I've also often looked around at among some favorites and thought "wouldn't this be interesting to cross with that?" So when I start my garden in my new place next year, I'm making sure to add as many of the "this and that" roses I can fit, and try my amateur hand at making crosses myself. I doubt I'd have the resources to get into it as much as others have, but it would satisfy my own curiosity, and be a fun little side hobby. For instance, I wondered about "remaking" some old rose classes from scratch with new crosses using different parents. Noisettes came about from crossing 'Old Blush' with Rosa moschata. What about trying a different China, like 'Louis Phillipe'? Or what about using 'Secret Garden Musk Climber' as the other parent? Perhaps some red noisettes can come about, rather than the shades of pink that predominate today. Bourbons came about from a cross of 'Autumn Damask' (or 'Tous les Mois' which may have been different) and 'Old Blush'. What about trying that again using a Portland and a different China, and this time selecting for disease resistance?

I suggest you do some research yourself and satisfy your own curiosity as well. You don't need a greenhouse or vast propagation space if you just want to dabble. Have you ever heard of how 'Lyda Rose' came into being? The hybridizer tossed open-pollinated hips of 'Frances E. Lester' into a compost pile and picked the favorite seedling that came forth. Ya never know.

:-)

~Christopher

One additional thought -- perhaps you can hook up with a hybridizer who would be willing to accept hips sent in the mail and grow the seeds for you. All you'd need to do is grow the roses you wish to cross, do the cross pollination, and mark the hips that form. Have you checked the hybridizer's forum?

:-)

~Christopher

Christopher,

I read your ntro on the Fall Vintage thread.

You may get more detail on me, or others, by using the search feature at the bottom of the forum page: enter (or C&P) the user name (in this case sandandsun), and select "entire site."

May we get more detail about you?
How old are you? Are you going to maintain residence in NJ & FL? Did you join the hybridizer's forum? How many seedlings have you grown? What was/is your major? Have you finished university? Afterward, will you be working or devoting all your time to roses? Any other details you'd like to share would also be interesting.

I am 36, I live in NJ now since this past July, and plan on moving to south Florida in a few years. I returned to college in 2010 as a double major in psychology and physical anthropology. I graduated from University of Buffalo this past May (summa cum laude, 3.81 gpa). I completed psych but not phys anthro. I moved here because I want to get my doctorate in clinical psychology at Rutger's, but I'm taking a year off before I apply. First time around, I was an animal science major at Cornell University, planning to go to vet school but changing my mind. I have not yet tried hybridizing roses myself, but have been considering it as an extension of playing in the garden. Roses are just one of my hobbies. I also enjoy planted freshwater aquariums, poultry and tropical birds, exotic pets, theatre (I used to do stuff on stage for fun), cooking and baking, science, and other geeky stuff. My main interest in moving to south Florida eventually is to be able to build large outdoor planted aviaries, and would like to incorporate climbing roses on the outside for proving dappled shade, attracting live insect food for the birds, and simple beauty. Right noe, I live in a small cottage of a house with Sammy, my 21 year old male DYH amazon parrot.

If there is a place to enter info about myself as member profile, can someone direct me there?

byc? (thinking I recognize you from there)

Yep. But I don't post there anymore.

:-)

Christopher

I've tried breeding roses but have not had any seedlings yet. Someone trespassed to pick the roses I had pollinated, and covered with plastic bags , and I haven't had the heart to continue.
However I still dream of crossing Alba Semi-Plena, syn white "Rose of York' with Old Garden Tea roses for the goal of producing in the latter generations a rosebush which is
-highly resistant to disease, from the Alba
-evergreen, from the Old Garden Tea.
-re-blooms through spring, summer, autumn and into winter in zone 8 from the Old Garden Tea.
-has the fragrance of the Alba or Tea.
I've researched the longest blooming Tea roses, so far I've documented that 'Lady Hillingdon' is the most constant bloomer at 180 days in a row, with always 33% or more blossoms than appear at her peak of fullest bloom, which means a constant good garden display all during that period. Than in mid-July she takes a rest for c. 33 days, before she continues to bloom for another period that lasts c. 80 days near San Francisco, Ca
This equals 260 days of bloom in a years time.
In our Mediterranean climate the average Hybrid Tea can only bloom between 90 to 120 days, depending on cultivar, because that class enters into dormancy even in our warm climate, for several months in winter.

-then I'd try crossbreeding the Alba-Old Garden Tea seedlings with the most disease resistant Pernetiana roses to breed more colorful Old Garden Tea hybrids with genetically influenced disease resistant foliage from the Alba line.
My dream rose would have the vivid hues and rich fruity fragrance of either 'President Herbert Hoover' or the exquisite but light perfume of the white Rose of York, with the
'exquisite delicacy" bloom style of an Old Garden Tea, or Alba.
-with disease resistant foliage
-that bloomed for more than 200 days each year in zone 8.

I'd be happy with that.
I've given this some thought on rainy days.

