Editors' Note.—Again our Canadian friends push the breeding of roses hardy without protection in a climate where 40° below zero is quire ordinary during the long winter. Pursuing the use of a most interesting species called R. pratincola in the following article, but placed by the authorities as R. suffulta, a rumor was followed up, with the result here presented. (In the latest and most comprehensive index of rose species, as printed in "Standardized Plant Names," R. pratincola is made synonymous with R. suffulta and diligent inquiry shows that it has also been called R. arkansana.)
     Much previous discussion may be followed by referring in the Cumulative Index to hardiness titles on page 10 of that useful work.

In breeding roses with hardiness as a prime objective, one of the most objectional characters which frequently occurs is the unattractive lilac shades of pink in the blossoms. Particularly is this the case when using R. blanda, R. acicularis and R. spinosissima. With R. pratincola, however, the coloring is invariably a pleasing shade of pink; whether it be a deep tint or diffused, it is definitely pink and without a bluish tinge.

One of the most outstanding examples at Morden is a Mary Wallace x R. pratincola cross. The coloring here is a deep or intense pink, without any suggestion of the salmon shade of Mary Wallace. There are two individuals from this combination, both very bright shrub roses, but neither hardy enough for our purpose. It may be well to state that R. pratincola appears to be of use only as a pollen parent. Attempts to use it as a seed parent have proved futile. The hips or seed-pods often will swell and ripen perfectly, but they are always empty of seeds. Mr. F. L. Skinner, at Dropmore, Manitoba, Canada, has had the same experience with it. His work is done outdoors, while at this station it is an under-glass project.

After a number of years of somewhat speculative work crossing species and garden varieties of rose, seeking for a line or lines of breeding work which promised success if pursued intensively, efforts are now being directed along two distinct lines.

The first concerns the combination of Ophelia, R. altaica, and R. pratincola, which is based on two individuals, namely Ophelia x R. altaica on the one side, and Ophelia x R. pratincola on the other. The Altaica cross is the hardier of the two, but the color is cream, overlaid near the margins with pink, while the other is a good pink. Both are five-petaled, of large size and thick texture.

The other line of work is based on one individual plant, a Ross x Dr. W. Van Fleet cross, and the objective in this case is a climbing or pillar rose. (For particulars regarding the Ross rose see the 1935 Rose Annual, page 115.)

This plant is in appearance almost identical with Dr. W. Van Fleet, although the seed parent is Ross. The plant equals, if not surpasses, Van Fleet in vigor, and possesses about the same degree of hardiness. Winter-killing averages about one-third of the year's growth. There is always sufficient healthy growth in spring to produce an ample display of bloom, but only an occasional one appears. The semi-double flowers are white, with reddish anthers, and the plant is capable of producing them in profusion. Its capacity is based on plants flowered under glass, and, curiously enough, by a plant growing in a garden one hundred miles north of here, where it is a great favorite.

There are two crosses with the last-mentioned plant which promice to give increased hardiness. These are xR. altaica and xR. pratincola. Of these the last-named is the more robust, and both are prolific seed-bearers. This matter of fertility is important because of the amount of sterility encountered in inter-species breeding. It is hoped that these two lines (namely, [(Ross x Van Fleet) x R. altaica] and [(Ross x Van Fleet) x R. pratincola]) when combined will yield something near our objective. Hardiness is represented by Ross, R. altaica, and R. pratincola, the climbing character by Ross and Dr. W. Van Fleet, and color by R. pratincola. We are very hopeful. And I think you should know that the American Rose Annual is, in my opinion, the best in contemporary rose literature.

The sheer beauty of R. pratincola is evident in the plate presented facing page 87. The rose is richly fragrant. The picture resulted from a plant sent to Dr. McFarland by Percy H. Wright in 1900 and bloomed indoors by Robert Pyle.

EDITORS' NOTE.—From the Saskatchewan prairies, far north of the United States boundary, come these details of a rose that endures -60°, is dwarf and drought-enduring, and a so-called "everbloomer." The hybridists seem to have overlooked it, and the botanists are not agreed about it. Bailey synonymizes it also with Rosa heliophila. In Miss Willmott's "Genus Rosa" is a superb color plate of it as R. pratincola. Its "author," E. L. Greene, says it is "one of the commonest of North American roses ... most abundantly inhabiting a very extensive range ... the peculiar rose of the rich grassy prairies." It would seem time to get it into gardens!

LONG ago, the title "the Prairie rose" was given to Rosa setigera, but this name should properly have been reserved for a species of very different habitat and characteristics.

