Yes Thornton, I hope you are right. With the amazing science we have today, I'm surprised more roses with such qualities have not been released. It just baffles me that the most beautiful flower we are able to grow is plagued with so many problems. Why must that be? There are so many beautiful plants that are such a breeze, but in my opinion nothing is so special as a classic hybrid tea rose. Why must they be plagued with so many diseases and pests? I admire the Knockouts, but I just don't think they are beautiful except perhaps in mass plantings from a distance, say at a commercial building or along the highway. We want giant flowered hybrid teas with the same vigor!!!

It really makes me sad that virtually NO ONE I know in my area grows any classic hybrid teas at all, with may the exception of a few here or there, usually in an older neighborhood.

Related Theme:

Here is a link that might be useful: ...on the decline of the rose hobby

You will be happy to know that hybridizers ARE working to develop roses with classic exhibition form that are resistant to diseases.

No currently available rose of classic exhibition form has yet been able to pass the "Earth Kind" criteria as established by Dr. Steve George. . However, some existing HT varieties have come very close. So to encourage the effort in that direction, the ARS in conjunction with LSU established the Easy-Tea Hybrid Tea Research program in 2009. The results of that research should be available soon.

Here is a link that might be useful: Easy-Tea™ Hybrid Tea Roses

People have been hybridizing roses for years and sales have been decreasing for like fifty years, then suddenly a guy comes out with a rose that's easy to grow and doesn't defoliate from blackspot and he makes millions of dollars.

Duh. If Knockout didn't inspire rose breeders, nothing will.

Thankfully, it has inspired people and there's work being done. I'm ripping out two more roses this year because I'm not going to grow twigs in the back yard and that's basically what I have right now.

One of them is the unfortunate Homère. I gave it ten years. That seems to be long enough.

Thorntorn......

I hate to be a wet blanket, but instead of putting the burden of producing very disease resistant roses onto the breeders, I think it is more honest to target the people who market roses as "disease resistant" without a nod towards science or botany.

I am not an expert, but I know there are a lot of variables to be considered beyond what the hybridizers of roses, or any plant, can accomplish.

The biggest and most wonderful thing those who market roses could do for the industry is to admit that roses are regional and offer roses to consumers on that basis.

Some things to consider:

Over 20 years ago Sean McCann wrote in an article in the ARS magazine that there are few, if any, international roses because there few, if any, roses suited to all climates and soils. He was not talking just about cold hardiness in that article.

Since that time, a lot has been learned about blackspot. What I have picked up on the Rose Hybridizers Phorum is that there are 15 races of blackspot in the world with five of them in the United States. A rose may be very resistant to one strain and very susceptible to another. How can any breeder breed in resistance to every strain of bs ? Even the Knock Out roses are susceptible to bs in some climates.

I have found in my own garden in the mountains where it seems like every spring is different, that some years my roses are all clean while in other years they seem to be bs magnets. And in other years it's mixed depending on how the rose has been sited. If conditions are right, I am going to see bs in my garden. I do try to grow roses that are clean more often than not.

Juvenile plants are generally more susceptible to disease until their immunity systems develop. Often they will become more disease resistant over time. How long does a breeder have to keep a rose in testing to determine whether or not a rose can be called "disease resistant" ?

There have been so many time when I almost shovel pruned a rose because of its propensity to disease when the next year it was clean and it stayed clean. How can a breeder test for something like that ?

Culture also makes a difference. I have a few roses in my garden that are more "thirsty" than the rest of my roses. If I don't give them some additional water, they will show water stress by becoming more disease prone. You will never read about that in the marketing materials for a rose.

Siting also makes a huge difference in the performance of many roses. I found out where the coldest micro-climates in my yard are this year because we had a heavy snow that stayed on the ground for several weeks. Generally the snow melts within a couple of days at my elevation. This spring, I moved two roses that had been puttering along and in the ground for over four years to new spots and they have more than doubled in size in just a couple of months. This is completely out of the control of breeders.

I've only mentioned a couple of variables in this post, there are more.

Kim Rupert told me years ago that disease resistance in roses improves every decade as breeders have more science available to them so that they can make better crosses. BUT even with this kind of information, it is not the breeder in large companies that makes the choice as to what rose is introduced. It's generally a corporate decision based upon what the marketing department thinks will sell. The breeder would look for a solid plant, while the marketing department is looking at the bottom line.

