Florists

How are rose petal number and chromosomes involved in the evolution of a Roses?

We know that all modern roses were developed from the wild five-petal variety. Not only do modern roses have many more petals, but also they have a much larger number of chromosomes. Explain how this probably came about.

Public Comments

1. There probably have been fuckups during roses meiosis leading to a larger number of chromosomes (n-ploid). These have been favoured and selected by humans. I assume that insects would still prefer the better accessible 5 petal varieties. The larger set of chromosomes implies a larger set of copies of each gene that includes the genes responsible for the petals, and in roses the equation seems to be simple enough so more chromosome sets lead to more petals.