Let’s see if we can all chime in with our location and whether or not we have had RRD, hoping to see if we can make a map of which of us has had Rose Rosette Disease and who hasn’t. (There are maps out there online, but the most commonly available one is YEARS out of date.)

I will start:
In my garden in Stafford County, Virginia, RRD is a fact of life. It is all over my area … in gardens, in commercial landscapes, and in the wild. I have had three roses affected so far this year, and 13 last year. There were a few cases in previous years, but I did not keep track of them as well as I should have.

Who is next?

I have had 4 cases of RRD in the last three years. (None this year--cross your fingers!) I had vaguely heard about it (on this forum) a couple years before that, but I had never seen a real life example of it until my rose got it three years ago. In the last year or two, I have seen or heard of a couple cases of RRD in this region. Right now I'm keeping a close eye on my neighbor's Pink Knock Out--suspicious growth on it--but I can't convince her it might be a serious problem. She figures she can just keep on cutting that branch back (I told her about the problem last fall).

So it is around and about in this region, but not excessively so.

Kate

I tried pruning and denial last year but the symptoms came back this spring about 5 times worse. I am in the process of digging out my wonderful, 7 x 12 foot friend now.

We are across the river from Trenton N.J.

Lost Dr. Van Fleet---it was a beautiful bush --raised from a cutting we brought back from Martha's Vineyard----

a huge New Dawn--------

one of my Zephirine Drouhin plants---I will be devastated if I lose my beautiful mother plant----

My gorgeous Paul's Himalayan Musk-----(horrors) is showing signs----breaks my heart

Florence

There is a lot of multiflora rose in our area and on some of our property (20 mostly wooded acres), but I haven't looked recently to see how much is infected.

It would be an impossible task to eradicate it on our property alone, and it would just show up again via birds. It grows in many fields in our rural area. I have read that one plant can produce 500,000 or more seeds that can continue to sprout for many years and the seeds are dispersed by birds, so fresh seed is available every year. It is a sad situation.
Marcia

I'm so very sorry about the losses to RRD. My kindred gardening spirit and rose-loving heart goes out to you all.

Carol

Myself, Roanoke, VA. I've lost 50+ to RRD since Sept 2010, most during that first wave. Now, other pop out with it, but I'm not sure it is a new infestation. But it is rampant here.

Ann in Grainger Country Tennessee. Fourteen years experience with RRD to my immediate north and then in my garden.

I now grow my roses dry and have a lot fewer modern roses (in part because I find it hard to save moderns by early removal of a cane.)

RRD is out there and massively a problem in a lot of the landscape plantings of Knock Outs in Knoxville. Lots of roses there to track the sickness over years. Five years in one planting until all were dead.

My worst loss, 2% was when my roses were well watered and the surrounding world was very dry. Hypothesis: drought makes the mites more prone to dispersal.

Over a decade ago I predicted the problem wouldn't be solved in my lifetime. I've seen nothing to make me rethink that.

For this, I am truly and humbly grateful.

Rosefolly

This year with good rainfall, none whatsoever. My soil is alkaline clay.

Florence

John

I also have rabbits and chipmunks -- the chippies are digging holes everywhere and lost a rose to the digging by its roots.

He said the mites land in the upper parts of the rose, and live there longer than we used to think. He said I should prune my roses way down in the winter, because they may not have worked their way into the rose at that time where they could do damage. He said that by drastically pruning them, it would be good for the roses, and also help get rid of the mites.

Of course by the time we see the damage, it is too late to do anything. I sent him a picture of one of my Maggies because its appearance was not clearly RRD to me. He said to get rid of it.

I think this advice makes sense. Regardless of where i find the distortions, the entry spots are at the top of the rose where the wind brings them in. They move down slowly.

I cut all my roses back like he said in March, and you couldn't tell it by the end of April. They really grew back fast.

Sammy

You aren't worried about the mite movement anyway. You worry about the mite feeding on the rose and the virus moving through the plant through the phloem and then through the xylem.

Cutting back in fall when a rose has been infected already for several months makes no sense.

The statement "Of course by the time we see the damage, it is too late to do anything" is wrong. Many of us have saved individual roses by removing an entire cane when the disease has just begun out on a cane.

The nursery industry is a Johnny come Lately to dealing with RRD.

Nana,

Make sure that there are no woodsii down in the bottoms of the draws. Woodsiis can take a lot more drought than most roses.

Were I a parishioner at that church, the matter would already have been dealt with -- whether the lady approved or not.

