Further Warmer Weather Wraps

As I explore and experiment with this method of rooting, I'm impressed how crucial the level of moisture in the newspaper is. It must not be wet, but DAMP. You need to squeeze as much of the dripping water from it as possible or your chances of rot are significantly greater.

I've also found that the apparent optimal temperatures to hold the wrapped cuttings under is in the sixty degrees F range. Hotter and they will attempt to sprout leaves instead of callusing and rooting. Other than to use refrigeration, I have no way to test colder temperatures, but the success rate in the sixty degree F range is sufficient to not encourage me to try colder.

I wrapped two burritos of unnamed China roses three weeks ago. After two weeks, the first wrap was callused and it has been planted. Today, three weeks after wrapping, this bundle came out. Remember, you may click on any image here to see the larger version for better detail. Click on the enlarged photo for an even higher magnification.

The storage room where I'm keeping the bundles now is slightly warmer due to the increased temperatures outdoors. It is still well within the sixties optimal temperature range, but it is warmer than with the original results. You can see the range of callusing to actual root formation. These were planted this evening and watered in well.

Two weeks ago, I wrapped this bundle of the climber Shadow Dancer to see how it responds to the method at this time of year. These were the results tonight after two weeks at the slightly warmer temperature. Notice the best root formation is on the actual flower cluster. I had been taught that the actual flowering cluster wood wasn't suitable for propagation due to the lack of growth buds. However, I experimented with my Annie Laurie McDowell and several floribundas before testing this variety and have found throughout the initial experiments, this "unsuitable" wood is the fastest to form calluses and the most likely to actually form roots in the wraps. And, from experience, they DO have growth buds and will make use of them once sufficiently rooted.

With varieties such as polyanthas, most of the available wood for propagation ARE these flower clusters. Most polys don't form that many nor that long shoots with growth buds and foliage to cut without taking large sections of the plant. By using these cluster shoots, too, you increase the quantities of the plants notorious for throwing these growths you may propagate in a season, and you will likely find these are the ones to propagate fastest and easiest.  To illustrate, this is an earlier piece of a climber I wrapped and which rooted quickly. Traditionally, this is the type of wood I was taught wasn't suitable due to lack of growth buds. As you can see, it has buds.

As a further experiment, I treated and wrapped cuttings to send to a friend in another state. She wouldn't be ready for them until after June 9, so I prepared them in time to mail them and have them ready for planting a day or two after receipt. She emailed to say the thicker cuttings were nicely callused when she opened the burrito. The thinner ones weren't callusing, but turning black. It appears this method may be better suited to thicker, heavier growth with some varieties. As you can see from the above photos, at least for China roses, the gauge doesn't seem that important.

Warmer Weather Wrapping

To begin exploring whether cutting wrapping is successful as the weather warms and material awakens from dormancy, I wrapped two sets of cuttings two weeks ago today.

The first bunch were accidentally left soaking in a bucket of water for one week before wrapping. The bucket received half day sun for that week. As you can see from the photo, half of them rotted, while half callused.

The second batch was a large bunch of Mutabilis, freshly cut and wrapped within an hour of cutting. Two weeks from right off the plant to this.

A few are planted here while the rest are being sent to a friend for rooting. I love Mutabilis, but, realistically,  how many can I possibly use?

Frustration!

It doesn't take many seedlings raised before you lose a tag. Frustrating! Whether it's your own neglect, some vermin removing it as happened in my old Newhall garden where rodents were all over the hillside chaparral, or snails eating the paper tag, usually the side with the graphite on it from your documentation.

This seedling is one of the latest frustrations. I know the seed parent, the "mother", was Ralph Moore's 0-47-19, the R. Wichurana X Floradora hybrid he used for sixty years to create some remarkable roses. Who the father is, is open to conjecture. I know what I used on the seed parent. I don't have records of what failed, only what I can document was planted, and what got planted without paternal information.

