Jeri,
I don't think there is a gene in roses that is a key to resistance. There are other diseases transmitted by other eriophyid mites in other plants in Rosaceae and resistance hasn't been found.
And then get into the real money crops (corn, wheat and pigeonpeas) where a big total loss field can be over a hundred thousand dollars ...there are similar diseases, also transmitted by still other mites, for which no resistant varieties have been found. And for them, the anonymous they have been looking.
As for what carries after gene splicing. Soybeans with glysphosphate resistance are the ones I've read and heard most about. The resistance apparently is transmitted by seed. The people who sell the GM soybeans keep track of who bought what (and they know how many acres that quantity will plant) and the following year, if no GM soybeans are bought, the farmer's fields are inspected and if he's spraying glyphosphate to kill weeds in his soy fields, they assume he (illegally) saved seeds from his previous year crop and he gets prosecuted with heavy fines.
Speaking of GM, on the net there's an application in Australia for Ingenta to grow GM roses in glasshouses. With mention of the rose genes having a genetically added blue component. The application was to prove no escape of the genes would be possible/probable. And there you get into the GM offspring potential in a back door kind of way.

So, in our lifetimes, at least, no one is charging in on a white horse to rescue our garden roses. Too bad.

Jeri

Ann, thanks for responding. And, Jeri, thanks for showing an interest. Here are the pictures. I'm not very good with the camera. I'll follow your advice and cut them as close to the ground as possible. This rose is totally entrenched in a china berry vine. I sure hope I don't lose it. Also, once I cut the cane near the ground, is it necessary to try and remove the cane? Will RRD spread to other roses?

Robert

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It's RRD. You do need to remove the canes, bag them up (and especially bag up the parts you've already cut off) because you don't want mites that might have fed on them to get anywhere near other roses.
Robert, I've never seen this close up on Banksia. Thank you. Only from about five feet below it on huge arches. That's a LOT of aberrant axillary breaks. Do you have any feel for how long these might have been sick?

Ann, I had recently trimmed back some of the top canes (probably in the last 2 weeks), and I hadn't noticed anything then. So, it's been only about a week or so is my guess.

I sure hope I can get this situation under control.

Thanks. Robert

Robert,
Please let us know how cutting back Banksia works. The roses that I've saved with severe cutting back canes have all been fall cutbacks of small infections found in fall. I certainly haven't saved all of them, but my successes have been in fall.
Ann

Ouch, I hope you are able to save it. We have a crop of it this year. I admit, I was lax using wilt-proof which has seemed to work for me when all others around me had it, but I was so bragadocious about no blackspot and not having to spray for that secondary to the drought, that I neglected to use the wilt-proof.

robert I'm just curious, beginning from last fall to now has there been any possibility of roundup or glyphosates oversprays or drifts?

I don't think there's much of a possibility for overspray of roundup...this rose is infected about 20ft above ground...when I do use roundup, it's very localized.

Robert

Have 2 huge thornless multifloras which came with the house. Mid summer, my next door neighbor asked me to look at a sick rose on a trellis on the side of her property away from us. It was witches broom RRD so I told her to cut the shrub down and burn it (they burn trash). Luckily not too many people grow roses and only one or two at that in the neighborhood and I thought, TG! I had been spared..........well,

a couple of weeks ago, I happened to look up at the top of the multifloras and there were witches brooms growing out of the leaf axils. The canes were a couple of feet long. The base of the witches broom had a "burned" look to it. Today was garbage pickup so I cut off all the witches broom and about 2-3 feet of normal cane beneath it and bagged them. Next monday, ALL of the bushes get cut off close to the ground. I hope this will take care of it; spring will tell I guess and if that doesn't work, I'll have to use the roundup or shrub killer. So sad, another disease to battle.
Jim

Jim,
So often it's the tops of roses that show the disease first. That's where the mites get dropped from wind by slight decreases in turbulence.
You might want to paint the rose stumps with roundup or 2,4d or tordon because the roses' vascular systems are still active well into December.
IF you've other roses near your multiflora, you might want to shovel cut a linear barrier into the soil between the multifloras and them, just in case root-to-root grafts have happened.
Ann

Ann,
In other words, just cutting the multiflora to the ground won't save it? or possibly save it? Like it since it was thornless. Luckily they are not near other roses. If you don't think it will save the bushes by cutting them back to the ground, then I might as well apply roundup after I prune them. Only the tops had the witches broom and not all branches. Anxiously await your response.
Jim

Jim,
From what I've seen on R. multiflora platyphylla in my yard, and from a couple of multifloras that are in woods near us, I think multiflora has this phenomenal vascular system that is much more efficient in exchange of nutrients....which may be why it's such a good rootstock. And why, sadly, when I've seen RRD far out on a really long cane, and cut that cane back, the damned disease shows up at the base of a bush...even though I'm catching the disease really early.
And when I've seen RRD on other roses and cut them back (same season), I've saved a few, but I've never saved a rose close to R. multiflora. (Even the Orleans line of Polyanthas that are fairly close to R. multiflora seem to share this good growth efficiency.)
And when I've (Larry's) taken the rose out, the multifloras and their close kin come back from roots left behind.
The most recent one, one root came back sick and two came back healthy. And RRD was only on one of six or seven canes and it was far out on the cane.

