Lyn,

Perhaps you are referring to lineage? We seem to have reached an age where the armchair experts via the internet, have full access to express their opinions at the expense of fact. If you have written a book, you are an instant expert. You may never have turned a sod, but you are an expert.

The experts Lyn, are those who have worked the fields with rose-growing as their livelihood, and who don't necessarily have a way with words, or the time to sit and contemplate their navels, or to swap myths. Your site is a rich opportunity for the "wannabes" to get their names in print. There are dozens of so-called rose experts who may be good photographers, or experts in seeking the truth. but who use the rose as a means to an end, not a creation of Nature.

Without cyberspace, where would your site be? It would be non-existant. It is easy access to anybody with an opinion that muddies the waters. Anybody and everybody can express an opinion, fact or fiction, but be careful not to ask for their credentials. If they've been published, they are credible. Practical experience, and working with roses for 50 years counts for nothing. It is almost enough to drive me to complete the book that half-written, languishes in several folders in my computer.

I maintain the List of Australian Bred roses for the National Rose Society of Australia, which works hard to be a reliable reference point for the rose-growing public. I attempt to perform my duties diligently with complete regard to fact. It is increasingly galling to see parentage stated as fact, or with a qualified "believed to be" or an "assumed to be", coming up in Modern Roses. The problem with assumptions and beliefs is that, that is all they are, and I am concerned, as a conscientious custodian working for the integrity of our knowledge of roses, that as the lyrics of a well known song state - " ......Be careful of what you do 'cause the lie becomes the truth. O, O, O, Billy Jean ........." You know how it goes?

I thank you for the offer to become a Premium Member. I do not have the time to become embroiled in fruitless conversations with people who are more interested in and expressing their own opinion, without regard to the experience of another. In the past fifteen years I have had that experience, and it only takes one instance of "armchair hypothesis" for me to drop the ball. I thank Patricia Routley for the salient piece of information that nails the lid on 'Billy Boiler'. But that's only an opinion from an uncredentialled contributor, but substantial enough for me to include 'Oscar Kordel' x 'Black Boy' as parentage of 'Billy Boiler', even with the understanding that the record keeping of Alister Clark was deficient in some quarters.