I just read through a very interesting Master's Thesis on genetic relationships between roses of China and/or Tea descent. Take notice of the following quote from the summary (on page 62), which is elaborated upon earlier in the paper (beginning on page 35):

"A number of vegetative sports and synonyms within the China Rose group were also identified,
including the largest group made up of ‘Old Blush’, ‘Climbing Old Blush’, ‘Green Rose’, ‘Single Pink’, ‘Rouletii’, ‘Pompon de Paris’, ‘Bengale d’Automne’, ‘Archduke Charles’, and an R. chinensis
var. semperflorens. "

Other roses determined to be sports of (rather than seedlings of) others in the study based on identical genetic profiles include:

'Fabvier' = 'Martha Gonzalez' = 'Old Gay Hill Red China' (the latter a taller sport)

'Cramoisi Superieur' = 'Serratipetala' (the latter a sport of the former)

'Hermosa' = 'Setina' (the latter a climbing sport of the former)

And the genetic similarity of 87% (rather than 100%) between 'Cramoisi Superieur' and 'Climbing Cramoisi Superieur' substantiate the claim that the latter is a seedling of the former, and not a sport.

And finally, a list of ploidies was given in Table 4, beginning on the paper's page 28. Of interest is the list of tested Chinas (and some others) found to be triploid:

Cramoisi Superieur
Climbing Cramoisi Superieur
Hermosa
Martha Gonzales
Serratipetala
Old Gay Hill China
Setina
Napoleon
Louis Philippe
Slater's Crimson China
Fellenberg
Bengale Centifeuilles
Ferndale Red China
Fabvier
Zephirine Drouhin
Souvenir de la Malmaison
Bouquet d'Or
Lamarque
Mme Alfred Carriere
Climbing Devoniensis
Adam


Thanks to Henry Kuska for posting the link to the summary of the paper on the RHA forum, to which a response was posted with a link to the full paper. The full paper may be read at the link below:

http://repository.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-12-7450/SOULES-THESIS.pdf?sequence=2

:-)

~Christopher