Grapey surprise.

27-09-02: 'Midnight Blue' X "MORsoul". The latter is an unreleased Moore hybrid from 'Anytime' X R. soulieana. It was one parent of Ralph's lovely little 'Baby Austin'.

This was a huge surprise, color wise. I selected 'Midnight Blue' knowing that if anything could add color to a cross that might bleach out to pale pinks or peaches using most any other parent, 'Midnight Blue' could. I guess I wasn't wrong! This is the second selection that has bloomed in a very dark color. Much darker than anything I imagined possible. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that R. soulieana is represented on both sides of the parentage equation? Hmmm.

Bloom form is a bit disorganized, but that might right itself in time. It is already forming the next blooms just as the first is opening, and lots of new growth is appearing from the base, indicating a potentially shrubby, compact habit. Oh, and yes....it has a fragrance too. Fun, eh wot?

Midnight Blue, just because.

I was documenting seedlings in "number four" yesterday and took the opportunity to photograph one of my favorite moderns, 'Midnight Blue', by Tom Carruth. Echoing a recent comment by Jim Sproul, it is one of the few named varieties I still use in breeding. (I mostly use my own proprietary hybrids nowadays)

'Midnight Blue' is a truly amazing shrub. What color! It is also a very willing and capable seed/pollen parent; it is one of the few roses I can expect consistently good numbers of fertile seeds from, regardless of what the pollen parent placed on it.

Busy day, off to work!

Proving fertility of the R. fedtschenkoana hybrids.

A few years back, Kim Rupert graciously shared with me one of his experimental hybrids, 'Orangeade' X R. fedtschenkoana, a white flowered species-like hybrid designed to be used as a breeder plant. It took a while for my plant to settle into its invironment, but settle in it did! It is now a thicket (ever-spreading, I might add) about 8 feet across and 10 feet high. Contrary to expectations for such a cross, it does rebloom, although only modestly. Mine does not set seed, but offers potently fertile pollen.

The cross 54-08, made in 2008, combined this fedtschenkoana hybrid with 'Midnight Blue', a marvelous Carruth hybrid with a deliciously mixed pedigree. (I look at hybrids with widely varied genetic backgrounds as an indicator of potential health and vigor; stirring the same old pot of genes is deadly)

54-08-03 was one of the first of about ten seedlings to bloom, and one of about four that I have selected for further breeding. Blooms are actually more lavender than they appear in photos. I recently germinated the first seedlings of crosses using this seedling, and some of its siblings. I don't know where this breeding line is going to end up taking me, but the R. fedtschenkoana genes are proving to be capable of imparting unique foliage, architecture and vigor traits to offspring. Seedlings also tend to hold on to the unusual "linseed oil" scent of the species parent. Not everyone is going to appreciate this fragrance, but I like its uniqueness. The foliage also tends to have a Pine-Cedar scent to it.

Busy day ahead; breeding has begun in earnest in the past 24 hours, as the main stud house explodes into bloom. I must go attend!

Consistently beautiful; 25-07-07

You must be getting bored of photos of this one. *laughs* I just wish you could see it in person. The photo barely does it justice, especially since you have to inhale the perfectly suitable fragrance that it possesses. (It smells purple!) Parentage: 'Midnight Blue' X 'Pinstripe'. Here is an older post about it.

This seedling is in line for commercial release in the next year or two, pending propagation of sufficient quantities.

Another busy morning; I need to get out and start potting up the hundreds of new seedlings into 3" pots. I am pleasantly surprised by the number of 'Belle Poitvine' hybrids I got from a cross with one of my old R. foliolosa hybrids. I need to use that thing more often, I think.

54-08-08

54-08-08 = 'Midnight Blue' X ('Orangeade' X R. fedtschenkoana) The pollen parent is a white semi-double rose bred by Kim Rupert, who generously donated a plant to my collection several years ago.

This is a mightily vigorous seedling, having produced new basal growths recently that have grown from zero to three feet in only three weeks. I am pleased to note two things: 1) this plant has set seed easily using a variety of pollen parents, and 2) it is repeating bloom in flushes, where in its first year it did not bloom at all. One of its siblings has proven extremely easy to propagate and I will be testing this cultivar for ease of propagation soon as well. I think this has promise as a potential link to new kinds of shrubs for the modern, low-maintenance garden.

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)

54-08-01, another R. fedtschenkoana seedling opens a bloom.

Yesterday I posted a photo of the first bloom of one of my 54-08 hybrids (Midnight Blue X [Orangeade X R. fedtschenkoana]). Today, two more opened their first blooms, and one of these, 54-08-01, is pretty spectacular: deep fuchsia/purple blooms about 2" across, with 15 petals and a modest fragrance. The plant is nearly identical to all of its siblings in most ways, showing heavy influence of R. fedtschenkoana: small, fern-like cedar-scented foliage, upright growth and plenty of needle-like prickles. There is a tiny bit more info available on the HMF page for this seedling.

