Thoughts about Mary Rose...

Mary Rose has been a 'doer' in my garden for the past two years. It has been quite clean and it flowers its head off. I am not overly impressed with the quality of the flowers though that seem to be damaged easily by wind/rain/sun. It does, however, set hips with ease and might be a good seed parent here. I know there are a lot in America who are including it in their breeding programs but there is nothing like local knowledge. How does it perform for others in Australia in terms of vigour and disease resistance?

Yes I have found the flowers don't last very long also Tas, but then again the perfumes is lovely. Maybe if she was moved as she ends up covered by my Monstera in the back garden

How's her disease resistance TheE? I have one seedling up from 'Mary Rose' this year from an open pollinated hip. Thinking of doing some planned crosses on it in the next flush of flowers.

Mine has no probs, only 2 years old though

Hi Tasv,
Thought I would jump in on your conversation.

I have grown Mary rose for around 20 years and in 3 different climates.
The first climate was wet and cool, mild snowy winters and short cool summers. She did very well in this climate. Stayed a reasonable size and bloomed for most of the short growing season. Health was good, but roses are not leafed up very long and there were no summer stressors.

The second climate was subtropical, hot steamy long summers and no winter. She was bad, very bad. Black spot, defoliated, grew new leaves and defoliate again in an endless year round cycle. Also threw out very long canes. Blooms did not last long. Was ready to killed her but she committed suicide first.

3rd climate is where I am now. Brief cool winter and long dry summer. She looks great in the first part of spring. She only is just now getting her second repeat and will do one more in Autumn. Has mildew in spring and autumn and black all summer. Does not completely defoliate. The summer flush is a dud as the heat will blow the blooms by 10 am each day.

She has as most of the Austin's a old fashion look with the modern stronger intense colours (which always gives them away as being Austin's in my eye). She grows very big unless she is savagely pruned in warm long season climates. She sports frequently. Seeds will germinate if you just throw them on the ground. I have a baby volunteer seedling now I am raising up.
Certainly copying DA is a very popular idea in breeding these days. I don't know how the roses would do if they stood alone without his powerful marketing promoting them. He also releases so many new ones each year it might very hard to complete. Personally I think DA has more than filled the nitch for cold climate roses with an old fashion flower in modern bright colours.

Mary at her best in early spring.
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Hi Cree,

I'm not thinking of copying DA or competing... he can have that to himself. I once read that when DA chooses his roses he does so based on what looks good to him first, second, and third and he can do this because... well because he can. I'm more interested in being unconventional... like seeing whether it will go with things like your favourites... the Teas... or with others closer to species level to make them more disease resistant. I'd also really like to try and obtain some of the hulthemias to see if I can breed an eye-blotch into my seedlings and for this I need a reliable seed parent. I don't think it is a good idea to try and breed for universal suitability given the wide range of climates in which roses are naturally found. I think it is far better to breed for your local climate or with a particular climate in mind. There are too many different climates within Australia to try and fit them all. In this climate, American equivalent 9b, 'Mary Rose' is a good doer but has poor flower quality (in my opinion). She is clean and bushy and not overly big... the main thing I am interested in is her ability to set hips and the quality of her seeds. If she is as willing to set OP hips as she seems to be then putting her with something possessing outstanding vigour and resistance might give positive results. I also have a thing for miniatures I would really love to try to grow miniatures using english roses.... Excellent results have been achieved by others doing a simialr thing. My favourite example of this is Paul Barden's un-named 'Rise n Shine' seedling created by crossing 'Rise n Shine' (miniature) with the DA 'Abraham Darby'. It is the most beautiful thing... I would like to try miniature pollen from my 'Rise n Shine' on my 'Mary Rose'. ANother one of my goals is to produce own-root roses so it might be a good idea to put 'Mary Rose' with something like 'The Fairy' (which would pose problems because 'The Fairy' works better as a female than a pollen donor...) which has excellent own root vigour (as do a lot of minis..)...

I think crossing DA to minis or other cold climate roses, make more sence then crossing them to teas or warm climate roses. I think the DA would bring to the warm climate rose reduced heat tolerance and decreased resistence to disease. I don't think the tea would make the DA healthier or a better rose. The HT is a cross of the Tea to Hybrid Perpetual for example with a similar result.