Finding out which roses do well in your area for others who are growing roses is the best way to find roses that will do well in your garden. It's also the most important "lesson" we can share to those who are new to growing roses.

Just food for thought.

Smiles,
Lyn

People seem to forget that BS and other fungi continues to mutate over the years. Both are in a race - BS/fungi mutations and rose hybridizers with BS-resistant roses. I think the two will continue to remain competitive for the foreseeable future. There's no guarantee that Knockouts will survive the next few decades (and it has no other saving graces).

We used to grow Red-tips in Georgia. They may have almost been as ubiquitous as azaleas. Then a mutated fungus broke through their resistance. Most were wiped out within a year or two. You can't find them anywhere anymore.

I grow classic HT's and love it. Seems to me the advances in chemical science and sprays are just as important. Used to, we had to spray something with an oily-base that was dangerous to the eyes - and it only lasted 1 week (if that). Now, we get two weeks with a much safer spray (despite religious protests to the contrary), maybe more, depending on the climate.

"People seem to forget that BS and other fungi continues to mutate over the years. Both are in a race - BS/fungi mutations and rose hybridizers with BS-resistant roses. I think the two will continue to remain competitive for the foreseeable future."

Tom points out the elephant in the room - you know - the one nobody wants to acknowledge. It will always be a race between new cultivar development and the pathogens evolving to defeat resistance. This is not a race that humans can win, but hybridizers strive to stay ahead. Roses that are brilliantly resistant to disease now are unlikely to remain resistant indefinitely, since they are static genetic entities; they cannot evolve to develop newfound resistance. (Unless they spontaneously mutate to develop new resistance genes, and the odds of that are - well - virtually nil)

Yesterday's roses are already compromised.
Today's roses are a mixed bag, from which we need to select only those that perform well for our specific sites.
Tomorrow's roses are an ongoing game of leap frog, and all we can hope for is a more concerted effort to select near-ideal disease resistance and enjoy it while it lasts.

For practical purposes an individual rose will not develop new immune system properties as Paul has pointed out. But, friendly fungi may/can mutate as rapidly as the bad guys if we let them.

Great thoughts and views here on this thread and some wonderful links, thanks Nickl and Sandandsun.

Lyn, i agree. The bottom line is the money.Who can blame them? I read it takes years to actually bring a rose to market and have enough to sell to the masses of online orders, not to mention promotions, cost of labor, etc.
Ofcourse, who wouldn't prefer Gemini with superior BS and mildew resistance? I know i would. It's offspring Mercury Rising has even better form i hear, but remains to have fungal issues, worse that it's parent.
My hope for the future is that HT's with consistant exhibtion form AND resistance can be combined at some point.
Let's hope it comes soon cause when one works full time plus all the other demands of life, there aren't hours a day to spend spraying and fiddling with the beauties.

One climate's disease-free rose is another climate's fungus-ridden disaster. Just as "All Politics Is Local," and Real Estate depends upon "Location, Location, Location," we need to find the rose that is best where we garden.

"Earthkind" roses can -- and some definitely DO -- rust and/or mildew in my area. Not all of them, but enough to show me that I can't depend on labels.

Jeri

I went to Lowes and Menards this spring in hope of finding a few replacements. They had Knockout and that was about it.

I am convinced that the future of rose growing has arrived, and it lacks diversity, and interest. There are fewer and fewer varieties available each year. I for one do not want Knockout. It is great that it is planted in front of Hardees, and no one has to lift a finger. But I want diversity, form and beauty.

I disagree with the premise of this thread that the future for rose hobbyists is "rosy." It appears dismal. This could change; it hasn't yet.

Jeri...

You've said it very, very well. I live in a climate where HTs thrive and are quite disease free for most of the growing season. It depends upon whether or not we are having a very wet spring ... lol.

I happen to like many bloom forms so it kind of surprises me that I am liking the HTs more than some of my other roses, but I think it is because they have the heavy petal substance necessary to hold up to the high summer temps in my climate.

frenchcuffs13 ... it does take years to bring a rose to market. The testing is not only for disease resistance, but also for ease of propagation. Right now, the HT seems to be out of fashion, but that has happened to other classes of roses in the past, but fashions change. I think I am happiest growing the roses that like my climate because I don't have to work so hard, but I also have to like the bloom. The Knock Out roses have never called my name.

Smiles,
Lyn