I have gathered the pollen from the two blooms shown here and hope to use it tomorrow. I have to ruminate a bit to select an appropriate parent from what is in bloom right now. Perhaps 'Little Darling'??! (just kidding!)

54-08-09: the first of the Fedtschenkoana hybrids blooms

This is the first of my 'Midnight Blue' X ('Orangeade' X R. fedtschenkoana) hybrids to flower. The pollen parent is a Kim Rupert hybrid given to me for study and breeding.

R. fedtschenkoana (HMF listing linked here) is a species native to parts of Asia and NW China. It is a prickly, upright species to 7 feet tall (give or take) with Linseed oil scented white blooms. About ten years ago, a lab did DNA sequencing of several of the early Damask cultivars and it was found, much to everyone's surprise, that R. fedtschenkoana played a role in the development of the Damask class. Roses such as R. damascena bifera are believed to be derived from (R. moschata X R. gallica) X R. fedtschenkoana. (Hikaru Iwata, Tsuneo Kato, and Susumu Ohno, 'Triparental Origin of Damask Roses', Gene, Vol. 259: Nos. 1-2 ( 2000 )

Read more: roses - Distribution and early development, The coming of the China roses, Recent developments, Materia Medica, Iliad, richardii) http://www.jrank.org/gardening/pages/1438/roses.html#ixzz0m8e6iKaI

The seedlings in the 54-08 group will be assessed for fertility, remontancy and disease resistance in the next few years. This first seedling has inherited the unusual Linseed Oil/herbal fragrance of its species grandparent, which I find intriguing. It has also inherited some degree of striping on the petals, which is curious, since there are no striped roses in its pedigree that I am aware of.

Hybrids like this may provide a completely new way of looking at the early development of the Damask class and new opportunities might be found when combining these species hybrids with more modern and more diverse parents. There are shockingly few species used in the development of modern garden roses (some estimate as few as seven or eight species are largely responsible for the creation of most of the roses we now grow!) and I feel that if anything truly new is to be created, integrating other species is essential now. I am particularly interested in the native North American roses like R. foliolosa and R. arkansana, to name but two.

Read more about some of Kim Rupert's other R. fedtschenkoana hybrids here.

25-07-07: one of the first to flower.

Busy day, potting up assorted seedlings of all kinds....

Just wanted to share this photo. Seedling #25-07-07, 'Midnight Blue' X 'Pinstripe'. Yes, its a miniature, and yes, it is richly fragrant, and yes, this is its true color. Strongly scented Miniatures of any kind are rare, and to have such a beautiful deep color as well is a real treat. I hope folks will like this one. I will be propagating it this Summer with the idea of making it commercially available as soon as possible. (Through Rogue Valley Roses, no doubt)

Back to potting up seedlings.....

R. fedtschenkoana hybrids.

54-08-03 = 'Midnight Blue' X ('Orangeade' X R. fedtschenkoana). The latter is a Kim Rupert hybrid given to me years ago for breeding purposes. See: LINK.

Some of you probably know that R. fedtschenkoana was identified about a decade ago as one of the species that helped found the Damask class. Since then, some hybridizers like Kim Rupert have incorporated the species into their breeding program in order to explore its genes as a potential source of new characteristics. Kim gave me a piece of his 'Orangeade' X R. fedtschenkoana hybrids several years ago and I have only recently started using it in my work. It took several years to start to flower, and because it clearly isn't ideally suited to my climate, it blooms only sparingly during its first cycle. And so, I rarely have pollen available at the right time.

However, in 2007 I managed to pollinate a few late blooms of 'Midnight Blue' with its pollen and about 14 seedlings resulted. Several of these grew so fast that they had to be moved into 5 gallon cans by June! I can see that hybrid vigor is something Kim's hybrid can bring into the mix. As expected, none of these flowered in their first year, and although "Kim's Fedtschenkoana" does rebloom, I don't expect my seedlings to be remontant. Often the remontancy genes from one class don't "play nice" with remontancy genes from another and what you get are mostly once bloomers. We shall see. To be honest, I don't expect anything but pinks, but with 'Orangeade' and 'Midnight Blue' in the mix, anything is possible.

The foliage is particularly attractive on these seedlings, most of them open with reddish tints and mature to a matte blue-green hue. The canes are matte as well, in brown and grey tones and fairly well armed with straight prickles. This year I will get them moved outdoors and see how they handle the typical diseases. (Kim's hybrid doesn't get any of the "big three" diseases, and with any luck, that might carry through to these seedlings)

The more I work with breeding roses, the more I find myself exploring non-traditional territory, often involving species and near-species hybrids. I think that if anything truly original and new is to be done with roses, it will surely come from the experimental breeding work of the dedicated "amateurs". (My friends, you know who you are!) The temptation to make crosses that will yield quick results is always there, but I say RESIST that temptation, and dare to strike your own trail. You just might end up creating a building block that future hybridizers might find invaluable in leading their own work forward. What better legacy could you want?!

