Roses rising

Jack Harkness

A new hazard awaits those visitors who have learned of old in many houses how to dodge Photograph albums, the screening of slides and the history of the family dog. They are now in danger of being taken down the garden to see the new roses created by their Proud host. For rose breeding has emerged from the realm of esoteric specialisation, and is now gaining ground as a hobby.

These trends are not always clearly seen, nor are they adequately noticed by those recorders of passing time, the press, who faithfully continue to report interests, pastimes and sports which are followed by a thin crowd compared with the millions who are growing roses. One could, if one ignored the subject that is supposed to be under discussion, go further and say that the press is forced to act as the creator of interest Which it then proceeds to report, instead of reporting interests which arise from serious and spontaneous actions among society. But as I never stray from the subject, I will not mention it at all. .

A century ago, it was generally supposed that rose breeding was best left to Frenchmen in their favoured climate of roses and wine. The custom was to pick the ripe hips from the plants, sow the seed, and see what nature had sent. Cultivated varieties of roses do not come true from seed, even supposing they were fertilised with their OW n pollen. And roses in nature are readily fertilised with pollen from other roses, thanks to the excellent pollen-ferry services Provided by the wind and insects. Therefore from the random chances of nature, the breeders of old were able to find new roses.

About 1877, a Frenchman wrote a paper In which he advocated deliberate pollination. In other words, prevent the flower from fertilising itself naturally, and then fertilise it with pollen of one's own choice.

The idea is so obvious, it is a wonder anyone needed to mention it as late as 1877. And the advantages were great. It became ' Possible, given a knowledge of roses, to consider which qualities from one kind should be added to another; and having envisaged the possibilities, to test the matter to the point of success by trial and error.

The first great exponent of deliberate Pollination in Britain was Henry Bennett, a cattle farmer in Wiltshire. He introduced ten new 'pedigree' hybrids of the tea rose. For you and me today, those large and beautiful roses like Peace and Ena Harkness are typical, true and traditional roses; in those days the class was only beginning, and the name 'Hybrid Tea' not yet given to it.

Trust a cattle farmer to see the point in keeping the cow away from all but the selected bull, and to use the word 'pedigree'. He was widely disbelieved, and called upon to justify his claim; which of course he successfully did.

British rose growers began to use greenhouses for breeding. Two reasons led them under glass: the seeds would have more time to ripen, and the controlled environment would exclude the pollen upon the winds, or most of it anyhow. • From that time, roses bred in the British Isles have gone around the world; and any impartial assessment of the great roses of the past century would show that Britain, France, Germany and the United States are the main originators, with Denmark and Holland close behind. It is right to add that Northern Ireland accounted for the lion's share of the British contribution.

The technique of raising a new rose is perfectly simple; first decide which plants you intend to breed with, and bring them underglass. Even without heat they will flower in May. When a flower is open enough to handle, and before its pollen is ripe, you strip off its petals, and remove all its stamens. It is thus left growing on the plant with only its female organs, which are those in the centre of the flower.

Because you operated on it before the pollen was ripe, it follows that the female part is also unripe, and it must therefore be left for a day or two to become receptive to pollen; if other flowers are opening in the house, it should be covered with a paper cap to keep pollen out.

Having allowed a day or two to pass, you put the pollen of your chosen male parent on to the prepared female. The pollen grains enter the female, penetrate to the ovary and fuse with the female egg cells. Thus you have caused an embryo to be formed by two parents of your own selection, an embryo which contains characteristics of those two parents.

The seed sets, and ripens, and is ready for harvest in October. It is then shelled out of the pods, and stored in a slightly damp medium, from which it may conveniently be extracted in due course, until sowing time in February. Mice rate it better than Stilton, s and it must therefore be defended from them.

In February, the seeds are sown either in boxes or on benches under glass. They start germinating within a month, and grow with surprising speed to form flower buds in April and May, and flowers in May onwards.

Impossible to describe the thrill of seeing the seedling roses at this time! Many are useless, and can be discarded at first sight, to leave room for better ones to grow. Others are hopeful, and some are supremely beautiful. All are different (twins being about as common as in the human race) and all have something to teach us about the value of the parents we gave them. The best ones will need at some time to be propagated, and perhaps, with luck, one will be good enough to have a name, and be grown in many gardens.

Amateur rose breeders are legion, es

pecially in the US, Britain and New Zealand. And they have had successes. Both Ena Harkness and Frensham, gold medal roses, were raised by Albert Norman, a jewel-cutter by trade. The brilliant scarlet Fred Loads, another gold medal winner, came from a Cheshire schoolmaster named Robert Holmes. Of the varieties given awards by the Royal National Rose Society for new roses last year, 20 per cent were amateur-raised.

It is open to a rose breederto secure Plant Breeders' Rights (a kind of copyright) on his creations. And there is a general fallacy abroad that there is a lot of money in it. Unfortunately there is very little; even the professional breeders are hard put even to make a profit on the British market for new roses. And it follows that the more people who produce new roses, the less, money there is for each.

The proper object of this hobby is not money, but rather an absorbing interest in one of the most beautiful flowers in the world. There is also the knowledge that we are continuing the evolution of the rose, a task that goes back to the earliest civilisations, beyond Rome, beyond Greece, beyond Myceneans and Minoans, not only to the start of the civilisations which are the ancestors of ours, but similarly to the very beginning in China and Japan.