Oh dear, sorry, mine are not very thorny. :(

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Hoovb, your picture-taking skill is wonderful! Wonderful pictures--ideal in every way for what I need to reach a decision. And the landscaping picture is inspiring, to say the least. Thank you so much!

I'll print out your pictures and take them outside to the spot my husband dragged the Julia Child to--way away, at least to someone with heavily arthritic knees. But hopefully I'll be able to decide within the next day or two. Mine is more thorny than yours, according to my memory, but I'll check to make certain. I think I've seen a couple of other symptoms too, but will have to double check under better lighting conditions than I had yesterday. Anyway, you have helped me enormously. THANK YOU!

Best wishes,
Mary

Mine are not thorny either.
Renee

Mary,
You might also want to compare the margins/edges of the leaves on the thorny canes with Hoove's from her second and fourth photos.
Ann

I do have to mention that I had a horribly thorny new basal on my 'Flaming Peace' (color sport of 'Peace' and not a very thorny rose) and as it grew, the cane stretched out and it eventually had no more thorns than any of the other canes. They just were all there, and full size, on the 6" cane. When the cane hit 5', all normal.

So maybe there's a sliver of hope? Such a lovely rose. Hate to see you lose it.

I don't have a picture handy but I will say that my Julia Child, in year 3, is very thorny.

Thanks so much to everyone for your comments.

I did manage to closely look at the plant itself in good light today (as opposed to looking at it in the semi-dark or looking at photos that weren't very good). It's much better to look at the rose than to try to tell anything from a picture; the larger older leaves actually get in the way of seeing many of the new rosettes on the rose in photos.

I've found rosettes coming out in multiple places with many tiny, slightly more-pointed leaves that are yellowing--a veritable rosette of leaves--and those multiple places with rosettes have leaf stipules that are very much larger than they ought to be. At least one of the enlarged stipules is surprisingly long, longer than the leaflets it adjoins.

The degree of thorniness was suggestive but not conclusive, though where the worst problem cane starts close to the ground, it grows larger than the cane coming from the ground that it is joined to. On this particular cane, many of the thorns are orange or an orange shade of beige, though the thorns on the rest of the plant aren't orange. It appears that the thorniness is in the stage of gradually spreading now on the cane coming from the ground that the thorny cane grows out of. On the other side of the plant, I see a good bit of thorniness too from canes coming up from the ground, as well as some rosettes and some tiny, tiny leaves, including some that are yellowing and more pointed than other older leaves on the plant.

This makes rose #6 out of the original 13 roses we started with last year--not a good percentage for the chances of keeping this disease confined. I really, really wish that I'd taken out the rose, Cornelia, showing the first problems when I first suspected the disease last fall. To repeat, those initial symptoms in Cornelia were: a sudden increase in thorniness, making a very low thorned plant into something very thorny on certain canes, and including many thorns that were oddly colored black.

The one thing I'd especially want to emphasize (which a careful reading of Ann Peck's book will also disclose): that different varieties do not necessarily all react in the same ways to this disease, especially at the earliest first symptoms. So, for example, not seeing black thorns this time on these other roses gives me no reassurance at all. (And in fact, by the time I was seeing full-blown red witches' brooms with red-streaked canes on Cornelia this spring, the color of the many extra thorns was no longer black.)

A few questions I wish I knew the answer to:

Does anyone know for sure whether Neem oil or something like PAM spray will discourage the particular kind of mite that spreads this virus? I know the problem in the mites' ability to be wedged so deep somewhere that whatever you spray can't reach them, but I was thinking that if spraying takes place every few days that the mites would be out in the open eventually and get whacked. Any ideas about pyrethrin using it the same way? Or soap sprays used frequently? What about pyrethrin dust for controlling the mites remaining in the ground that might live off of whatever remains of the rose's roots?

I am also thinking of using Wilt-Pruf on the new roses (now sitting on the other side of the house from where the RRD roses were located). Any experience with trying Wilt-Pruf as a mite discourager/protectant? (For sure the smelly spray products used to discourage pests like deer and rabbits do nothing to ward off mites. And for sure beneficial nematodes have no effect in controlling these mites either.)

Do the mites usually land on a plant via the wind and almost never end up traversing the ground to get there? If they do traverse the ground too, might something like diatomaceous earth work on those mites doing the walking? Or might they find something like snail bait (Escargo) tasty while they're on the ground?

We are organic gardeners here, so something like Avid won't be used. Thanks for any ideas!

Best wishes,
Mary

Mary, I just found someone who posted today on the organics forum with trying to find predators to try to get rid of their RRD-carrying mites! She herself is an entomologist and is now facing RRD with one of her New Dawns. This could be another option as well.

Here is the link:

natural predators against phyllocoptis fructiphilus

Mary, I just thought of another idea. If you still need those Julia Child cane photos I can run out to my local nursery and start taking bunches of photos for you! Normally grafted Julia Child's are at least 2 years old (your rose is very young) so I'm thinking they would be close to the same age as a comparison. I am very thrilled you at least got Gail's (HoovB's)wonderful photos and would be more than happy to help add to the photo comparisons. To me just the words thorny, or quite thorny or not thorny is harder to gage without actual photos, so I am going to try my best to scrounge up something for you. Please let me know. I'd be more than happy to try to post more photos if you need me to.

The entomologist wrote her advice about the natural predators to a gardener who had problems with RRD on New Dawn. I didn't read the original post correctly. They are 2 separate individuals. Ugh, sorry about my goofcase error...

Hi Serena,

I did receive all the photos I needed, Serena, but thanks so much in thinking of this problem and trying to help. I carefully inspected the rose yesterday, and it did have Rose Rosette Disease. Julia Child was tossed today, and that decision was based on more than thorns.

I am very much interested in biological controls for whatever mites might still be around and living off the roots not totally eliminated from the soil--as well as using them as a layer of protection for all the new roses I'm hoping that will live free of RRD-- but apparently Google isn't operating properly here; I'm not getting any results for sellers in this country. Thanks for that idea anyway.

Best wishes,
Mary

Many, many hugs, Mary! I am so sorry to hear about your Julia Child...will be keeping your beloved, beautiful garden in my prayers....

Kaye in Arkansas has used antitranspirants on her roses and has almost no RRD. Where she lives, there is RRD. AND she's on a mountain top, which increases her roses' chances of mite drop. Maybe her property is TOO windy for the mites to drop, but there may be something in the waxes that fools the mites into thinking that they aren't on a rose, so they move on.

The mites are not conventional mites that we know and hate. These are wingless with four legs only at their fronts. They aren't built for walking very far. They probably don't walk from plant to plant, but rather float.

Diatomaceous earth won't work because of size issues. Whole Diatom frustules can be about the same size as the mites; the shattered diatom 'skeleton' has sharp edges...which would work for larger critters. It would be like....we prick ourselves with needles and pins but blunt unsharpened pencils don't go into us.

The weight of an individual mite determines where it will land, when the carrying wind drops it. A big rose with a baffle-like structure can cause it to drop as can any structure that acts as a snow fence.

Mary....you need to walk upwind of your garden. Somewhere, probably not that far away, there's a sick (probably) multiflora thats sourcing your contageon. It's probably still a bright red and will only have had a few scattered blooms this spring.

Much luck.

They are also MUCH smaller than the other mites you see when you look carefully in your garden. They're perhaps as much as one order of magnitude smaller than spider mites.