I've been watching your posts and I can understand why this rose is so important to you. At this point perhaps you need someone local to help you out. Why don't you search for your local roses society? I found a web sit for one and am putting the link below. There may be one closer if you search the internet an this one isn't close enough. Call a contact person, tell them your story and I'm sure someone local will love to help you out. To me it doesn't look dead.

Here is a link that might be useful: Las Vegas Valley rose society

You can also find local rose societies through the American Rose Society's web site. Or you can find contact information for a Consulting Rosarian in your area. Don't hesitate to contact a CR. They're very nice, knowledgeable people happy to help you.

My sister passed away in May and last week I transplanted a miniature rose bush which belonged to her into our yard so I know how you feel...
I hope you find the help you need and the rose survives.

I'm very sorry for your loss. The issue with your rose is you have it planted in a ceramic pot on a concrete surface in a very hot environment. Ceramic and clay pots are cooking utensils. Corning Ware is ceramic and, like that beautiful blue pot, is extreme efficient at cooking anything inside it. That concrete surface is a marvelous solar collector as are the stucco walls probably surrounding the area. They absorb and radiate the heat marvelously and for many hours after the sun moves from shining directly on them. The ceramic pot absorbs that radiated heat as well as the direct sunshine on it extremely well, then also continues radiating it internally. Effectively, there is no difference between a ceramic pot on a hot masonry surface and against a hot wall and a Corning Ware utensil on a range burner. The photos of the rose show it has cooked, literally.

No amount of water is going to alleviate the heat extremes from those surfaces and that pot. DO NOT give it anything but water. Period. ALL fertilizers are, or become, salts which draw water from the stressed plant and replace it with salts. That will only make matters worse and can very easily push the plant over the edge to death.

The first thing you must do is get that poor plant out of the "oven" in which it sits. You know how hot that area gets and how long it remains hot. Go outside bare footed and see. Stand close to the walls and see how much heat radiates from them, even after the sun moves from them. The plant needs a serious heat reduction, particularly to the soil area, the pot. Hopefully, there is somewhere you can slip it inside other shrubbery where no sun will shine on the pot and the plant will be sheltered from any heat being reflected and radiated from any stucco or concrete surfaces. There are still some small green stems which MIGHT have the chance of surviving if the plant can be moved from being cooked. The standard will never be full as it was originally as too much of the head, the budded part on top, has been killed. Your best hope is to limp it along until the weather cools, encouraging it to put out some new growth, from which you may root or bud new plants. That particular standard, if it lives, will probably have two straggly stems coming from the trunk. That is, if there is enough of the trunk still alive to provide the necessary sap flow to support them. Every part of the plant that's black is already dead. They won't resurrect. Hopefully, there is enough viable tissue remaining in the trunk and below those green stems to permit them to put out some growth.

If you wish to grow potted roses on a hot patio in that climate, you will be best off using as large a pot as you can possibly handle. At least 22" in diameter would be best. It takes a lot longer for a six quart pot to boil on the range than it does for a one quart. The larger the soil ball, the greater the insulation the soil provides to the center where the crown of the plant lives. Of course, the roots which grow closer to the pot sides will suffer more heat damage, faster than the crown of the plant. Please don't use ceramic or clay pots as they will cook the plants. You will be much better off thinking of any pot as an ice chest. You need materials which insulate against heat such as wood, foam, fiberglass, concrete, even heavy plastic, particularly if it is double wall construction with air space between the inner and outer surfaces. It is basically like insulating your walls and using dual pane windows to keep out the heat. If you must use glazed ceramic or terra cotta, then use the largest size you can find and wrap the interior with many layers of bubble wrap or thin sheets of Styrofoam, basically turning the pot into an ice chest by insulating the interior against the heat.

I had a client here who lived in Agua Dulce, CA, in the mid California desert. It gets hot there, but not AS hot as what you and your rose endure. After I explained to him why the plants against his southern facing, white stucco wall failed, he went out on a hundred degree day and reported back that he measured 130F air temperature, one foot from that wall while the sun was shining directly on it. Your situation is guaranteed to be MUCH more extreme than that. If you have windows which reflect sunlight on the pots or plants, that exacerbates the problem greatly. The glass functions like a magnifying glass or mirror, focusing the heat, causing it to be even hotter than direct sun rays. I have that issue here along the south side of the house. The sun reflects off treated glass windows in the living room, cooking every plant anywhere near where the reflected rays hit the ground. NOTHING will grow in that area, no matter how much water or mulch is used. A few feet in either direction, where the reflected rays don't reach, plants survive, but the closer to the focused reflection they grow, the more burned they get.

I hope you can find somewhere to put the plant out of that heat misery, where you can keep it watered until it shows whether it can survive or not. I also hope it does live and you are able to propagate plants from it so you are able to keep pieces of your fiance's rose in your garden. Good luck. Kim

I forgot to include, it might be easier for bush forms to survive in those conditions than a standard because the shank, the bush's version of the standard's trunk, is very likely shaded by the soil where it shouldn't experience sun scald from direct sun exposure. Once an area of the trunk, shank or cane is sun scalded and turns black, there is no living cambium layer, the plant's circulatory system, in that blackened area. All the parts above the scald which depend upon that line of capillaries will then die due to the loss of sap. The standard's trunk has two to three feet of exposed cane above the soil, where it is liable to be sun burned. The bush has several inches of the same cane type, probably insulated and shaded by soil and other plant parts. Kim

Well I moved it to the center of the patio to take photos. Normally it sits on a wooden deck and it is in the shade during the hottest part of the day.

Today it is supposed to be 95 degrees here, so I'm thinking of moving it inside until things cool off in the evening. Thoughts?

Tomorrow the weather will finally cool drastically (80), and I will transplant it to a bigger pot.

Generally, putting roses indoors can be the kiss of death. The air is too dry and light too low for their survival. IF it is only over night, it probably won't matter, but any longer than that and it can go down hill pretty quickly. I hope the bigger pot is a better insulator than the blue one. If there is room, you can shade the pot with other pots, even if they are simply full of soil. If they're taller than the one the rose is planted in, it should help reduce any direct sun rays on it. Just make sure whatever pot you use drains properly and if at all possible, don't put it in a saucer so the water reabsorbs back into the pot. Your water has to be at least as "salty" as ours. Due to evaporation, that saltiness can very quickly concentrate like a soup or stew which is kept heating all day. If you can also wash the plant off with the hose every once in a while, that can help rehydrate it. That would be best done in the evening. I seriously doubt you have any disease issues to worry about with this heat. I wish you all the luck possible keeping it going! Kim

So it's down to one last cane now. I'm seriously thinking of cutting off the last remaining cane and trying to get it to grow roots. I've had some success with this in the past, but it is definitely a gamble. But at this point I think the cane on its own has a better shot than leaving it on the plant. Thoughts?

As stressed as it appears from your photos, I don't know which would be better...leaving it on the fried trunk and trying to limp it along in hopes of it putting out useful growth, or "kill or cure" it by trying to root it. Might there be a tag on the plant so you can tell what the variety is? Should it not work, at least you would then be able to purchase another one so you'd still have the rose as a memorial. Kim

Yeah, it really is a toss up. I will sleep on it and decide in the morning, also depending on how the plant looks. It's pouring down rain right now, so nothing to be done.

This post was edited by philippos on Fri, Sep 26, 14 at 22:07

Agree with Kim, 100 percent as usual. Larger pot and check drainage.
Best luck to you, philippos.