Followup on post from three days ago.

Here is that same 'Magic Wand' open pollinated seedling, its first bloom open. Yes, that is a penny. ;-)

How tiny does tiny get??

It is a fairly well documented fact (R. S. Moore and others) that the miniaturism trait is a dominant one, and you need only one of the parents to be a miniature in order to obtain a good percentage of dwarf plants from a cross. Well, what happens if you cross miniature X miniature? Often, the offspring get smaller still! If you have ever done a cross like that, you will have no difficulty imagining how Pedro Dot came up with 'Si'.

Illustrated here is one of the first seedlings to bloom from a crop of 'Magic Wand' X self seeds. Out of about 80 seedlings I have grown, I would say that about 90% are dwarf, with about 25% of these being extremely dwarf. About eight or ten seedlings appear to be much larger in both leaf and growth habit than the parent variety, which is also to be expected with such crosses.

To give you an idea of scale (yes, I ought to have photographed it with a coin beside it) the pot shown here is 2.75" square. The plant is currently no more than 1.5" tall, and I would estimate that bud is no more than 1/8th of an inch tall (center of the plant, pale pink): the ultimate in cute. Click on the photo to get a much larger image.

I didn't grow this group of seedlings with the idea of actually keeping any of the offspring, I did it to show me the scope of what 'Magic Wand' would do as a parent. If it harbors extremely undesirable traits, they will show up in a selfing batch. Desirable traits as well, will manifest in the seedlings, and so this is a learning excercise more than anything. I often sow self-seedlings from a variety before I put it into actual use as a breeder, just to determine its fertility and other traits. Mind you, I am pretty certain that I will save a few of the best of these tiny things and keep them around as curiosities. ;-) I'll post photos of some of the others as they flower, assuming they are the least bit photogenic!

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)

Mel's Heritage at The San Jose Heritage Garden

Lars met up with Jill Perry, the SJHRG's director, who made sure to
show off a specimen of my Wichurana Rambler 'Mel's Heritage'. It is
often referred to as a repeating Cecile Brunner. (Photo by Lars)

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.