Reprinted from The Australian Rose Annual, 1968

A Precis of a Convention Lecture given by Mr. Pat Dickson, Northern Ireland.

Since arriving here in Australia I have found that there are quite a few people interested in hybridizing and raising seedlings each season.

When I started hybridizing I had the great advantage of being able to follow in my father’s footsteps, because, obviously, you commence with a number of selected un-named seedlings already in your nursery. However, there is a disadvantage as I believe that no one can continue exactly where somebody else left off and it is preferable to start for yourself at a certain stage.

Firstly, you create in your own mind a picture of the type of rose you want to produce and from that you try to gather around you the varieties which you hope will meet that goal. I have found that it is more difficult to produce a good Hybrid Tea than Floribundas. One piece of advice I would give to those attempting hybridizing for the first time is to limit the number of parent varieties to a minimum and; from experience, you will gradually reject some as unsuitable and bring in a few more which you think will help to produce the type of rose you are trying to breed. Do not pay too much attention to varieties which have been unsuccessful with other breeders, but certainly be guided by cultivars which consistently produce good seedlings. You ought to have a copy of the American publication, “Modern Roses VI”. It is a wonderful reference and is “the rose breeders’ bible” as, in most cases, it is wise to trace the potential parents back to their grandparents. 

Speaking from my own personal experience, I am breeding for new red HybridTeas and I must pay a tribute to work done in this field by Wilhelm and Reimer Kordes, but I have found that these new reds will not come from our existing red roses. I have tried to go back and find some pink Hybrid Teas which have had red bleed in them at some time.

Be careful in selecting your seed parent (the one that carries the seed hep). Make sure that it is a good plant with good stiff stems, large foliage and disease resistant if possible. 

All rules are made to be broken, but usually I get my colour from the male side and I like to mix brilliant colours. Another aspect to watch is the number of petals - not the petals of the parents so much but the history behind them. Do study the petals, their texture and pigment. If you are trying to reduce the number of petals you would not use such varieties as Montezuma crossed with Kordes’ Perfecta which would almost certainly pro-duce seedlings which would be full and probably would not open very well in European conditions. Selection of parent roses is based on observation and experience.

I am not a scientific breeder and I often envy them their knowledge as I believe that it must be a very great help in selecting parents. We learn a great deal by visiting our competitors - we do not really call them competitors, but friends. We can discuss experiments with them, see the seedlings which they are growing and share their mistakes and gains. We can make many short cuts this way. A plant hybridist who does not have the opportunity to get around like this is at a disadvantage because we see and learn a lot as we keep our eyes open and listen to new ideas. We change our minds many times as to what our programme is to be during the next year.

Our present need is more brilliant bi-coloured roses such as in the Piccadilly shades, weather-resistant red roses, new yellow roses and Floribundas with perfume. The story that modern roses are losing their perfume is just not true because when the Floribundas became so popular some twenty to thirty years ago, the public was primarily interested in bright colours, but now the public wants Floribundas with fragrance, and hybridists are now producing them.

Dr. A. S. Thomas, President N.R.S.V., discusses the rose show with two overseas visitors, Mr. Pat Dickson and Mr. Frank Bowen, Treasurer R.N.R.S.

Climbers have been neglected by me over recent years for various reasons, including lack of demand and lack of space in our green houses, but I believe that, in the next few years, there will be many new ever-blooming climbers placed on the commercial market.

I might mention that you who live in Australia can do your hybridizing outdoors, whereas in my country we have to work entirely in large green-houses of about five thousand square feet.  These houses are heated by hot air which is kept moving slowly around by fans and adjustable polythene tubes. 

We start to prune our roses in early December and we like to begin hybridizing during early March because we seem to get more seeds in each hep from the early crosses, and this number will diminish through the season. My friend, Sam McGredy, has also made this observation. We mark our crosses with different coloured labels so we can tell exactly when each cross was made.  Hybridizing is usually completed by the last day of June. 

Once a cross has taken and the hep begins to develop we do not allow any further growth to develop on that stem and thus we encourage all the nourishment to go into the forming of the seeds. (Mr. Dickson then referred to an article by Mr. E. F.  AlIen, the scientific advisor of the RNRS in the 1967 English Rose Annual, page 123, on the use of Gibberellic acid in hybridizing roses which he described as one of the most exciting discoveries over recent years). In our climate the seed heps ripen about November and are then carefully removed and stored outdoors in sand which we find perfectly satisfactory. About mid-December we bring them into the heat (about 55 deg. F.) keeping them very wet and we can usually begin to plant by early January - which always seems to be the beginning of a new rose year. 

The seeds are put into plastic bags and soaked in water for twenty-four hours before planting, and the soil is treated to minimize damping off when the seeds germinate. We obtain about a seventy-five per cent germination. Once the seedlings begin to flower they are inspected daily and the obviously inferior ones are discarded. A couple of budding eyes can usually be taken from the promising seedlings by about June and budded on to stocks.  The selection of seedlings is an exciting time. There is often a great change between the first flower of a seedling in a green-house and the same seedling grown outdoors as a maiden plant. 

During the early morning we often have to walk up and down rows of more than two thousand plants of “crosses” made during the previous season with our “seedling book” in hand.  Selection will start at this point and, by making notes throughout the season, the selection will be made by mid-August. The selected seedlings are then budded so as to have twenty-five, fifty or one hundred plants of each variety to observe and test during the next season. A much better idea of their suitability is obtained from a larger planting.

We try not to become excited over our new roses but even my father, with all his experience, became so excited over the first blooms of Red Devil that he was down four or five times in one week-end to see the plants.

The second year is a very important year as final selections are made. Some seedlings may be chosen to be used in future hybridizing plans whilst a larger number of plants of the outstanding seedlings is built up to send out to the trial grounds of the world and for introduction to the public. It is obvious that plant patenting laws are essential for a hybridizer to get his just returns for all his work and the cost of publicity in introducing a new cultivar to the commercial markets of the world.

Mr. H. Graham, President N.R.S.Q., was chairman of this session.

The trade display of S. A. Brundrett and Son at the rose show.