Of course I don't think you can imporve on the tea rose...LOL What I think would be nice is if someone wanted to breed teas for what they are and not try to make them into something else or use them to try to fix some other kind of rose. I think it would be wonderful to have a range of new pure tea roses to plant in my garden!

I am zone 9b too BTW. We live in very different climates. All that tells you is the winter low temps. So not much to guide you. Heat tolerance, which I think is the most universal issue facing most Oz rose growers is not a factor in USDAA zones.

I have had about 30 DA's in this garden, all but 7 are gone due to poor heat tolerance and blackspot. Mary rose does much better than most of them!

I think many of the DA's will grow own root well.

Deb,

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A miniature Tea! Now THIS is something I could sink my teeth into. This one is a mini. climber... but I can see non-climbing mini. teas being lovely too.

It is very cute.

Not sure I would call it a Mini Tea.
Gloire de Dijon is noisette x bourbon with some tea behind.
Rise n Shine is HT, HM, large flower climber, mini, wichuraiana, floribunda and on it goes.
Wouldn't that make it a Cl Mini Mutt? LOL

Probably... maybe that's why it is good work-horse rose... hybrid vigour and all.

But then... all roses, that aren't species roses, are mutts! Even Teas... a turning point in Tea development was when people started putting Bourbons into them to make them more robust and there is, as you say, Noisette behind a lot of them... as with so many other things in animal or plant breeding... if it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and walks like a duck... well... it must be a duck You can line breed them and develop them to a visual standard but in the end they are all a mish-mash of genes from all over the place. That's one of the reasons why you get so many duds when raising roses from seed. Some germinate and grow strongly, others germinate and then just sit there, others germinate and grow weakly or develop ugly spindly growth... you really see the best and worst of roses when you grow them from seed and this is primarily due to the mongrel-bred gene pool creating combinations of genes that just don't work. You have to do a lot of crosses to find ones that do work.

So for me... if it looks like a Tea, smells like a Tea, is a mini, and a climber... then... it's a mini climbing Tea LOL

What turning point was that? Can you spacific and give detials of the roses you mean and why they were a turning point.

Have you ever grown SdlM or GdD?
Have you ever grow any tea roses?
What bourbons to you grow?
What tuning point tea roses have you grown?

Hmmm Deb... I don't see what the answer to any of these has to do with the direction of the discussion. I have grown and currently grow some Teas and I currently grow only one bourbon ('Vivid')... all of which is really immaterial. My point was that Teas, like any other variety of rose are the result of mixing large numbers of roses and so there is no such thing as a pure this or a pure that... they are all mutts, but if they meets a certain physical standard then it's like 'if the boot fits...'. If you would like me to expand on this further then let's take a brief look at some of the first teas then...

The events that I know of start on the Ill de Bourbon where two roses, `Parson's Pink China' and `Tous Les Mois' (a Damask), were popular hedging companions and in one such hedge was found a hybrid seedling of these two roses that was then named `Rose Edouard' which itself went on to found the bourbon class of roses. 'Rose Edouard' was crossed with a noisette to make the bourbon rose `Mme Desprez'. This much I learnt from researching what makes a bourbon rose a bourbon rose when I also became interested in bourbons. 'Mme Desprez' was later crossed with the Tea 'Park's Yellow' (the original one... not the one in commerce now that also goes by the same name) to make the famous Tea 'Safrano'... You can trace others back like this through noisette crosses and crosses with chinas... e.g. 'Parson's Pink China' (China/Bengale) x R. moschata (species) 'Champney's Pink Cluster' (Noisette) x 'Park's Yellow' (Tea... a few times) 'Smith's Yellow China' (Noisette/Tea) x 'Park's Yellow' 'Devoniensis'... AND to explain the significance of the abreviations you mentioned; the pollen parent of the tetraploid 'Gloire de Dijon' (GdD) was thought to have been 'Souvenir de la Malmaison' (SdlM), a bourbon, whose seed parent was itself 'Mme Desprez' (another bourbon). GdD is now recorded as being in the pedigree of 289 different roses, a lot of which are Teas.

