte foliage and exceptional vigor and beautiful growth architecture. This is a hybrid I will be using much more in the next few years. (/me makes a note to post a photo of one of these seedlings)

Speaking of which, I must go fetch more 'John Davis' pollen today for freezing, to be used in the greenhouse next April/May.

L83 X Stanwell Perpetual

I am pleasantly surprised today to realize that L83 has accepted pollen from 'Stanwell Perpetual' and is making fat hips. Who'd have thought?! This means nothing until they have actually germinated, of course.

Basye's Amphidiploid

Many years ago someone sent me a few open pollinated seeds from Dr. Robert Basye's 'Basye's Amphidiploid', from which I obtained three seedlings. Two are large Spring-blooming shrubs with terrific vigor and complete immunity to disease. (the larger of these two is pictured above) The third is a short plant to 24" tall and blooms on and off all through the growing season. It too is immune to disease, but is a rather runty plant that lacks vigor. I have used their pollen occaionally on a few things here and there but rarely with any concentrated effort. This year I am making a bigger effort, since they probably have the ability to further the goal of disease proof roses of the future. I am assuming these seedlings are tetraploids and so I am using L83 and 'Basye's Blueberry' on them. When my 'Commander Gillette' blooms in a week or so, I will use its pollen as well.

What follows is a bit long, but well worth the read, in my opinion. Dr. Basye specifically mentioned 'Commander Gillette' in reference to working with the Amphidiploid with the goal of Blackspot immunity in mind. The following is a quote from an article written by Dr. Basye in the 1980's.

"May I outline just one plan of attack which I would consider if I were that young rose breeder? I would consider starting with a nucleus of three tetraploids: 'Commander Gillette, and the two amphidiploids, 67-305 and R. kordesii. These three stud roses carry genes of the four species carolina, rugosa, abyssinica and wichuraiana, all of which are highly resistant to Blackspot. And 'Commander Gillette' has the potential of removing the thorns."

"We would begin by crossing the two amphidiploids and growing a population of F1 seedlings. We would expect no great variation here in Blackspot resistance, but if there should be, let us select the best ones for selfing. In each of the resulting F2 generations of selfs we have a segregation of characters and thus a better chance of variation in Blackspot resistance. Again we select from each F2 the plants with the highest resistance. Let A designate this final group of plants of highest resistance. We would hope that their resistance equals or excels that of the two amphidiploids. In any case, we now have plants that carry genes of rugosa, abyssinica and wichuraiana. "

"It remains to introduce the fourth species, R. carolina, and take the first step in the thorn problem. 'Commander Gillette' is ideally equipped for this. I mentioned in a 1985 article that the cross 67-305 X 'Commander Gillette' produced a rose, 77-361, which was free of thorns and bristles and had perfectly smooth midribs of the leaves. Recently, I repeated this cross and confirmed this possibility. But before making the cross Ai X 'Commander Gillette', where Ai denotes a member of the group A, we first make a cosmetic change in 'Commander Gillette'."

" 'Commander Gillette' itself is free of thorns and bristles and has smooth midribs. Among the selfs, however, the bristles will often appear; also a rare thorn or a slight roughness on the midribs. Those recessives are easily bred out by several successive selfings. The criterion for success in such a self is that one further selfing produces a population completely free of the undesirables. One reason I have not done this before in my other breeding work is that it can lead to the loss of other recessives that are desirable. For example, 'Commander Gillette' contains a latent gene for recurrency which might be lost. I nevertheless recommend the cosmetic change for the labor saving dividends it will pay down the road - not a small item."

"We return now to the crosses of the type Ai X 'Commander Gillette' where Ai denotes a member of the group A, and 'Commander Gillette' has been subjected to the cosmetic change described. A small percentage of the seedlings of this cross should be free of thorns, bristles and roughness on the midribs. Several successive selfings of each of these should produce one or more plants homozygous with respect to each of the three traits. We repeat this routine for each member of group A. All the roses so obtained form a group B. Our final group G comes from selecting from B the plants with outstanding resistance to Blackspot."

"To further reduce the labor of the operation just described, it might be best to use the reverse crosses, 'Commander Gillette' X Ai, and mix the pollens of Ai."

"Of the group G we can that each rose it it has high resistance to Blackspot, is homozygous with respect to freedom from thorns, bristles and roughness of the midribs, and, last but not least, carries genes of four of nature's noblest roses."

Since it appears that my F2 seedlings from the Amphidiploid already have superior resistance (immunity?) to Blackspot. I am going to go ahead and pollinate all three with L83, rather than R. kordesii, since L83 is essentially a derivitive from R. kordesii with superior disease resistance and improved Winter hardiness. While this does not follow the Basye plan exactly, it does employ some of the same materials. As I say, when 'Commander Gilette' blooms in another week or so, I will include it in the crosses I make, bearing in mind Dr. Basye's outline for obtaining a superior race of disease resistant roses. If I can obtain germplasm that is capable of furthering the goal of Blackspot immunity in roses, I will be more than pleased. Its well past time we had a group of roses that could be grown without "life support" and which have better architecture and Winter hardiness, making them better shrubs for integration into a garden landscape.

Final note: I will make pollen of my Amphidiploid F2 seedlings available to anyone (in North America) who wants to experiment with them.

They just keep getting better.