Luxrosa
for white roses, Westside Road Cream Tea' because it is very fragrant but far more resistant to p.m. than 'Ducher', and has the typical long bloom season and rapid bloom that is typical of the Old Garden Tea class, crossed with white 'Rose of York' until remontancy appeared.
Oh bliss!!!
Next dream sequence: remontant Moss roses that are resistant to p.m..

Has there been success transmitting yellow pigmentation from other yellow rose species, which perhaps are not as prone to blackspot? I also remember something from Paul Barden's blog about Ralph Moore suggesting using Harrison's Yellow (or was it something else?). I guess the idea there is that while a descendant of R. foetida, the Scots Rose parent provided disease resistance.

And I guess it'll take a few generations of breeding between Albas and Teas to achieve Tea-like remontancy, considering that Albas (owing to their R. canina ancestry) are typically hexaploid, while Teas are mostly diploid (with exceptions owing to likely ancestry from crosses with European roses but which retained enough classic "Tea" traits for them to be classified as such at the time of their introduction). If remontancy can be reduced to a single-gene recessive trait (in Teas...likely there are different "versions" of remontancy in other classes/species), then it will take more generations for the "non-remontant" alleles to be replaced when they are found on more copies of the chromosome.

6n X 2n = 4n offspring (generally), but these offspring will have 3 copies of their chromosomes from the Alba parent and 1 copy from the Tea parent. Thus while one parent is a Tea and the other an Alba, genetically they'd be 3/4 Alba and 1/4 Tea.

In the F1 X F1 = F2 generation, you'd have a 1/16 chance of getting offspring with two copies of the recessive "remontant gene", but it will also have two copies of the dominant "non-remontant gene." For recessive traits to be expressed, (generally) there can't be a dominant version of the gene present. With animals, common advice is "they need two copies to show" but this is true only in diploid organisms. When a rose has 4 copies of each chromosome, then it needs 4 copies of the recessive gene for the trait to be expressed. Oh, and you wouldn't be able to tell which has two copies of the recessive "remontant gene" by appearance.

If you did F2 X F2 and somehow knew that the F2 had two copies of the recessive "remontant gene", then you'd have a 1/16 chance of getting offspring with four copies of the recessive "remontant gene" but you also stand a good chance of having those offspring lose a lot of the Alba characteristics you'd be hoping to maintain.

You'd probably have to breed the F1 back to a Tea, in which case you'd still likely end up with a non-remontant offspring, which would also likely be triploid (4n X 2n = 3n offspring), and possibly infertile (some triploids are, some aren't). It would still have one or two copies of the dominant "non-remontant" gene, requiring another generation (at least) being bred back to a Tea. If you finally get a remontant offspring somewhere along the line, perhaps if you then used this to breed back to an Alba and start the path again, after a few more generations you could end up with a consistently-reblooming Alba....if fertility is maintained, and if any number of other things "hold still" along the way.

If you can get your hands on some colchicine or similar chemical and induce higher ploidy in the Teas you use to start, perhaps you can get there sooner.

There are others here who will have more knowledge about this than I do, and can correct any suppositions I posited which may not be valid. Plant genetics is a bit of a different beast than the animal genetics with which I am more familiar. Ploidy variability is one headache limited to plants. And if I keep going on this, I'll be putting you to sleep.

:-)

~Christopher

Thank you Christopher, I did not know that albas are hexaploid and that teas are diploid.

Cath

Often, the historical section of a Ph.D. thesis is a very efficient way to learn about a new scientific area. The link below is to a 2000 thesis "Genetic variability and reproductive strategies in Nordic dogroses, Rosa section Caninae"
-----------------------------------
If you are interested in doubling chromosomes, perhaps the following may be useful:

"My "lazy mans' method to double the chromosomes of diploid or triploid roses"

http://home.roadrunner.com/~kuska/chromosome.htm

Here is a link that might be useful: full Ph.D. Thesis

Ah, ok, so according to information in the thesis, using an Alba as the pollen parent on a Tea might work, resulting in diploid offspring. From there, selfing the F1 (or breeding F1 X F1) could result in reblooming F2 offspring. Like I said, I'm more familiar with animal genetics.

:-)

~Christopher

Christopher,
Kind responsible folks don't ask others to do what they could easily do themselves. Or at least, I do not.
I have issues, lol. I have a very challenging climate; roses of merit must entirely be mail ordered here; and those roses take at least 3 years to establish. Seedlings would likewise take at least three years to mature here. Plus, I do not have Eugene in my garden. Had I acquired Eugene this fall, which I did not, I'd be looking at 6 years to see my F-ones. That's assuming successful crosses that matured in the very first available season, of course.
And then there's another possible twist which I will add for the humor of it all: I got my first successful hip this year. It ripened and I collected it a few weeks ago. I was very busy with other matters then and have been since and now I cannot find it.
Isn't that the icing?
Maybe I'll be confined to dreams. I hope not, but life can be a lot like the lottery jingles.