The topic is 'Mary Rose' and, as topics tend to do, it has evolved... You mentioned the above mini climbing tea to be a mutt... I pointed out that all roses are mutts... even Teas whose pedigree took a significant turn when bourbons were introduced... and to quote Brent Dickerson (http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/)

"In the history of the Teas, however, the most important crosses were with the Bourbons. This began a new race of Teas, most of which were quite unlike the old ones: large, vigorous, thick-limbed shrubs, often with perfectly healthy, beautiful glossy foliage"

. This is also evident in the bourbon rose I have; 'Vivid', whose foliage is disease free on a vigorous shrub. I haven't even mentioned here that even further back the Teas include the two species roses R. chinesis and R. gigantea, the source of their lack of cold hardiness, further adding complexity to the gene pool... This discussion was going well until this last post and I feel it has 'lost its way' a little

I think it is still going well and now I know where you are coming from.

Go back to the same web site you got the above information from and look at the David Austin English rose page and read that. Then look again at the 3 modern roses crossed to tea roses. The breeding recipe is the same, modern roses cross to old roses. The one that has been released fits perfectly into the English rose group, both in appearance and pedigree.

Which goes back to what I said...
< Personally I think DA has more than filled the nitch for cold climate roses with an old fashion flower in modern bright colours. >
I can find no history of breeding mini roses, modern climbers, modern coloured HT blood into tea roses in the original tea rose recipe.
Today this popular recipe, of mixing old blood with modern blood is either classed as English roses or Modern Shrubs and even as HT. Not as Tea roses because they are not a tea rose, they have modern blood and are modern rose.

It would not be good if a person new to teas were to buy a tea/modern cross thinking they were getting a real tea. However at least he does say about rose he has released that it gets black spot and will need spraying. He does not say if the modern/tea cross you liked gets blackspot but since both parents get it rather severely I would think the offspring will too. There is also no mention of heat tolerance which is one of the most important traits of a tea rose, but then he lives in a very cool damp English climate, I know as I have lived there. The area gets the least amount of sunny days in the US and used to have the highest suicide rate in the country which was attributed to the damp cloudy climate.

Back to GdD and her bourbon past. I would take argument that bourbons are healthy roses. B=B is an old saying it means Bourbon = Blackspot.
The rose being sold now as GdD, (which is felt not to be the real GdD) and the bourbon SdlM both get black spot very badly in most climates (maybe not in cold England). This cross was done for one reason, to increase cold tolerance and NOT to make them healthy. None of these people breeding at the time lived in warm climates. They were trying to make a tea that could grow outside in snow. They did it, that rose is the HT.

Gigantea and China are both warm blooded roses and were already part of the tea long before Europeans got their hands on it. They did the same thing with these roses, they tried to make them snow birds. What the tea had was repeat bloom and that was what they were after. Which goes back to my other breeding point. We live in a very warm country, we need more warm climate roses, not more European cold climate black spotty heat intolerant roses, we already them in spades.

Sorry I just don't want another modern rose with old fashion flowers in bright colours. I say again, I wish someone would breed tea rose and the other warm climate roses that thrive in our climate. Alister Clark was ahead of his time and we need another like him.

Ok... I can see where you are coming from also and to be honest I agree with you... to a point. No where had I mentioned that I was trying to breed new[i] teas. In fact nowhere did I mention what I was actually planning to cross 'Mary Rose' with. My intention was to cross MR with my miniature 'Rise n Shine' to produce a miniature rose with English Rose type flowers. If I was to try and breed Teas, and the more I learn about them the more it tempts me, then I would certainly use existing Teas as a base from which to start and following the steps of past hybridisers would incorporate classes of roses used in their development like Noisettes, Damasks, Bourbon, and [i]R. giganteaetc. That makes perfect sense, especially R. gigantea given its suitability to Australian conditions. Mini Teas, or Mini Climbing Teas are a class that as yet does not exist and if someone was to develop them of course they would be modern roses, compared to the Teas, because the Teas will have preceeded them... that doesn't mean they are not miniature Teas however because to be a Tea it should fit a physical description, not a pedigree. Jill Perry, in 'Heritage Roses' published such a description in 2000:

