Australian Bred English roses

David has real talent and a clear goal to work to.

Great work David

roseman wrote:Simon, in simple terms can you explain how the same 2 parents come up with one pink child and one yellow.

In simple terms... my guess is that it came mostly from the Austin parent; 'Lilian Austin'. This rose is a similar colour to 'Mons. Tillier' except it shows both orangey/pink colours and a yellow centre. 'The Yoeman', one of "Lilian Austin"'s Parents, also shows this yellow centre (as does 'Aloha' in some photos). So I guess this is why it has the ability to throw both pinks and yellows. The parantage of 'Mons. Tillier' is not known but if you look on HMF at its descendants it has done this before too. Once when crossed with the yellow miniature; 'June Laver' and when crossed with Rosa wichurana it made a very lovely pastel orangey colour so I suspect there may be yellow genes hiding in 'Mons. Tillier' somewhere too.

George Thomson in SA uses a wide range of roses for breeding. One of his projects has been shrinking Austins down to manageable size in this climate, using one of his own roses which has a dwarfing gene. Generally it's (Austin x Anna Olivier) x Mrs Mary Thomson. The Anna Olivier is to retain the perfume. Lady Phelia ia an example.

In the back of my mind I remember reading somewhere about the inheritance of yellow as well.. something along the lines of thinking about yellow as being like a base coat colour onto which a lot of other colours are overlaid. I tried to find where I read about this, on RHA, and found this:

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The easiest way to think of it is that the yellow can be fully or partly masked (it seems that there are different genes, or sets of genes, that also divide the flower into zones and work independently on each section so you can end up with yellow eyes etc), and if you remove those inhibitors then the yellow can be expressed... either partly or fully. In the above case it looks like the yellow pigment in 'Lilian Austin' is being partly (but not fully) inhibited and when crossed with 'Mons. Tillier' the inhibitors were not passed on in one of them (remember a lot of modern roses a tetraploid or triploid... so one rose can effectively carry 3 or 4 different versions of the same gene... you can get higher ploidy counts but most of the ones we encounter are diploid, triploid and tetraploid). Mons' Tillier is diploid, so it has only two sets of chromosomes. Lets say at one locus, in Mons. Tillier, there is a gene that affects the expression of yellow and Mons. Tillier has one that suppresses yellow and one that doesn't (because it is diploid). When crossed with 'Lilian Austin', which I assume is tetraploid or triploid, one of the seedlings received the inhibitor and made a pink seedling and one received the non-inhibitor version and made the yellow one. 'Lilian Austin' probaby is in a similar situation except its higher ploidy count probaby makes it dose dependent.

I know this is starting to get 'non-simple' but I've left a lot of what I could add out (and am worried something will get lost in the translation because of it).

This article was also interesting:

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Simon, your call again, as it has Austin in it, why can't we ask his hybridizer

What do you mean my call???? Paul Barden is a member of this forum... we can ask him his views.

I was surprised to find a sucker coming from a seedling from 2004; OP from "Not Francis Dubreuil" (ie the rose sold as Francis Dubreuil), but I'm pretty confident the pollen parent was Troilus. Looking at the parentage of Troilus, Duchesse de Montebello features heavily, so maybe that's where the tendency to sucker comes from. Something to think about.

Margaret, does DdM sucker bad ? Is it suckering because of injury? Could it be from a node that has decided to become a shoot instead of a root as it would being below ground level. Roses that we used for cut flower production which started off as cuttings gave out about equal amounts of roots and top growth. Once the cuttings found some sort of equilibrium they tended to produce more vegetative growth

Dave, seedlings don't generally produce nodes below ground level so when you see suckering in a seedling it is generally from the roots.