To keep your plants going, take stem sized cuttings from the canes farthest physiologically from the affected rose (as well as NOT adjacent to where the witches brooms were.) There are still parts of the rose that aren't sick with RRD, but it may be in the roots already.

A couple of years ago, I brought a sick cane of multiflora back from the mountains of Virginia, up by Norton. It had one nasty withches broom out on the cane I brought back. I soaked it with Cygon 2e, stuck it in water and watched it. In two days, the next leaf axil on the same, sick side of the cane broke with contorted red growth and three days later a third sick growth came out, under water. I was shocked at the way the aberrant growth happened indoors, and with no fertilizer, and almost no sunlight.
Those are some of the reasons I worry more about multiflora roses than other roses, like roses with wichurana in their parentage.
Hope this helps,
Ann

Ann,
Thanks so much for responding! Not only will I prune it to the ground this weekend(garbage collection is Mondays) but I will use roundup or stump killer.

Because I have "visions" of grafting in the future (need to keep those rambunctious gallicas in line), I made some cuttings of these thornless multifloras about 2 years ago so still have them. Will pot them up and keep them small however. Also took some seeds last fall though they still are in the frig. Will take them out this winter and see if any germinate.
Thanks again for your complete and concise explanation; I understand the situation much much better now. Hope all is well with you and Larry. So enjoyed our talk at Rich's in Asheville; was it 2 or 3 years ago now?
Enjoy your posts as always,
Jim

Somehow I missed this picture but man, that's it. I had a gardenful of that twice. It just makes me sick to see it.

It IS sad, isn't it? And you gotta feel so darned helpless.

Jeri

I agree that it looks very similar to glyphosate (note spelling) damage in these pictures and therefore think it's not necessarily 100% certain to be hypervirulent rose rosette disease without more than a couple pictures to go by. Even if HRRD is being found nearby it is also true that glyphosate has, in fact been sprayed on the site. Roses are very susceptible to picking this up from spray drift and manifesting symptoms like those shown here.

bboy,
Do you know of any papers that define the threshold for/ parameters of different classes of plants between damage and death from Glyphosate? And that might indicate different degrees of damage?

I'm sick too.......and Roundup was insistantly blamed, tho, for example, it was found on one long Darlow's Enigma cane at the top of a mass-Darlow's Enigma, Sally Holmes and Penelope all growing through each other growing inside a Western Redbud tree. Again, it was found on Baby Darlin Cl., Cafe Ole, and Don Marshall, growing as indivisuals but all my plants rather morph together. The Cafe Ole, a mature plant, I cut back to about 6inch canes. I just went out to look and the same odd growth that has been there since first noticed last year, is still there, but there is a new growth from a bad cane that is looking normal and even has a flower bud formed. The Baby Darlin' still looks exaxtly the same has it has since cut back and Don Marshall looks poor but not distorted. I never believed my plants were suffering from Roundup, but keep and open mind wanting to learn. With experence using Roundup for 35 years on other plants in my horse pasture, plants die or reappear as normal. I am not saying the 'herbiside drift distortion' isn't accurate, I simply can't comprehend it as an explaination in my garden. I will try to take some pictures today for comparison. How would you be specific in identifing RRD "FROM" drift distortion. Is RRD ALWAYS Red? Robert's photos look exaxtly like mine. The plants I have cut back and watched are green, no red for a year with no change. Please forgive my poor communication, I'm so upset..... At least I can report that what ever I have, has NOT spread or changed for the worst, and the one plant has normal new growth to watch.