27-07-16

NOTE: I made an error when listing the parentage of this rose, see revised parentage below.

This is beginning to impress me in its second year. 'Midnight Blue' X 'Lilian Austin'. Very intensely scented.

Working with Midnight Blue

Tom Carruth's 'Midnight Blue' has turned out to be a decent breeder for me, often delivering shimmering purples and amaranths and occasionally black-reds, as illustrated here. This is one of the 49-08 seedlings blooming for the first time. I wouldn't normally consider 'Smoky' as a parent, but I made this cross on a whim last year. This is the only seedling I kept from a small group of seedlings. The color and petal texture cannot be photographed accurately; you should see how velvety the petals are, and the quality of the deep garnet coloring. It is branching from the base even before the bloom is fully open, which is hopefully an indicator of good shrub architecture. Time will tell.

The search for purple: 50-08-03

I don't think anyone has done a more remarkable job of breeding new purple shrubs than Tom Carruth. Both 'Midnight Blue' and 'Ebb Tide' are astonishingly beautiful. I have done some of my own work using both of these in breeding, and happily, both set seed and both can pass on these rich colors fairly often. The tendency is to breed paler mauves and dark Beetroot crimsons (which is fine by me) but good solid purples can be had as well.

I can't go into a lot of detail describing this cross, since I have a LOT of work to do out in the greenhouse these days. However, here is its parentage: 'Midnight Blue' X ('Midnight Blue' X 'Dragon's Blood') The idea behind introducing 'Dragon's Blood' into the line was to increase the speed of rebloom (the pollen parent accomplishes this) and to intensify the color, if possible. It is also hoped that the offpsring will be better plants on their own roots. ('Midnight Blue' and 'Ebb Tide' have to be budded to perform their best, so Weeks Roses management told me)

This is one of several seedlings selected from 50-08 so far and I sense there will be more. It shows signs of being very fast with reblooming, a trait it would have picked up from 'Dragon's Blood' I expect. And yes, it has a strong fragrance.

Mistakes were made......

I'm pretty good about documenting my work properly and making sure things are labeled clearly and correctly, but occasionally accidents happen. In this case, I have a seedling germinated in 2007 that is clearly not from the cross the label says its from. 130-06 is a group of open pollinated 'Old Blush' seedlings. There is not even a hint of 'Old Blush' in this plant. What I expect happened is that a seed from another cross wormed its way into the 130-06 row and thats how it was labeled. In '06 I did quite a lot with 'Midnight Blue' and this seedling looks very similar to some of the seedlings from those crosses. Anyway, I am going to assume this had 'Midnight Blue' as a seed parent and leave it at that. I wouldn't be the first hybridizer who lost track of the parentage of a rose.

I have just moved this seedling from a 5 gallon container outside into the garden for further evaluation. In another year I will have a better idea of its merits (and flaws). It has a very decent fragrance, but the blooms are a bit on the small side at 2 to 2.5 inches. The color of the half open buds is amazing and defy photographing; almost black they are such a deep Amaranth purple.

In the weeks to come I will likely present numerous test seedlings, as the 2007 and 2008 crop are all coming into bloom now.

A more recent miniature: 25-07-07

As I mentioned in my previous post, I don't use miniatures in my work to breed new miniatures, but to utilize them for some of their other characteristics. It can be a specific trait I am trying to obtain, or some general trait like compact growth habit. In the case of this seedling, I was aiming to capture stripes, as the pollen parent was 'Pinstripe' by Ralph Moore. While I did get a couple of striped seedlings from this group, I am still evaluating them and am unsure of their merit.

This seedling, number 07 from the cross of 'Midnight Blue' X 'Pinstripe', has been a rather pleasant surprise. Yes, its a miniature, but a rather unique one I think. In many ways it is a perfect miniature replica of its seed parent except that it has more of a tiny Waterlily bloom form. (I regard Tom Carruth's 'Midnight Blue' as a triumph of modern hybridizing in terms of its overall performance and remarkable purple coloring.) 25-07-07 is still only one year old and has not yet matured, so I don't really know much about its ultimate size or shrub form. It appears to be fairly upright but bushy, and it is going to bloom in clusters. Bloom size is about 1.5" and it has a moderate/strong fragrance reminiscent of its seed parent. (Somewhat Clove-ish) This seedling propagates readily from cuttings as well, which is always a good thing.