In trying to determine what is or is not a Tea rose, several things need to be considered. In roses where the parents are given, the presence of Noisette, China or Bourbon is, by itself, not sufficient reason to exclude a rose from the Tea class, since all those groups helped make the Tea class. Thus, `Lady Hillingdon' is still a Tea rose. With found roses that appear to be teas, consider the following. Tea leaves are large relative to the flower. They have ovate-lanceolate leaflets, the terminal one of which is noticeably larger than the others; the lowest pair is smaller and pointed toward the stem. The thin petiole is often curved, and has hooked prickles on the back. Characteristics that differ from these indicate the influence of another class in the rose's ancestry. However, we don't have clear standards on where to draw the line between Teas and other classes, and the problem becomes worse when we don't know the ancestry of the rose. Unless we can come up with a checklist of characteristics to identify a Tea Rose, we will continue to have the possibility of the same rose being placed in different classes.

I think this is far more suitable than looking at the pedigree, especially since the pedigree of a lot of these OGR is so incomplete and unreliable.

This is where I agree with up to a point... you said you can find no history of modern roses being incorporated into original Tea rose recipe (BTW it is interesting to note that there is at least one rose classified as a Tea on HMF released in 2003, called 'Won Fang Yon' whose seed parent is listed as a modern miniuatre (Avandel)... maybe we need a separate classification called 'Modern Teas' but then I come back to the question... what makes a Tea a Tea and the only answer I come up with is bsaed on whether it fits a physical description because there are always going to be cases like this one to complicate things. There is also another Tea rose called 'Faith Whittlesey', released in 1970, that is classed as a Tea/Hybrid Gigantea that incorporates 'Echo', a modern shrub rose into its pedigree). There is no evidence because these classes, aside from the minis which have been around a long time, did not exist at the time. Let's say the classes you mention; HT, Floribunda, etc, preceeded the Teas. We certainly wouldn't be having this conversation now because they almost certainly would have been incorporated into the gene pool in much the same way DA is doing now to develop English Roses. Nowhere in the above description of a Tea does it mention modern colours as a feature that would exclude a rose from being a Tea. I'm not saying that the above description of Teas is extensive enough to be accepted as complete... it even acknowledges that one such standard does not exist and maybe colour does need to be worked into it, and maybe a better description exists somewhere, like in the new Tea book, that I haven't read yet that would better fit the bill. DA's first english rose, Constance Spry, was made using a Gallica and a modern single floribunda called 'Dainty Maid'... I think hybridisers at all points in history prepare their crosses based on what is available at the time and given that there seems to be different subclasses within the Teas (i.e. Noisette/Teas, China/Teas etc) then one could also agrue that just because there is no evidence of modern roses being used to make Teas... it doesn't mean they shouldn't be used to make contemporary Teas, given that our 'palette' of roses is so much more extensive now. I would steer away from using most HT but there are some magnificent modern roses that just might add something to the Teas. R. gigantea has been used extensively to make all kinds of roses and I would not hesitate to use a good one to make further Teas should they offer something different.

Now about the bourbons... I would agree that bourbons have a reputation for being susceptible to rose diseases like mildew and black spot (though 'Vivid' seems oblivious to them so far). However, I have not said that they were. What I did say was that introducing them into the development of Teas resulted in a healthier Tea rose. The introduction of the bourbon genes in conjunction with those that already existed, resulted in a hardier bush. Cold tolerance might have been the primary objective in introducing the bourbon but the net result was a more sturdy/hardy bush as well.

One thing you might be able to answer for me is, why is Fortune's Double Yellow referred to as a Tea when it is apparently a Hybrid Gigantea? It doesn't even feature highly in the pedigree of other Teas

Now... this is the kind of rose discussion I really like!

Want to add one more thing you might want to think about when you buy some tea roses. There are different types, in style of growth and bloom. Some look like they are on the road to be HT's, and in my limited exprience these are not as disease resistant (some not all) and also tend to get a bit leggy (is that your robust boubon blood?) as the the type that are more (old) in appearence, being twiggy and dence. These often get the brush off by new comers as the flowers are not so double and heavy. But to me they are some of the best roses anyone could possible grow in this country.
I can not honestly say that trying to "Buff" up the tea was an imporvment. I like all types of teas, but "Buffed up" is not what I look for in any of them.
They are not HT's, they are not show roses, they do not need thick upright stems. They are garden roses, to be enjoyed in the garden, and I think there is no rose that looks better year round, is as easy to care for or out blooms them. Why fix what is not broken.