Started cutting back my multifloras that were RRD infested yesterday. Decided to take a quick look around the garden to make sure everything else was all right. I noticed some of my canes on Petite Pink Scotch looked "funny." Wasn't sure but some of the branches had new growth that was more dense, the green was lighter and yellower and there was red growth at the tip of the new growth.Also, the base of the new growth had dead leaves and that "burned look" which I also noticed on the multifloras. Oh Oh I thought. Cut out the questionable areas.[Those of you familiar with Petite Pink Scotch know that at its best, the plant looks like one big "witches broom" since the canes have minute green leaves (mouse ear size) and the canes tend to be somewhat contorted.] Well, today, I went out to cut the bush back down to the ground and found more of what appeared to be RRD. Today I felt 99.44% sure the bush got it. It was at the edge of my pot ghetto somewhat close to a large tree. The lower branches seem to have been hardest hit in this case. What worries me is that it was on physically intimate terms with my Baby Love, Breeze Hill, Verdun, and La Belle Sultane. They look fine but time will tell. For those who got cuttings at Connie's rose swap, the plant looked fine when I took the cuttings; in fact it looked fine when I noticed the RRD on my thornless multifloras a few weeks ago. There was NO roundup used in the area of these 2 rose varieties. Incidentally, they are on opposites side of the property and one is much closer to the front of the property on the South side and the other is closer to the back of the property on the North side (2/3 acre). We have had some wild windy days this fall and I bet that is when they got infested. I live in a suburban area and I am wondering where the source is!
Jim

Jim,
Don't just look at an aerial view of the garden. Look instead for patterns that might explain where winds/breezes decrease (going around a tall tree, hitting the flat surface of a wall, going through a densely planted arch.)
Sometimes in my yard, the tall, dense roses are the ones that the wind hits first and when the wind drops inside the rose, it gets sick within the massive wonderfulness that was a good rose.
I'd expect with Petite Pink that a mite got dropped somewhere upwind and kept bouncing (riding puffs of air) until she landed on PPS, recognized that it was a rose and chomped in.
Talking with a local friend this a.m., she also had more RRD than she would have expected this year, even though she sprayed with Cygon every two weeks. The drought may have caused the mites to migrate away from dry multiflora more often than in other wetter years.

Ann,

What's the incubation period for RRD? And what is the chance that healthy-looking canes from an infected plant could have mites on them and infect another plant by touching it and tranferring mites?

Lindsey

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Lindsay,
I've seen RRD develop in a garden on plants that were healthy in as little in two weeks. (Several examples from east Tennessee in late May to late June, warm conditions with good rose growth)
The mites themselves are not the cause; it seems that mites that have fed on a RRD sick rose and then moved to other roses are vectors only after they've fed on a sick rose. The mites can be on all roses, but their populations apparently build to huge numbers on roses with RRD. (Population counts done at Iowa State of sick and not sick multiflora.)
Boadicea,
There is a plant pathologist in Oregon, Dr. Fred Crowe, who has a lot of experience with RRD from his years in Kansas when he was one of the first to describe RRD's move into suburban rose gardens. He's seen a lot and has been watching for it in Oregon especially on multiflora in the John Day Wildlife Mgmt area.
Baldo Villegas is another resource who has seen it in wild roses in the mountains of California. He knows bugs really well and would be another person you could turn to.
Is there any possibility that you used a mulch that could have brought herbicide into your garden? Everything looks to be at the same stage, and most times with RRD, it gets even uglier quickly.
Rose Spring Dwarf is a disease in which the leaves are more normally sized but they grow almost bending backwards.
I think you can find Baldo and Fred's email addys on the internet and both would be willing to help you, I think.
Ann

Have you seen 'normal' growth appear on a plant with deformed 'brooms' present and unchanged for a a season? Does RRD appear at anytime during the plant cycle? The Cafe Ole as you can see is very low down inside a planter, and the Darlow's Enigma cane was a lateral coming out over ten feet up, fitting your discription of a mite drop in the wind. The low Cafe Ole however was a healthy 2'? plant under a 6'? full Polka. Where might I see images of Roundup damage with normal looking new growth? I have seen roundup 'wilt with the plant later recovering, example- Heavenly Blue Morning Glory. I have never seen any plant we have sprayed stay alive with deformed growth. Roundup has always either killed or failed. Where are the 'herbicide drift' photos taken and are those plants watched for recovery, cleared away or tilled under? This is a fascinating subject, if it were not so heartbreaking for many of us. I sure do not understand, but I have left my plants after cutting back, in hopes of watching and hopefully learning something. Thanks for all your input! It would be amazing if we could actually figure this out! And Robert, I'm so sad for you and your plant too.
Oh, one more question, are both Darlow's Enigma & Baby Darlin and Cafe Ole concidered what is refered to in RRD discussions as 'multiflora? .......or what defines multiflora in this disease?

Thank you, Ann--it's been some time since I read your e-book, but I assumed that mites had to be infected by feeding on an infected rose. What worries me somewhat is that I put a sucker from a plant which showed symptoms two weeks after I got the sucker later right beside a rose that I had recently purchased from ARE. When I went to get the sucker and plant it, I noticed that the canes were touching. It was only later that I discovered the mother plant of the sucker was infected; however, I did isolate the sucker--just in case, so there is no chance that anything could spread from it now to other roses.