I kept this seedling because of its dense, healthy foliage. It isn't as rampant a grower as some of its siblings. The wood is mahogany with mid green, semi glossy leaves. It has prickles, but not terrible ones like others of its relatives, or even its mother. It germinated last year and only began flowering for the first time a few weeks ago.

It is obvious there are Wichurana genes in the plant, all parts suggest it. I've not had a seedling from 0-47-19 show such photo reaction in the flowers. The sun touches the petal reverses, giving them a nice rosy glow. There is a flesh tone to them that suggests what I more and more suspect might be its "daddy".

I've only caught one fading flower before it fell and was thrilled to find the petal surfaces overcast with a similar rosy glow. I'll watch for these to take on that glow to be able to post photos later in an edited post.

Anyone care to go out on a limb and suggest what could be the pollen parent?

Update:

These are the same blooms one day later, and one Katydid attack later.

BUGS

Hate them. Unfortunately, they're a gardening necessity. Without them, we'd not have any birds or lizards. When you pimp pollen, you become painfully aware when they over step their bounds.

I hoped to pull some pollen from this seedling, but something beat me to it.

Fortunately, the bugger was still there so I could finally determine who the culprit was!

He was rather quick at getting away.

I figured out viewing bud identification sites it had to be a sort of Katydid. Sending the photos to Baldo Villegas, the State Entomologist, confirmed it is an immature Katydid.  Baldo has a great rose site containing many photos of diseases and insects as well as professional information concerning what to do about them. Here is the link. Baldo's bug and rose site I don't have any photos of a mature one...yet, but you can find them easily online.

Katydids can cause some real damage in your gardens. They'll eat just about anything. If you find these in your garden...

SQUASH THEM! They're Katydid eggs. They deserve to be squashed!

Basye's Thornless Wichurana

Quite a few years ago, I purchased a rose from Sequoia Nursery they called "Basye's Thornless Wichurana". It grew..and GREW....AND GREW! As with any Wichurana, it roots at every leaf node, creating a new plant each time until it colonizes all available space. Due to lack of room, I removed it and quickly wished I hadn't. I intend to eventually begin working with it to determine if the thornless character can be bred into its hybrids.

Winter of 2004, while visiting Sequoia, I asked Ralph Moore if he still had the plant and might he please have one available for sale? He didn't but told me he'd make some. The following summer, May 29, I was in Visalia to attend the dedication of his memorial garden. People lined up to shake the great Rose Man's hand. Many of us wore name tags with our names, the names of our roses he'd created and named for us, as we slowly moved toward the honorees seat.

As I approached him, he caught sight of me out the corner of his eye and reached for my hand. Jerking medown to his face to be heard, he asked, "You know that thornless Wichurana you asked me for last winter? I got two little plants for you if you remind me when we go back to the nursery". Easily six months since my inquiry, with the dedication of his memorial garden with its associated hullabaloo, and this 97 year old gentleman is focused on my inquiry of six months ago! That's the source of my two plants of Basye's Thornless Wichurana.

It still grows and grows. These plants have been starved in depleted soil, crammed into five gallon nursery cans, yet they STILL grow! One has thrown itself through the other roses in the pot ghetto, into a huge Manetii root stock which got away, and cascades down the sunny side of the mound. Laterals spring from its smooth canes, each terminating in clusters of single, white flowers.

The foliage is attractive, and I noticed today it has the trait of "tanning" to red in heat and sun, particularly on the reverses of the foliage.

The canes ARE thornless. The leaf mid ribs do have small, hooked prickles. The plant roots EXTREMELY easily and GROWS quite well. It should easily make a very successful ground cover for a slope, rooting as it creeps along the ground. Not having the flesh eating prickles on the canes should help make it quite a bit easier to deal with when having to pull weeds or trash from the plant. When it flowers, it is quite beautiful.

Catching the fragile flowers while they are still fresh and without damage is quite a trick. Unfortunately, I can't detect much scent from them.  What I did notice today during an overcast, warmish morning is a slight "soapy" scent.

