Pedro Dot (1885–1976) was a Spanish rose breeder. Biography Pedro Dot (in Catalan, Pere Dot i Martínez) was born on 28 March 1885 outside Barcelona on the rose-growing Monistrol estate (now better known for sparkling wine) where his father was estate manager. His early experiments in hybridising roses were encouraged by the Marquise of Monistrol, also titled Countess of Sástago. The countess lent him money to get started, eventually repaid by dedication of one of his finest roses. His father Simon, born into a peasant family but a notable gardener and plant breeder, started a small nursery nearby at San Feliu de Llobregat, where the soil is very alkaline and where the family firm of Rosas Dot is still to be found. Pedro took charge of the roses and later the whole firm. Eventually he moved to Vilafranca del Penedés on the other side of Barcelona, but retained San Feliu de Llobregat. At sixteen he was sent to work at an outside business and in 1910 to Belgium and Paris, where he came across the new methods of hybridisation, not to mention the French attitude to garden art. To escape the small stage of Spanish horticulture, he subsequently played to a world audience. As early as 1924, Pedro entered new roses in scores of international competitions, winning a certificate of merit at the Bagatelle trials in Paris with the variety ‘Margarita Riera.’ He used such choice varieties as ‘Frau Karl Druschki,’ ‘Souvenir de Claudius Pernet,’ and ‘Mme Edouard Herriot’ to produce a large number of brightly coloured hybrid tea roses that all performed well in hot climates. They mostly have Pernetiana ancestry – Pernet was the first to breed the intense yellow colour and strong smell of Rosa foetida into hybrid tea roses – and are not frost hardy. ‘Marí Dot’ won a prize in Strasbourg and ‘Condesa de Sástago’ the first Rome Prize; later it became very popular in the United States. It was the first successful bicolor rose, with petals scarlet on the front, golden yellow on the back. Conard-Pyle imported many of these roses into the United States under their original names, but only a few seem to have been patented. From 1925 Dot also began to use the pollen of wild roses in his breeding. Undoubtedly, Dot’s most successful rose (a hybrid spinosissima) was ‘Nevada,’ released in 1927. The great climber ‘Mme Grégoire Staechelin’ came out