I thought that a local landscaper had reported it to me. But when I inquired further, it turns out that she was a heavy used of a popular herbicide around the roses. I told her that you can't spray this stuff around the roses, you will get the "witches broom" effect. She pooh-poohed what I said, and stormed off. I'll assume that she's torn out the roses by now.

A friend of mine here has a planting of Knock Out roses, and has read that Knock Outs have RRD in epidemic proportions. She said many things about Knock Outs, but her information just did not sound like what others here have been saying.

Also what about Henry Kusco? I may have not spelled his name correctly, but he usually gives information when this subject comes up.

Sammy

Cynthia

Knock Outs get RRD because there are so many KOs out there, now and they stay sick and are a source of infection for other KOs in their mass plantings.

Re Texas: Gardeners in Houston and Ft Worth have had serious problems. The late Field Roebuck from that area was the first to put RRD in a 'modern' rose book, but he died before it got into his garden. I also know of someone near Tyler who had RRD on Mermaid.

Henry Kuska is the person you're remembering.

"From memory: early on I had a number of "RRV type" infections and I removed the whole plants. This was over several years. At some point I put the dots together. The infections were either in the bed that was immediately downhill from the neighbor that had a lawn service or were very close to where I had used a herbicide on newly sprouted poison ivy (many places among my 1000 roses). I changed the bed next to the neighbors to a raised bed and stopped all herbicide use (except corn gluten meal). I have had zero cases since then."

IS that RRD? My Austins show some pretty weird growth at times. They look a lot like yours. I'll post some The Prince photos. Maybe Ann can confirm RRD.

Ann, in your opinion IS that RRD on Dayna's rose?

Carol

Next two photos:
Close-up of red growth and clusters of flowers which looked rather "broomy" a couple of days before the photo was taken. Also photo of a close-up of thorns.

Odd growth but not RRD to my knowledge.

Carol

Lynn

I'm so sorry that you lost a couple of roses to caution, but I'm glad you don't have RRD! My Austins (and sometimes others) often produce odd new growth. I don't use herbicides, so other factors must be at play. Weather? Water? Who knows?

Happy gardening in CO. It's a beatiful state!

Carol

Kate

I really enjoy this forum, very helpful and great people :)

Cheers!
Dayna

My property is rural and is I know there are multiflora roses in the woodland area. This year so far, my hubby has removed about 10 mature HTs, 5 minifloras, 1 Buck, and last week, 'Funny Face'. Three years ago I turned the western rose garden into a conifer garden because the mites always traveled the winds through that area and it was a death-knell for any roses that I planted there.

I predict that within 5 years at this rate of infection that most of my roses on the northern slope will be gone.

Re Vermont. You aren't that far from Syracuse NY and they have had RRD in their city rose garden.

http://www.rosebreeders.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=54197

My ebook has the references in the bibliography, if you feel inclined to search.

Although I am not remotely versed in viral transmission, I am chary of ascribing the same results to different virus families.

This is not my theory. I assume that this is what scientists trained in the area of plant virus spread are proposing should be investigated.

The link below explains where the poster heard it.
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/roses/msg102241481001.html?9
"Henry, I came across this thinking while attending a woody plant conference at swarthmore college. The college has the Dean Bond Rose Garden and RRD was showing itself."
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The link below is to a recent (2008) review of plant virus transmission through fungi.

My heart goes out to those affected, but I am wondering why not here; not that I want it, but what is different?

If ever there was a systemic or a spray to ward off RRD, that would be the one I would buy. I only hope that researchers are progressing towards eradicating this plague.

Lynn

The link is to the chapter in my E-book about the history of Rose Rosette. If you haven't seen it, it might be worth your reading it as it has citations to the papers on which it is based.

I've asked the young surgeons who bought our old house from before we moved to Oregon, and they've found no witches' brooms on the nine varieties I planted there: not even on the Rosa Laevigata scrambling up the trees, or the New Dawn cascading from a tall screen of Cryptomeria. That house is out in the one-third-acre 'Cheap Seats', where there are a lot of those odious "Knockouts", which seem to be the primary RRD 'reservoir' in the Bible Belt.

I've looked up into tree canopy on the surviving stretch of unchanged forest on Madison Avenue, and can't see any signs of distress in the Laevigata naturalized there. And the plantings of 'Drift' roses I've had a chance to inspect on commercial properties seem fine. We're south of the Mississippi Delta, which supposedly is RRD-free due to the heavy spraying of insecticides (it's an intensively farmed area). Maybe that's checked the southward spread of the mites. However, the prevailing winds come from areas southwest of us. I'd expect mites from Texas...