Strangely, the stipules are slightly fringed like the bracts in the flower clusters, a trait indicative of multiflora heritage. No other Wichurana or its hybrids not containing multiflora I've encountered possess the fringing.

Cuttings of this easily rooted, healthy rose are available to anyone interested within the Continental US for the cost of postage.

Longer Wrapped Cuttings Update

It's been about five weeks since the precallused IXL cuttings were removed from their burritos, where they callused for two weeks. What you are about to see is seven weeks development from cuttings to these plants. Only two to three days of the weeks they sat out among the other canned roses were hot. Two days of 97 degrees, while the majority of the rest of them were in the seventies with quite cool nights. The past two days have had rain showers, a real rarity for Southern California this late in the year.

I'm sure the milder weather, compared to what it could have been, has helped the cuttings perform as well as they have. Having the increased humidity relieved me of needing to water them as often and eliminated any need to mist the foliage. IXL resulted from a cross of Tausendshon and Veilchenblau, both strongly multiflora hybrids. The species' greatly enhanced ability to root definitely helped, too.

Because of the cool, wet weather, I decided to check the pots for roots. If they were sufficiently rooted, these conditions would be perfect for unwrapping the stems to allow them to harden off easily without requiring any extra effort from me. Rainy weather is perfect for transplanting plants, planting bare roots and hardening off cuttings propagated in more controlled conditions.

Only one of the pots showed no root growth at the pot bottom or along the sides. Many impressed me with how well rooted they are so soon after planting. These were some of the root development in pots. You can click on all photos to view them larger.

I checked the one and two gallon pots but decided not to attempt the five gallon, four foot cutting for fear of destroying the soil ball. Based upon how the smaller pots look, and how well the cutting protruding from the plastic wrapped around the cane, I'm sure it is doing its thing. Ironically, the smaller pots generally showed superior root development. I wonder if it is due to the smaller soil balls heating faster in sunlight and warmer air than the larger ones?

They vary in size from half #2 pencil gauge to quite thick, virtually what you'd expect a traditional standard trunk to be. This is approximately two feet in length, in a two gallon can.

Those which impressed me as being sufficiently rooted have been unwrapped. Those which felt too lightly rooted to chance should weather conditions become hot and dry, I left wrapped. Once they develop larger root systems, unwrapping them to harden off shouldn't be that much of an issue. I wanted to get these going now to reduce the work required later.

This is how they look at this moment. All but one short, quite thick cutting, have some root development. Not bad for seven weeks time. Not bad at all!

These are now against a west facing wall, under a deep eave. Light is filtered through a Black Walnut, so it's bright with little direct sun until very late in the evening, shortly before dusk.

Why R. Fedtschenkoana?

A frequently recurring theme during my long friendship with Ralph Moore was "not to stir the pot", but bring something new to my rose breeding. He led by example, basing much of his miniature breeding on R. Wichurana, and adding doses of other species and Old Garden Roses along the way.

This set me to searching for a species which hadn't already been over worked in creating modern garden roses and which wouldn't yield the infertility problems associated with mismatched chromosome counts. Many species are diploid, meaning they have fourteen chromosomes (two pairs of seven). Many modern roses are tetraploid, meaning they have twenty-eight (four pairs of seven) chromosomes. During fertilization, pairs split from one another and mate up with matching pairs from the other parent. When there aren't equal pairs from both sides, infertility issue arise and crosses fail, or infertile offspring result. I hoped to avoid much of the historical infertility issues encountered on the road to what we grow today.

I discussed this with Ralph and he chuckled, telling me it didn't matter because 'the rose will find the way'. He paid no attention to chromosome counts, other than to find them amusing and interesting when they appeared to disagree with established "scientific knowledge" His disregarding matching counts resulted in many triploids, roses with twenty-one pair of chromosomes, being produced. Historical science holds that odd numbered pairs will result in lowered to no fertility. However, his most prolific breeders have tended to be odd numbered, triploids. His triploid breeders are some of the most fertile, most easily pollinated roses around. OK, so based upon chromosome counts alone, it shouldn't matter what species I selected for my breeding.

