Mosses (
tetraploids) are mutations of both Centifoilias and Damasks. The crested moss is a mutation of the Centifoilia or a Centifoilia cross. Mr. Moore of Miniature Rose fame has done the ground breaking work with mosses. He however took them to miniatures. I purchased some of his tea or floribunda mosses, Gold moss, Rouge moss and Fairy moss. Though I truly respect the work he has done and the devotion to his craft and understand his vision is different than mine, I did not like any of the three. I found them all very un-mossy. They were more thorny than mossy. The blooms on the other hand were quite well developed, good substance and color, they hit me as thorney hybrid teas. I did however read everything I could find that he wrote about his breeding and am very thankful and use the information often. Please keep this in the perspective as it is meant! I have only bought three of the moss roses and two of these were stepping-stones to Mr. Moore's ultimate goal. I think he is a genius when it comes to his miniatures. Nothing speaks for success like success, right. Mosses are my main project. I like mosses for several reasons, one. is "Moss" isn't a type of rose. Any rose can be a moss so they aren't standardized. Two. mosses are hard to breed, a challenge. Three. they add a whole new visual and fragrance level to roses. I hope that in the future they (Rose experts) stop listing moss as a species but as an additional description because (as I said) Though this mutation started with a species it has gone past the species, all rose classes can be mossed. Moss is like spots on a dog. The A.K.C. doesn't have a spotted class. There is big difference in a spotted Poodle and a spotted Great Dane, a mossed Tea and a mossed Damask. I believe this is true of climbing and minature also.These do not describe a flower type or even bloom cycle. If you add the flower type descriptions..mossed minature Tea or climbing mossed Damask you have a much clearer picture of what type of rose is being described.
I have to focus my breeding because of the small amount of space, number of roses and time I have. My long-range goal is re-blooming moss roses in all color ranges. I want to retain the old fashion look and fragrance. The look I want is mossy and crested Portland’s, Bourbons, and Hybrid Perpetuals. I want to add the red and yellow colors lacking in those groups however.
I have read that the "Crested" moss has never set seeds. I set four hips the year 2000 (I only have two seeds this year 2001) and will try again the spring of 2002. This time I will take pictures of the hips. ( I have now posted a picture of a mature Crested rose hip in "Hips") I didn't realize at the time I did anything unusual. The hips maybe a little more of a tubular shape; not quite as roundish as the other moss roses I have set hips on. This may be what Centifoilia hips are like and the other mosses may have inherited the rounder hips from the Damask side of their families. I should have seedlings from these "Crested moss" hips. I should have other seedling from the "Crested moss" from the pollen I obtained and brushed on a very fertile hybrid.
When starting my moss breeding I wanted to breed more moss hybrids. I want my mosses based on several mosses rather than one like I see so often, even though I know this will take much longer. I also decided to make crosses that would simplify the genes rather than make crosses that would take the already fertility burdened moss and pair them with hybrids that shared the same affliction.
I am testing the theory of the gene for moss simply exaggerates what glands that are present on a particular rose. Mr. Moore thinks the gene might exaggerate everything on the epidermis, as mosses tend to be over thorny and on some realy mossy roses the leaves are even stippled. If you look at Teas, some have practically no glands (such as "Peace") while others have more. So in short, a moss seedling that doesn't express as much mossing might be carrying just as much moss material as one that looks quite mossy. It just may not have inherited the glands to exaggerate. I haven’t ruled out the possibility of factoring especially since the roses are tetraploids. It makes perfect sense that a dominant gene could be carried on more than one set of genes and be expressed accordingly.
I crossed several mosses both as seed and pollen parents with simpler more fertile parents. I am not convinced that the fertility problems with mosses have anything to do with being mossed. I think, and will be proving or disproving, that the problem lies with their Centifoilia roots, which of course have fertility problems. My goal is to break what I think is a genetic link to infertility. The hybrid I used to cross with mosses was both a good seed setter and had a less double bloom, I will be taking the mossed offspring from this cross and back crossing them to the same hybrid and others with the same attributes, to hopefully produce very fertile moss roses. I also used the same hybrid to cross with several teas in an effort to not only simplify their genes but also add hardiness, courser foliage and the glands to exaggerate with the future addition of the mossing gene. The tea crosses will be cross bred to produce tough repeat blooming modern colored roses. I also will be crossing crested moss hybrids to other moss hybrid types.
Things to come: I had over 1,000 seedlings this year(from crosses I made in 2000) many will be mossed. Most will not bloom till spring 2002. I had a hand full that bloomed this spring(2001) (I have some of them posted) I had a surprise in that some seedlings are variegated. They should bloom spring 2002. The variegation is most pronounced on young foliage. I am not sure yet of the quality of these hybrids.
6/13/02 I have observed the Moss seedling this year and have no doubt that the moss gene and probably many or all other genes are expressed by factors. I have to force myself to think of Rose genes (in the case of Teas, Mosses and the like) as tetraploids or four sets of genes, which they possess.
It seems "moss is expressed by the number of genes that carry it". Seedlings from the same crosses, showed a remarkable variance in the amount of mossing, from none at all to very mossy. The only explanation I can think of for this is factoring. When roses are bred in the case of tetraploids mossed to tetraploid non-mossed the expression depends on how many of the moss genes are passed from zero to two. The maximum amount when crossing a moss and a non-moss is two. When crossing two mosses the maximum amount then would be four if both roses were carrying at least two. I believe most mosses carry two mossing genes.
If moss was just simply factored then I feel heavy mossed roses (lets just say double factor) would produce all mossed off spring though less mossed, which is not the case, and mossed crossed with mossed would always produce mossed off spring, though varing in amount of mossing, which again is not the case. With the gene factoring if a mossed rose, single or double factor is crossed with the same, some of the off spring will be un-mossed some will be single, double, triple and quadruple factored, the only way all offspring would be mossed is if two mosses were crossed each being at least a triple factor, which is what I feel is the case. If the first moss mutation was a quadruple factor moss, which we don't know, all crosses of that rose would have been double factor and all successive crosses would have been zero, single or double factor, unless two mosses were crossed.
