Sunday, December 06, 2009

Halo Sunrise

What’s still green: Arborvitae, juniper and other evergreens, Apache plume, a few roses, cholla, prickly pear, yuccas, red hot poker, grape hyacinth, hollyhock, winecup, large-leaved globemallow, oriental poppy, St. John’s wort, vinca, white sweet clover, alfalfa, sweet pea, flax, beardtongue, snapdragon, coral bells, rock rose, sea pink, large-leaved soapwort, columbine, pink and yellow evening primroses, perky Sue, Shasta daisy, tansy, anthemis, protected Mexican hat, coreopsis, purple aster, cheat grass, bases of needle and June grasses.

What’s grey, blue-grey or grey-green: Piñon, pinks, snow-in-summer, yellow alyssum, winterfat.

What’s blooming inside: Christmas cactus, aptenia, asparagus fern; .rochea and Christmas cactus leaves tinged with red.

Animal sightings: Birds flit in distant trees.

Weather: The storm that hovered last weekend only brought early morning temperatures below 10, as cold as I remember in New Mexico; last rain 11/29/09; 8:33 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: Genealogies are elegant simplifications we use to describe our ancestry. It’s satisfying to look at a family tree and see that Mary Ellen Lawler married George Henry Nason in 1875 and that she gave birth to my maternal grandmother in 1889.

When I look at a photograph taken of the woman I think of as Tessie when she was 30, I see an individual with the slender body my mother will inherit in 1912. She has none of the fullness of the women surrounding her, who may have been her sisters and Mary Ellen.

However, when I look at a picture taken when Tessie was in her 70's, I see none of the features of my mother when she died in her late 50's. I wonder if my grandmother inherited her body type from her father and her perceptions of female form from her mother, or if life experiences like multiple pregnancies and diet overrode DNA and family aesthetics.

I see the same complex interplay of genetics and expectations when I look out the study window at the fading orange hips on the Halo Sunrise rose. It’s creator, Ralph Moore, was trying to breed a miniature rose with a red blotch at the base of its petals, a characteristic only found in Iran and Afghanistan in the hulthemia species. Instead of his refinements, I see the most ethnographically pure rose in my garden, the one with more thorns and more hips than even the rugosa.

Modern roses are the product of men working to make recessive traits and random mutations permanent without losing the vigor we demand in our gardens. The ability to bloom more than once is found only in Rosa chinensis, introduced from China around 1759. Any modern rose has some chinensis among its ancestors. For Halo Sunrise, it appears nine generations back.

Miniaturization comes from a dominant gene, but one that coincides with sterility, so that it’s carriers don’t survive. The Chinese apparently found a way to capture it in their chinensis roses. Specimens found their way to Europe in the early nineteenth century from Mauritius, then lost popularity to large flowers during Victorian times. Individual plants survived in obscure gardens where one was discovered in Switzerland by Major Roulet in 1919, and introduced to gardeners in 1922 by Henri Louis Correvon.

Moore began developing his miniature roses when he pollinated one his seedlings, later called Carolyn Dean, with a rose produced by Jan de Vink in 1936 that had brought together a Roulettii and some rugosa hybrids. He became interested in enhancing the blotch after Sam McGredy IV combined one of his roses with a floribunda, Elizabeth of Glamis. McGredy’s Anytime had a lavender center.

The genealogy of Halo Sunrise simply says he crossed Anytime with Angel Face, and introduced the progeny in 1997. Moore makes clear that he crossed Anytime with itself, selected the seedling with the best blotch, and grew more seedlings from crossing them with themselves until he had an Anytime he could use.

Before he released Sunrise, he had sold five other Halo roses. The first, Halo Dolly marketed in 1992, has Anytime for the female seed parent, and a cross of Anytime and Angel Face on the male pollen side. Halo Star, also released in 1992, list Anytime and Angel Face crosses on both sides.

The first is a medium to light pink, the second more watermelon. The other early Halos are bright orange red (Today, Fire) or pink (Rainbow). Moore then crossed his Anytime selection with Golden Badge and produced a peach rose, which became the Anytime parent of Sunrise.

After Jack Harkness introduced hulthemia hybrids, Moore began combining his Halo stock with hulthemias to get even redder blotches. Persian Sunset was released in 2006, two years before he retired and three years before he died in 2009 at age 102.

Moore never mentioned where the thorns came from. In fact his Sequoia Nursery catalog for 1997 only says it’s a "vigorous, healthy bush." The most likely source is the mother of Anytime, Moore’s own New Penny which has a winchuriana - Floradora mix for the seed, and the miniaturizing Zee for pollen. Floradora was introduced in 1944 by Mathias Tantou as the result of a cross between a floribunda, Baby Château, and Rosa roxburghii.

Roxburghii, sometimes called the Burr Rose, is described by Bontanica as "angular and stiff in habit." The leaves are "distinctly hairy" and the fruit resembles "small chestnuts in their husks." The fruits are high in vitamin C and antioxidants. The efficacy of the traditional Chinese use of Ce Li to treat high cholesterol has been confirmed by several scientific teams.

Halo Sunrise got its physical form from its maternal great-great-grandfather, while mine came from my great-grandmother. It’s a bit anthropomorphic to compare human generations to rose ones, but it is clear that in both the introduction of a genetic trait will persist and manifest itself in its descendants, whether it’s desired or not.

Notes: Doug Chase recently sent me the information on Mary Ellen Lawler; he’s working on the genealogy for the immigrant Richard Nason and his four sons.

Botanica. Botanica’s Roses, 2000.

Lawrence, G. H. M. "History and Nomenclature of the Fairy Roses," American Rose Annual, 1953.

Lidwien, A. M. Dubois and D. P. de Vries. "On the Inheritance of the Dwarf Character in Polyantha x Rosa chinensis Minima (Sims) Voss F1-populations ," Euphytica 36:535-539:1987.

Moore, Ralph. "A Study of Moss and Miniature Roses," republished on Paul Barden’s Old Garden Roses and Beyond website.

_____. "Ralph Moore-60 Years of Innovative Breeding," Minirama, Fall, 1996.

Photograph: Halo Sunrise miniature rose hips, 29 November 2009.

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