Lower leaves often depart, particularly as the year advances.
They're worn out.
It's normal.

Aside from that, tho it is blurry, you may have some blackspot on Verdun.
(I wouldn't stake my life on that, as it's pretty blurry.)
And the Kordes rose problem COULD be downy mildew.
You might get better images if you could put your leaves in a flatbed
scanner, and scan 'em.

Jeri

My guess would be that it's nothing worse than the summer heat. Many of my roses, if not most, have the same problem, even though I water every second day. My tea roses (not hybrid teas) seem the least susceptible to this. When cooler weather and/or rain comes, these leaves will drop off and new green foliage will grow in their place.

Ingrid

I'll try scanning them, Jeri...thanks!

How are you watering and how much water are they receiving?

Like Jeri said, those leaves gotta go sometime.

We have soaker hoses around the beds and water them once a day, dripping for about 30 minutes or so. It has been horrificly hot here in Texas this past month.

Too much water, maybe??

I wouldn't even begin to guess on whether it's too much water.
It all depends upon the temperature and humidity, and the soil conditions.

But again, losing those lower leaves is likely not a problem.

Jeri

ok, one last question...should I clip them off?

Mine have this, too. I just went ahead and pulled them off. Because in my experience, they just turn brown and fall off anyway. I think mine was from heat. We went 21 days without rain and it was 80-90 degrees even in the morning! They looked pretty sad and bare, but they're starting to come back out now.

I'm just a novice, but I put a little Miracle Grow on mine to help them out so they weren't so bare.

Thank you Brittney...I'll try a touch of miracle gro too...couldn't hurt!

I have a lot of this because of the drought. I've just been pulling them off. Most of them are the older larger leaves that are months old. Senile tissue, as jeri would say.

The interesting thing is that since we had all that rain last week, many of my roses have perked up. I had my 3 Barrone Prevost which looked positively awful. Their leaves were almost black (I did spray fungicide and I think they were so dehydrated they were damaged) and now the new growth is a bright light green. It looks funny, but I'm glad to see them doing well.