Rosa suffulta Greene, otherwise R. pratincola Greene, grows wild over a large area in the American and Canadian plains. It is, perhaps, one of the most drought-withstanding rose species in the world, occurring even on the driest knolls. It is, therefore, naturally a dwarf rose, sometimes blooming when only two to three inches high. The flowers and seed-hips, however, are not dwarf, but rather larger than those of some of the bush species. I have never observed it over a foot high, even on moist lands.

In my district, at Wilkie, Saskatchewan, about 250 miles north of the international boundary, it is the only rose growing in the open. As winter temperatures here sometimes sink to - 60° Fahr., even without snow-covering, the local strain of it is of the utmost hardiness. R. blanda occurs in the ravines in the same area; on cool, northerly slopes, we find R. acicularis.

The flower of this dwarf denizen of the cold prairies varies from deep pink to white, with occasionally a cream tint in the center. Marvel of marvels, this humblest of roses is everblooming! It will normally bloom and bear seed after the infestation of the snout-beetle is over, and so severe is that pest in dry years that sometimes such late blooms will be the only ones to be spared. I have seen this rose in bloom even at the doors of winter, on roadsides, or elsewhere where cultivation had destroyed the early growth. The everblooming habit of this species is surely evidence that the rose genus is not limited but that the everblooming habit is deeply ingrained in it.

In one district of southern Saskatchewan a field of many acres of a double form of this rose has been discovered. The flower is nicely double, a delicate shell-pink in color, and very well formed for a species rose. Most double wild roses of North America are of little value, but this strain seems to be an exception. I have no right to name it, but in correspondence have called it the Woodrow rose. It and its species are evidently difficult to transplant, partly because the stems are very fine and hence subject to drying out, and partly because it is so very deep rooted. In digging it from the wild, one cannot easily get more than a small proportion of the root.

The species has characteristics which it would be desirable to transfer to domestic roses. Unfortunately, it does not cross readily, although F. L. Skinner, of Dropmore, Manitoba, has successfully used its pollen on R. rugosa. In 1935 1 secured over 1,400 seeds from pollinations with it of the Rugosa variety Hansa. Thirty-nine of these germinated in April, 1936. One plant grew three feet high, and another bloomed but was only a single. Such early returns are commonplace with tender roses, but I have not heard of them with northern species. This plant certainly could not have bloomed in the first year of its life had it not inherited from one or both parents the capacity for late blooming. It set no seed; Mr. Skinner's plants are also sterile.

The foliage of my thirty-nine hybrids formed a most interesting study. Variation was all the way from Suffulta to Rugosa, and with some the size of the Rugosa leaf was combined with the type of Suffulta. With 1,400 seeds I should pretty well be able to explore all the ranges of possibility.

In 1934 I got results from the use of Suffulta pollen on Rubrifolia, but cannot now prove it, as, unfortunately, mice ate the seeds. I feel sure that the Prairie rose will pollinate more of the northerly species than has been thought, and I intend to try it out on as many as I can. It has, however, never been known to accept foreign pollen. It is a tetraploid like R. spinosissima and its altaica form and most Hybrid Perpetuals and Hybrid Teas.

It is about the only rose I know likely to bring dwarfness and some everblooming habit, without loss of hardiness, into domestic varieties. In other words, it gives great promise.

OF ONE thing in rose breeding I am thoroughly convinced, which is that if we want new characters in domesticated roses, we must bring in new species. This is not to say that further improvement is impossible by reassembling the old genes, but that the results thereby to be achieved are much smaller in relation to the effort expended. That is like reworking an old Phoenician mine, now three miles under the sea. But every new species is a new vein of ore!

The two species that to me appear to be the most promising are Rosa suffulta, six-inch, extremely drought-resistant denizen of the northern North American plains, and R. nitida, the dwarf, shiny-leafed rose of the New England States and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. My experiments with Nitida are too recent to say much more than that it appears to be able to transmit extraordinarily attractive foliage, with wonderful autumn coloration especially, and petal color of good tone, and unusually non-fading. My experiments with Suffulta are now eight years old, and though various delays have prevented me from doing much more than see intriguing possibilities from the theft of its genes, I do have a number of hybrids of which readers of the American Rose Annual may like to hear.