The 77-07 group of L83 seedlings continue to flower, and yesterday there was a new crimson seedling that is the best of the lot so far. (Click on photo) Today this bloom has opened to a deep crimson red with purplish splashes on the outer petals, expanding to 4" in diameter. Slight fragrance. Very busy afternoon watering and out pollinating some of the Rugosas, but I wanted to share this photo with you.

More from L83: 37-07-03

The seedling pictured here comes from a cross of Ralph Moore's yellow breeder 1-72-1 X L83, the AgCan tetraploid Kordesii breeder. The idea here, of course, was to work towards yellow in the Winter hardy, Blackspot resistance line. This is as close as any of this group has come to yellow, and it is peachy pink with a yellow center at best, but I think it represents a step towards better things. As 1-72-1 is a tetraploid yellow miniature climber, the likelihood is that all of this group are tetraploids also, and therefore fertile with any luck. The first thing I will do is allow these seedlings to self and see if seeds result. Then next year, if the open pollinated seeds germinate, I will make some intentional crosses, probably mating this with other peachy seedlings from the same cross. (There is one other so far and many still to bloom) I will undoubtedly mate this with the 'Golden Angel' X 'John Davis seedling mentioned a few days ago.

Results from the L83 crosses: 77-07

At left: 77-07 selections. Click on the photo to see a full sized image.

In 2007 I made a few crosses using the Agriculture Canada breeder L83 by Dr. Felicitas Svejda. It is basically a R. wichurana and R. rugosa selection, multiple generations long. It also happens to be a tetraploid, making it particularly useful in breeding with modern lines. There were three crosses I got large numbers of seedlings from and L83 was the pollen parent in every case. 'Seed parents were: 'Golden Angel', 1-72-1 (Sister seedling to 'Rise 'N' Shine') and a proprietary red Floribunda I use extensively in breeding. Out of at least 70 seedlings of each cross, at least 40 of the two yellow groups were saved and potted into gallons and about 60 seedlings from the red cross were potted on.

77-07, the red group, has been the most fruitful. I would estimate that about 35% of these, a much higher number than expected, have been strong reds and several have been large blooms and very double. In the photo, 77-07-08 shows what some of the more double ones have looked like. Several of these have had fragrance and there was one that was a purple very similar to 'Tuscany'. So far about 20 of the reds have been moved on into 5 gallon containers and will be moved outside to watch their progress. This has been a very exciting group of seedlings and I am eager to continue trying new ideas with L83.

Last Fall, some members of the Rose Hybridizers Association received some of my surplus seedlings from the 77-07 group, so this information will be of particular interest to you. Have any of you seen any of the seedlings flower yet?

L83 by Svejda

L83 is listed as a Hybrid kordesii, created at the Canadian Experimental Agriculture Farm (aka AgCan) circa 1988. Its parentage is listed as R. kordesii X a 'Max Graf' derivative. This makes it a combination of only two species: R. wichurana and R. rugosa.

About as far from being a romantic name as you can get, L83 is potentially a very valuable breeding plant. Although it was not introduced into commerce, it has been exchanged from hybridizer to hybridizer over the years solely for the purpose of breeding new Winter hardy, disease free roses. These qualities it passes on quite readily. It also tends to pass on excellent, glossy foliage and superior vigor. Plants are a mix of climbers and shrubs, and many have very good repeat bloom. Unfortunately it is difficult to get it to breed any colors but pinks, but with perseverance it is possible. (See link to 77-07-23 below)

Noteable hybrids from L83 includes 'AC Marie Victorin, 'George Vancouver', 'Prairie Celebration', 'Rosy Vision', 'Irma', and 'Louis Jolliet'. I also have a number of seedlings currently being grown and evaluated, the most attractive so far being 77-07-23, a brilliant red cluster flowering shrub. Read more about it on HMF

More info available about L83 here on HMF

Pollen available during the Spring blooming season, submit a comment if you want any.

11-02-07: 'Sequoia Ruby' X 'Guinée'

This seedling is the sole surviving seedling from a cross made in 2002 between 'Sequoia Ruby' and the magnificent old climbing Hybrid Tea 'Guinée', bred by Charles Mallerin in 1938. The idea behind this cross was to increase bloom production and frequency ('Guinée' is not very generous with bloom) while preserving the rich crimson of 'Guinée'. To be expected, the fragrance of 'Guinée' was lost, but this seedling accomplished some of the other goals, namely the deep coloring and the improved rate of repeat. While I'm sure there were other seedlings from this cross, I don't recall what any of them looked like and ultimately this was the only one saved.

11-02-07 is fully fertile in both directions. I suspect it is a tetraploid but I have not bothered to check. It frequently passes on deep red coloring to its progeny, and seedlings tend to be an equal mix of dwarf and full-sized shrubs. The dwarf seedlings tend to have poor vigor and/or disease problems, but that can be said of many breeding plants, so nothing new there. I can't say that fragrance is a trait commonly passed on to its offspring, but then I am not currently using it to breed for fragrance. For the most part I am using it to breed with the Canadian Explorer roses to create richer colors in the Winter hardy shrub line. Results are still rather early to offer much commentary about, but this line of work looks promising. This Spring I will be evaluating a group of seedlings of the cross 11-02-07 X L83. The latter is a R. kordesii seedling developed by Dr. Felicitas Svejda specifically for the creation of Winter hardy and Blackspot free shrubs. (I'll talk a bit about L83 in an upcoming post, and discuss some of the offspring I've generated from it.)

Next post: a brief biography of 50-05-02, a seedling from a cross of 11-02-07 and 'Dragon's Blood'