I asked a question about suckering and how it was inherited on RHA a little while back and the general concensus was that there is suckering where roots form shoots that come up some distance from the plant and then there is persistant roots that sometimes give the impression of suckering. Personally I don't have an issue with suckering and my roses can sucker all they want but roses such as bracteata don't infact sucker but have persistant roots and don't generally 'sucker' unless something happens to the main plant. My bracteata is producing adventitious plants at the moment because it was a new season bare root plant and the plant is responding as though the main plant had been injured (which it had) and produced suckers from its new roots (its cutting grown not grafted). I don't expect it will continue to do this once established... I'll have more issues with 'touch downs' than suckering. Rugosa and roses like a lot of the gallica will produce true runners or suckers that may surface some distance from the main plant... again I like this ability as it produces a thickett or roses (and I have the room to allow them to do it). The advice I got was that suckering could be bred out fairly easily but could resurface some generations down the track. Suckering has its advantages too

Can't remember if I've posted this rose before, as it's one I've had on trial for a few years. It's Othello x Camp David. It is low growing with strong thorny canes and is a good cut flower. Light sweet perfume. It's a cherry red, no purpling at all, large, flat and very double. Terrible photo!
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Dave, assume Othello was the seed parent and Camp David pollen parent, is this correct. I have a fairly large CD, I was hoping it might set some hips. It appears not on mine, does yours?

CD sets hips for me Dave. Othello was the pollen parent. I like using CD with DAs because it's the best sun/fade resistant red here and is usually beautifully quartered.

I've been using 'Othello' as a seed parent this year (too early to tell whether they've taken yet), because I can't get any pollen from mine

Well I'll send you some + M. Tiller, when i can get enuf,

Hi to everyone,
these are the results of my breeding efforts with DA roses:

I had a couple of nice seedlings from Teasing Georgia (op and hybridizations). TG is the most rewarding of all my DA roses. It is in flower all summer and vigorous enough to cope with the blackspot that all Austins are getting here. It sets seed easily.

Gertrude Jekyll gave me a seedling (op) with the same gorgeous scent as the hip parent and a very similar flower. But it is most likely once flowering.

I tried several other DA roses but they are not very fertile. Ann Boleyn seems to be completely sterile; no anthers and only one hip in 4 years.

Sharifa Asma (nice scent, not myrrh-like) produces hips, but low seed numbers.

L.D.Braithwaite: I tried 5 cultivars on it, each on 3 to 4 flowers, only one worked.

Alnwick Castle: not many seeds

Most Austin roses could do with some extra genes for BS resistance.
Austin tries apparently to breed more resistant roses( At least according his catalogue)I will see how my new acquisitions will do....

Cheers Ulrike

Hi Ulrike,

Have you ever used 'Abraham Darby'? I've put 'Comtesse de Labarthe' on it this season and have hips forming. I tried putting 'Tuscany' on it but that failed this time around... will try again next season. I've also found that of the Austins it's one of the more prolofic OP hip producers. From memory I think I also have hips forming from the same cross perfromed the other way around too... must check that as it's one I meant to do and I can't remember whether I got to it or not. The seeds take a long time to germinate and I think this means they need an extra long stratification time. 'Pegasus' sets lots of OP hips and I've pollinated it with 'Comtesse de Labarthe' as well but I've never been able to get he seeds to germinate. I'm going to give up trying 'Mary Rose' I think. I've got 'Mary Rose' x 'Comtesse de Labarthe' hips maturing now but every seedling I've ever grown from MR has been weak and eventually discarded.

I'm really glad to hear that you got a good seedling from 'Gertrude Jekyll'. The perfurme is just amazing but everyone on RHA keep saying that she is only capable of producing weak seedlings. It has, however, been used with a Tea ('Papa Gontier' I think.. again... need to double check) to make an Aussie Austin that was bred by George Thomson a few years back. Also forget it's name . I purchased 'Gertrude Jekyll' earlier this year (it has had poor repeat this year for me here so far) with the view to putting it on 'Monsieur Tillier'. Another thing to try, I think, is to go way back to the very first Austin; 'Constance Spry'. It is once flowering but it will be carrying remontancy and I'd really like to see what it could produce by performing a self pollination (CS x CS). My plan from there is to put any remontant seedlings with some of the better Teas to make more Aussie Austins.

