Looking for cuttings of François Dubreuil

If anyone has cuttings of "François Dubreuil" they could spare or swap I'd love to hear from you (note I've used the double quotes as used in the new Tea book to denote a rose that is in commerce that is not the original rose... I'm after the one in commerce in Australia under this name).

Sorry cant help, I dont have that one ??

I bought a plant of it that turned up with RMV... if anyone has some spare bits from an RMV-free plant I'd love to hear from you.

Ours is a bit small to cut much off it. Its in its third spot to see if we can get it to grow.

Unfortunately is is a small rose so it seems to always get put in with its larger Tea brothers (sisters?) and gets buried.

Not sure if it is virus free but none of our roses show any of the igns though they say it is not as bad in the heat.

Where did you get it from Gary?

I think We got it from a lady who used to sell cutting grown roses up this way. She does not do it anymore.

Not positive. We did purchase a few from her.

If it was not from her it was from Mystydowns.

Is yours own root or grafted?

Not positive. If it was from the lady it would have been own root. If it was from Mysterydowns it would have been grafted.

When I contacted the nursery I bought FD from I was told they believe there isn't any FD in the country that isn't infected by RMV... would be interesting to test this hypothesis We aren't talking about a small backyard propagator here either

I know where there is one, haven't seen it for years but will be out there next Spring and check if it's still alive. If all else fails between now and then will take cuttings and post. I would be very surprised if it had RMV.

Lets keep in touch

The people who found it and decided it was Francis Dubreuil were really using wishful thinking - Teas don't smell as good as that!
My plant is a couple of cutting-generations down from a budded one ex Wagner's, & looks OK. Not big enough yet for cuttings but it's a backup in case Ozeboy can't find the one he knows about.

I still have mine and I have made a thermostatically controlled heat chamber to kill the virus off. I just need it to grow a little more because at the moment it is sulking with not even enough material to remove any buds for grafting. I don't want to risk the parent plant in case it doesn't survive the thermal therapy. What I need to do is remove budwood from it and bud it onto a understock and allow it to grow and flower so there is suitable budwood to remove from it and then put it in the heat chamber for 28 days at 38 degrees celcius after which I need to remove budwood from it and bud it onto clean seedling understocks... that's why I grew out so many multiflora seedlings... it all takes a long time to do because before you can even start you need to make sure you have a good supply of virus free rootstocks and the only way to really do that is to use seedlings. I grew out about 400 multiflora seedlings and chose the biggest and best one to grow on in the ground a long way from everything and from this I will make cuttings for grafting. My chosen plant is now about 9 months old and is about 1m high and wide and will hopefully flower this spring and after it does I'll cut it back and strike the stems and be ready to do about 30 grafts in preparation for thermal therapy. I'm going to put this rose and St. Francis Xavier through it as well as 'Altissimo' and a few infected minis I have here. If the treated plant survives the heat process (there is usually a LOT of die back and you need to remove budwood from as close to the tip as possible) and the bud takes then you can grow it up and determine whether the thermal therapy has been successful or not. If not, you repeat it and do it again. If it is then you grow this as a stockplant form which all other material is taken (or to supply virus-free material to others who wwant it). There are a couple of other tips given to me by Malcolm Manners that I haven't mentioned here that I'll document at the time I do it... it's just going to be a while yet because as they say.. the devil is in the detail in something like this and you need to have everything ready to go before you start

I think my Altissimo is OK (can't check because it's dark), if you want to try that one at some time. I put in some cuttings for the Vic bushfire gardens, because it had been requested by several people, and it was particularly quick to strike.

'Altissimo' is a strange one. I would almost guarantee all material in the country is infected. It can be really hard to see at times and at others be quite apparent. It can grow well for years and years and then all of a sudden show it even though it was infected all along. It doesn't seem to be overly affected by it and still grows strongly for me. Mine can go for years at a time with no symptoms and then they will reappear, especially in the cooler weather. It is suspected that 'Altissimo' was released at a time when not much was known about RMV or how it spread and so was grafted onto infected rootstocks and was then distributed around the world already infected with the virus. Prof. Malcolm Manners said his team had cleaned it up a long time ago now but I would be surprised if clean material has made its way to Australia given it's been here so long and RMV is such a low priority among growers. It's worth cleaning up though because, from a breeder's POV, it's extremely fertile and will form hips with most any pollen you put on it and might be a vital link in introducing fetility into 'difficult' lines. It's also great to hear that it seems to strike easily from cutting. that will actually make the job of cleaning it up easier/quicker as I don't need to graft it.