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New Varieties

New varieties of roses are developed in two ways: by sports and seedlings.

SPORTS Sports are purely a matter of chance, and occur when any given variety shows a bloom or habit of growth different from the accepted plant. When this occurs propagation of the wood by cuttings, budding or grafting establishes the new variety.

As illustrations of sports, the two following are well known and are changes from the parent stock in the color of the bloom itself:

La France, color silver rose, sported with Paul & Sons, near London, in 1888, and gave the Duchess of Albany, called dark La France, a rich, deep pink. This was propagated and Duchess of Albany is now a well-established variety.

Camoens, pale rose color with the base of the petals yellow, sported with Boytard, in 1907, and the new rose was called Ecarlate, a brilliant scarlet.

With these two new varieties the habit of growth of the plants remained practically the same as their parents; it was only in the color of the rose that the change manifested itself.

In the past few years the old rose, Killarney, has sported a number of times, giving among others Killarney Brilliant, a rose of a deeper shade of pink; White Killarney, a rose, as the name implies, of a beautiful white; and Double Killarney, a rose of greater substance in petallage than the stock from which it sprang.

Before so many hybrids were cultivated, and when roses were not grown to as great an extent as now, sports were naturally less frequent. Of course varieties which are crosses, such as the hybrids of today, are very much more likely to give different growth or different bloom than the old varieties, which were not so far removed from the original species.

Changes in habit of growth occur as well as changes in bloom, and a great many of the Hybrid Teas and some Polyanthas have produced sports which have much more of a climbing habit than the dwarf bush from which such new varieties originated. The bloom in form and color is practically identical with the parent stock, although its period of flowering is usually shorter and its bloom less profuse.

There is one very interesting illustration of a rose which sported, the new growth of which when propagated reverted to the original form of its parent stock. Heinrich Schultheis, a Hybrid Perpetual rose of deep, rosy pink, sported with Paul & Sons, of London, and produced Paul's Early Blush, a light silvery pink. Again it sported with Alex. Dickson & Sons, in Ireland, and produced another silvery FIG. 7