I researched many species, looking for one which not only attracted me but contained traits I found desirable to try and include in my breeding and which hadn't already been used to make what we grow. I chose R. Fedtschenkoana for a number of reasons. Whether the chromosome count matters or not, I figured its containing the same count as the roses I wanted to cross it with could only make things easier. This rose has absolutely beautiful foliage! New growth tends to be lavender tinted, with short, sharp red prickles liberally studding the canes. New foliage on these shoots show the lavender tints until they begin developing the mature silvery-turquoise-gray tints. This is foliage unlike most other roses you've encountered and I had to see what it would do!

It's flower buds are quite "mossy", exhibiting what Ralph called "soft moss" as opposed to the harder, prickle type mossing which tends to stab you and remain in your flesh when you come in too close contact with it. The new growth tips and the mossy buds and sepals release the most amazing scent when brushed or rubbed. It has always impressed me as being that of a Nobel Fir combined with hardwood smoke, like a fresh Christmas tree with the scent of a fireplace. I had studied R. Foetida and its wonderful plant scents and followed how they had morphed through the breeding toward modern roses. I wondered what the effects would be on this marvelous scent.

Fedtschenkoana's blooms are a very brilliant, hard white. The plants have been nicknamed "ghostly" and the intensity of how white the flowers are fit that very well.

They have the same odd "linseed oil" scent found in R. foetida and R. laxa, and it carries well on warm, moist air just as the delicious plant scent does. I've studied how the Foetida bloom scent evolved into fruity scents as it has been massaged by the inclusion of other genes and wondered if that is the path Fedtschenkoana's scent would also follow. Its characteristic of flowering throughout the summer is an added attraction. Perhaps that would blend well with modern repeat flowering to produce season-long bloom earlier in the line?

The rose has always been spotless in any environment I've grown  or encountered it. Very late in the fall there can be some ugliness to it, but this IS a deciduous plant and aging foliage being drained of all of its nutrients as the plant heads toward shedding it for winter isn't always "pretty". The species does tend to turn autumnal colors, primarily in the yellow tones in my climate, before being dropped for the season. I wondered what effects other genes I might choose to mix with theirs might have on the fall colors.

Obtaining Fedtschenkoana proved more difficult than I had imagined. There were only two sources for it and both were sold out for the year. At that time, we had a very active volunteer group at The Huntington Library. Joan Kennedy, who was one of the active volunteers, had contracted cancer and it was only a matter of time. She had a very large, lovely garden not far from Descanso Gardens and the volunteer group decided to spend a Saturday cleaning up her garden to show our support and get to visit with her. While working along the fence at the bottom of her garden hill, I encountered a plant which looked very much like the rose I sought. We broke for lunch and I asked her what the rose was. R. Fedtschenkoana. I told her of my efforts to buy it and she begged me to dig out as much of the plant to take home as I wanted. My Fedtschenkoana and all of its hybrids are my remembrance of Joan.

Now, it was in my garden and I began planning what to cross with it to produce the breeders I wished to create and base a line on. Unfortunately, the rose had other ideas! For a rose containing the right chromosome count, it was definitely being stubborn! Nothing I used its pollen on succeeded. No pollen applied to its ovaries took.

Out of desperation, I chose to cross it with Orangeade, a brilliant orange floribunda from the late 1950s. MANY breeders have selected Orangeade over the decades since its introduction, for good reason. Not only does it tend to saturate all plant pigments, but it is wonderfully fertile, you can almost "pollinate it with dirt!"I liberally applied Fedtschenkoana pollen on Orangeade flowers, and it took!

Only two seedlings resulted from this first cross. A great benefit of using the modern parent for seeds is hybrids with species are immediately evident. Both of these little plants were obviously hybrids rather than probable self seedlings. Both clearly exhibited the anticipated foliage and prickles, though slightly modified from the original. I waited until the following year for the first to bloom. The second flowered the following spring.

Breeding roses teaches PATIENCE!

Next: Results