Svejda, Dr. Felicitas

	Profile		Publications Authored		Plants Bred		Plants Discovered		Photos		Comments

HelpMeFind's future is in your hands - Please do not take this unique resource for granted.

Your support of HelpMeFind is urgently needed. HelpMeFind, like all websites, needs funding to survive. We have set a premium-membership yearly subscription amount as low as possible to make user-community funding viable.

We are grateful to the many members who have signed up so far, but the number of premium-membership members remains too small for us to sustain the current support and development level. If you value HelpMeFind and want to see it continue we need your support too.

Yearly membership is only $2.00 per month and adds a host of additional features, and numerous planned enhancements, to take full advantage of the power and convenience of HelpMeFind. Click here to start your premium membership..

We of course also welcome donations of any amount. Click here to make a donation. Donations of $24 or more receive a thank-you gift of a 1-year premium membership.

As far as we have come, we feel HelpMeFind is still in its infancy. With your support we have so much more to accomplish.

Photo courtesy of Margit Schowalter

Rose Breeder, Author and Discoverer

Listing last updated on Sat Apr 2025

Ottawa, Ontario
Canada

Dr. Felicitas Svejda (November 8, 1920 Vienna, Austria - January 18, 2016), emigrated 1953 to Canada. She worked at the Ottawa Experimental Farm until her retirement in 1987.
[From Peter Schneider on Roses, by Peter Schneider, p. 149:] Working for Agriculture Canada's research department, Dr. Felicitas Svejda used rugosas extensively in the breeding of her series of super-hardy roses named after Canadian explorers...

[From By Any Other Name, July 2016, pp. 7-11:] Felicitas Svejda was born in Vienna on November 8, 1920. She studied at the Hochschule für Bodenkultur in her native city where she qualified as an Agricultural Sciences Engineer (PhD) in 1948. Her thesis was an investigation of the decline of the culture of wine grapes in Vienna and Lower-Austria since 1900. She continued working at the Hochschule as a research assistant until 1951. In 1952, she moved to Sweden where she worked at the Svalöf Research Station for the Sveriges utsädesförening (Swedish Seed Association). The following year she left Europe for good and emigrated to Canada. She found work as a statistician at the Department of Agriculture (Ag-Can) at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa. She continued in this position until 1961 when she was transferred to the Ornamental Plants Division of the Institute for Genetics and Plant Improvement at the same location where she worked until her retirement in 1986

An archive of information about Dr. Svejda and her plant breeding work (which included many kinds of plants in addition to roses) is on the web site of the Montreal Botanic Garden:
http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/jardin/archives/svejda/rosa_explorer_en.php

This archive includes lists of crosses she made, her evaluations of the resulting plants, and other information that a plant breeder will find interesting.

Margrit Schowalter explains Dr. Svejda's coding system as follows:

E12 seedling code = 78L15U04009
E10 seedling code = 78L15U04002

78 = year of cross
L15 = pistillate parent (mother)
U04 = pollen parent
009 = 9th seedling
002 = 2nd seedling

E12 and E10 are siblings from the same cross.

E12 used as a parent is shown as (L15 x Champlain) or (L15 x U04)
E10 used as a parent is shown as (L15 x Champlain) or (L15 x U04)