Rise n Shine seems to be a good rose down here... it will spot but not to badly and it has a nice twiggy structure. The main reason it is used is it willingness to set seed. Not all roses will set seed and RnS sets them in abundance and they germinate readily (so are of good quality). In fact it has more than 700 descendants (mostly minis) to its name. The other thing I like about it is that if you do an HMF search on it and look at its descendants you'll notice that most of them are minis... even those crossed with standard sized roses or large flowered climbers. This indicates to me that this miniature is probably homozygous for miniature. I don't know if you know what this means, but for those that don't it means that it possesses only the miniature version of genes for stature and so when crossed with a large rose you will get 100% minis. I may well be wrong on this but I haven't found a case of HMF where it breeds otherwise (though it is taking me some time to get through all 700+ ). Miniature stature is dominant to tall (tall and climbing are not the same thing and are controlled by a different suite of genes), so I could theoretically cross this rose with anything (including Teas... though I have been informed recently that mini genes and Tea genes don't seem to mix very well and produce a lot of inferior plants... I'm inclined to think, however, that this might be a long term multi-generational thing) and produce miniatures. Since climbing is controlled by something else it therefore makes it possible to produce miniature climbers because climbing is dominant to non-climbing. It would therefore be very interesting to try and use some of the roses that do very well in Australia with Rise n Shine to make Australian minis that can replace those Parade roses you see everywhere by Poulsen that live for one flush and then either cark it or look terrible. Any cross with a large rose would result in a miniature rose but that minature rose would then be split for large and miniature and further breeding may result in larger roses. When I look for miniature parents I always look at the immediate parents to see if one was a large rose because then I know for certain that it is carrying large increasing the chances of throwing a large... which is fine if that's what you want to do... but I like miniatures and would like to breed miniatures of various kinds so want to reduce that risk. If you could get Rise n Shine to also pass on its ability to set seed then you also have a useful breeder for further work. If your focus is on breeding for disease resistance this could be a good thing because you'd have to be pretty lucky to get a fully resistant rose in one generation so you'll want to be able to work with it more until you get to a point where it can live unsprayed in a garden with little or no mainentance and still look good. It would be great to introduce gigantea to it. The gains for the mini line, both climbing minis and non-climbing minis would, I think, be HUGE. I have a few minis that I am looking at as potential parents. One of these is 'Magic Carrousel' which is one of my favourite minis... it has been around forever and it is still one of the best and has quite a few descendants as well. It seems to pass on the picotee pattern quite well but not so clearly defined as in MC... I really like this washed out picotee effect especially with closely matched colours which gives the flowers a tonal shading effect. Another is 'Black Jade'. I almost got booed off the stage when I mentioned I wanted to use BJ on the US forum but here it is one of my best performers. It has rich almost jet black flowers in the bud that open up to a 'black-shot silk look' garnet red. I can really see this working with some of the more hardy varieties to try for beautiful bomb-proof almost black minis and also to use with purples to try for intense purple minis.

So that's why 'Rise n Shine' is a hit. It's a real hybridising work horse and to me the same revolution is needed in miniatures here in Australia, as it is needed in large flowered roses. We insist on persisting with these varieties that are about as approproate here as a ham sandwich at a Jewish wedding

Well...All stuff I know little about with minis, but sounds about right.
I would think that health should be the number 1 priority in any rose breeding these days. With the European Union, parts of the US and Canada banning home use of insecticides and everyone's favorite rose fungacides, the need for some healthy roses is going to be there.
I wonder if the rose (as most people know it today) will even be around in 50 years. The trends in gardening, water shortages, the likelihood of worldwide banning of home chemical use for recreational gardening and the changing lifestyles might just be enough to end the HT craze. They are too much work, take too much time, need too much water and chemicals and they really don't look appropriate in the more relaxed informal gardens people seem to be wanting these days.
This added to some very fixed ideas about what roses should be by breeders and what is being offered to the home gardener...makes for a less than certain future (if you ask me).

Well best of luck with your minis..I am sure you will make some good ones!