Good Sports in the Garden

It could happen in your garden, though it’s not very likely. The flowers or leaves of a plant suddenly might be a different color, or they may grow in a markedly different way. This genetic mutation is what’s called a “sport.”

Sports often are propagated to become a new version of a familiar plant. This year there are three new roses that started life as sports, one in a Missouri backyard.

“It’s very unusual to have so many new roses be sports,” said Tom Carruth, the hybridizer at Weeks Wholesale Roses in Ontario. Most new roses are intentionally bred by crossing and hybridizing. Few are accidentally discovered as sports.

Weeks is introducing two of the new sports for the year 2000. ‘Pearly Gates’ is a pale pastel pink sport of ‘America,’ while ‘Easy Going’--which is “a really lovely rose,” according to Carruth--is a gold sport of ‘Livin’ Easy.’ The third sport is ‘Full Sail,’ a white sport of ‘New Zealand.’

Sports in roses are usually of a different color, or a different habit of growth--many climbing roses are sports of shrub roses.

Before sports can be introduced as new plants, they must be tested for many years, to make sure the plant does not revert.

There can be side effects, too. For instance, climbing sports often bloom poorly. He had a wonderful climbing sport a few years ago that grew so fast “it looked like it would consume small children and dogs,” but it never bloomed. On the other hand, sports can be prettier than their parents. As for finding a sport in your yard, he said, “you’d be lucky to see one in a lifetime,” which is why three in one year is usual. All three are available at nurseries now.