Three natural doubles of the species have been picked up and to some extent propagated. The first is the Woodrow rose, from Woodrow in southwestern Saskatchewan; the second, unnamed, was found near Penzance in central Saskatchewan; and the third, Allan, was discovered near the North Dakota border by Agricultural Representative John Allan of North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Of these, the first, already being used by several U. S. rose breeders, is the most double and has the least pollen. The second I had, but have lost, and memory does not permit me to give a very exact description of it. I believe it to be semi-double and to have plenty of pollen. The last is sufficiently double, and has an abundance of pollen, pollen that I have found to be fertile and active. This variety may prove to be the most valuable of all to the breeder.

The earliest hybrid I made was produced by putting pollen of the single Suffulta on the pistils of the Rugosa Hybrid, Hansa, an extremely hardy and vigorous variety not well liked except where it is about the only choice in everblooming roses, on account of its rather violet color. From this cross numerous seeds are easily got, fifty to a hundred per hip, and nearly every flower catches. From my first cross I got Hansette, about intermediate between the two parents, but tending to be more like Hansa when thriving and when a full grown plant, and more like the wild parent when suffering from drought or just getting a start. The flower is small, red without violet tones, and possessing thirteen petals. It is fully fertile both ways, though its mother is probably a diploid and its sire is a tetraploid. Unfortunately it is as susceptible as is Hansa to root galls. It attains about three feet, is broad and bushy, and blooms earlier in the spring than either parent. It blooms but once, each parent having suppressed the type of everblooming shown by the other.

Next came two sister sorts of more complex ancestry. They were produced by putting pollen of Woodrow on a Hansa-Macouni cross of my own called Mary, not unlike Dr. N. E. Hansen's Tetonkaha. This makes them one-half Suffulta, one-quarter Macouni, one-eighth Rugosa, and one-eighth Hybrid Tea, assuming that Hansa is a Rugosa-Hybrid Tea cross.

The more important of the pair was dubbed Ariel, a singularly appropriate name on account of the charmingly airy effect of the delicate, button-hole blossoms. I understand that according to the rules it will have to be renamed, which is a pity. The plant shows the Rugosa influence somewhat, but grows erect, about three-and-a-half feet tall, has flowers of the type of Woodrow but a deep pink approaching red, also clear of all violet tones. The other, Felicity, is of the same size and attractiveness, but is a clear pink. The plant is somewhat less vigorous, as erect as its sister, but almost thornless. Both are fertile both ways, and their pollen has already produced abundant offspring. Felicity was somewhat set back by winter injury in the terrific winter of 1942-43, with its sustained cold and its low of -67 degrees.

The fourth hybrid, Little Betty, I have no exact record of, but the evidences of the plant indicate that it is either Betty Bland by single Suffulta or Blanda by Woodrow. It grows about 3 1/2 feet high, is double, pale pink, with a small, neat flower. It is extremely prolific and has welcomed the pollen of every rose I have given it, having returned many seeds even to the pollen of Austrian Copper and Persian Yellow. It was 100 per cent hardy in the past winter, though at the corner of the house, almost free of snow and exposed to all the winds that blew. This summer I discovered that it would layer readily.

In the summer of 1942 I put pollen of Ariel upon the pistils of Little Betty, thus giving the genes of Suffulta. a chance to come together again from both sides of the house, and accidentally restoring the type of everblooming of Suffulta, previously suppressed. From this pollination, about twenty seeds germinated in the spring of 1943, of which one bloomed when still in the seed box and less than a month old, and four others bloomed in the fall, from August 15 to freeze-up. All were double, and a medium pink. The flowers were wee, necessarily, since they came on plants less than three inches high and with only three or four tiny leaves. Next year I expect them to be as large as the flowers of Woodrow.

To look at these plants, blooming when a teacup would accommodate each, one would think that they had in them the blood of Rouletti. Doubtless they are reversions to the Suffulta ancestor and a cytological examination would show them to be tetraploids. I regard them as new varieties of Suffulta. As such, with Woodrow and Allan, they may replace Polyanthas in cold climates, and come to be used freely as border and edging roses. As with Woodrow, natural multiplication will undoubtedly be too slow to wait for, and budding the only way to obtain new plants quickly.

As a group, the Suffulta hybrids tend to have small flowers when double, of better size when single, all perfectly clear of blue. The leaves, usually small, narrow and sparse, are of a bluish cast. The plants are medium to very dwarf, fertile and prolific, and hardy to fifty degrees below zero or lower. Doubtless they are also extremely drought-resistant, a feature for which I cannot test them in this forest area which is now my home. Probably a cross with the thornless Multiflora would give a rose suitable for budding tame roses upon to produce plants adapted to the prairies of both Canada and the U.S.A.