Dave... I have a few little plants of 'Rosa Indica Major' in pots here. HMF classifies this rose as a few different things from China through to Tea and even hybrid gignatea... Mine flowered well this year and almost every flower set a hip. I am planning to sow all the OP hips and use it next season in a similar way to the Aussie Austin idea... wondering if you'd like a plant? I have two in pots here and three in the ground... if anyone would like the other one give me a hoy... It's a once flowering plant and it seems to suffer from mildew o/s. I haven't noticed any mildew here on mine and it develops a very strong basal growth habit with pretty long, arching, twiggy growth... one of my favs atm. It's a big rose so you'd need to give it plenty of space. One of my favourite photos on HMF is the one Margaret uploaded of Indica Major on the old farmhouse. It doesn't grow so big down here... maybe 2m tall and wide... nothing outlandish anyway... would be a large climber in Martinsville though

I don't know much about David Austin roses & only grow 2 ("Mary Rose" & "Leander") but some are very nice & I might use 1 or 2 for breeding in a big way in the coming years. This year I have crossed "Mary Rose" with "Lavender Pinocchio"...

TBH I always used to avoid the Austin section in Victoria Park at Goulburn because it always looked "messy" because of the roses growth habits & I could see BS (or lots of bare stems because of it) from a mile off! Major turnoff! LOL

But I now go & have a look & find I am only attracted to "Abraham Darby" & "Symphony", the rest are just not for me!

Strangely, at Victoria Park, they also have an Austin rose grown apart from the others & it is one of the best in the entire garden. It is "Immortal Juno". The 6 or so plants of it always looks healthy & the flowers are very pretty...

The Austin roses are a remarkable achievement, but I find the "myrrh" scent too high a price. Now I grow only Jude the Obscure and Windrush.

Funny you should mention "Windrush" Margaret because that is one of the roses I will use in time mainly due to it having "Golden Wings" behind it (but also because of "Canterbury")!

Sometimes, IMO, less is so much more with regard to petal count & the lighter built "Windrush" is a good example of this. For me, "Dainty Bess" is another...simple yet stunning!

I look at the Austin roses as stepping stones here in Australia. They perform better in Tas than pretty much anywhere in Australia and it is easy to get caught up in how beautiful they look here. My collection includes 'Christopher Marlowe', 'Pegasus', 'Mary Rose', 'Othello', 'Heritage', Winchester Cathedral', 'Constance Spry', 'Gertrude Jekyll', 'Abraham Darby', and an unknown red one that was here when I bought the place. Of these I would never be without 'Pegasus'. It's the best DA I've ever grown and down here it is very well behaved. The reason I see them as a stepping stone is because they contain lots of old rose genes in a modern remontant plant and to me they do not represent a finished product but a work in progress. They CAN breed excellent roses such as 'Nahema'. 'Heritage' is one of its parents and the flowers are bigger, smell better, last longer but are of the same shell pink colour on a strong climbing bush that, in my garden, lives super cleanly without chemical intervention. So, like Dave, I really want to see what they can do with the Teas, Chinas and Noisettes as well as maybe putting them through a couple of different species like bracteata, clinophylla, or gigantea.

This is the George Thomson shrub rose I was thinking of: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (Seed: 'Gertrude Jekyll'. Pollen: 'Anna Olivier' (tea, Ducher, 1872) × 'Mrs. Mary Thomson')

I've got "Temple Bells" x 'Othello' hips forming too How about a wichurana-ground cover with big DA-type flowers with a nice perfume Large flowered ground covers!

I'll take ten when you have them please.

"Temple Bells" x an Austin rose sounds great/promising Simon!

As long as nothing turned out like Meilland's "Traviata" I would be happy! LOL

I am with David on that one Simon TB x O should be wonderful.