After posting my question, I did a quick search for incupation period and found a website that claimed it could be as short as 3 weeks and as long as over a year. The first number is comforting--I'd rather know the worst quickly in such a case so I can take immediate action--but I found the second number quite unsettling. If it's correct, no one can ever be sure that a rose given or received isn't infected.

I think from what you have said that the arrangement of my garden might help defeat the spread of RRD, but I'd prefer not to put that idea to a test. I do have a monster Climbing Devoniensis which sends canes straight up when it can't find another direction to grow. It doesn't bloom much, though--its main goal seems to be to grow as large as possible. I also have a tall Lamarque and Indica Major on a trellis and have just moved Jaune Deprez and a struggling Gloire de Dijon on the other side. While the height of these roses probably puts them at risk, I think they should be protected from mite fall by the house and woods unless infection enters my garden.

I was interested in your comment about Rose Spring Dwarf disease--I've noticed slightly twisted (though usually smaller than normal) leaves in spring, but they always disappear as the season warms.

I have also noticed that sometimes when a rose is about to die, it produces a few undersized leaves. My shrub Devoniensis that I raised three years from the first cutting I ever took from my climber died that way this spring, as did an Old Blush last spring.

You asked once whether Shrub Devoniensis raised from a climber was hardier than other shrubs. I'd say no, based on my experience. Mine was always frail, and though I protected it last winter, I think the sudden freeze in February and again in April (after an ottherwise warm winter) killed it.

I'm glad to say I took a single cutting from it last fall (meant to take two, but never got around to doing the second one)--anyhow, the cutting struck, and the yearling now has a bud ready to open. I intend to give it the best protection possible this winter--it's already in the warnest place, and take cuttings from it next spring. I could probably get one now, but hate to do that to such a young rose. This is about the third time it's bloomed--a much more reliable bloomer than the climbing form.

Lindsey

Have you seen 'normal' growth appear on a plant with deformed 'brooms' present and unchanged for a a season?
...We watched a small planting of Nearly Wild at LMU (where RRD had destroyed most of their rose garden, so disease pressure was high) and one plant lived for six years with RRD. RRD didn't spread fast within the plant, and only in year six did it get to the pitiful surviving cane. Some canes stayed sick for three years. Once they were sick, they didn't put out normal leaves. At the first sign of infection, sometimes the disease is confined to one side of a cane (supporting the idea of phloem transport.) And the other side of the cane is ok, for a while.

Does RRD appear at anytime during the plant cycle?
.......From my own garden it can show up any time the mites can be spread (which is generally warmer temperatures) but sometimes I don't see the disease until it is on more than a single leaf axil.
The Cafe Ole as you can see is very low down inside a planter, and the Darlow's Enigma cane was a lateral coming out over ten feet up, fitting your discription of a mite drop in the wind. The low Cafe Ole however was a healthy 2'? plant under a 6'? full Polka.
Where might I see images of Roundup damage with normal looking new growth? I have seen roundup 'wilt with the plant later recovering, example- Heavenly Blue Morning Glory. I have never seen any plant we have sprayed stay alive with deformed growth. Roundup has always either killed or failed. Where are the 'herbicide drift' photos taken and are those plants watched for recovery, cleared away or tilled under?
........There's one garden over in South Carolina where RRD was feared, but the pattern within the garden just didn't fit RRD and it was a rose society maintained garden...and over two years the symptoms haven't gotten worse (into the really ugly RRD realm of symptoms) so the assumption is that some member sprayed in the garden with his/her own sprayer after using it for herbicide at home.
I know folks who have had the same accident at home and they reported that it took three years for their roses to recover.
This is a fascinating subject, if it were not so heartbreaking for many of us. I sure do not understand, but I have left my plants after cutting back, in hopes of watching and hopefully learning something. Thanks for all your input! It would be amazing if we could actually figure this out! And Robert, I'm so sad for you and your plant too.
Oh, one more question, are both Darlow's Enigma & Baby Darlin and Cafe Ole concidered what is refered to in RRD discussions as 'multiflora? .......or what defines multiflora in this disease?
..........Multiflora is the name of a rose species that has become an invasive plant pest in the eastern USA. In the west in Oregon, it's been used as a 'green' barrier along highways to try to control out-of-control cars. It is good at stabilizing slopes and may have been used out west for that as well.
I often use the term multiflora kin, for those roses closely related to multiflora. This includes a lot of old ramblers (other old ramblers are descended from the very different growing Rosa wichurana). Some polyanthas are also close to multiflora in their ancestry. Darlow's Enigma (being a found rose) is of uncertain ancestry, but how close it is to multiflora might be seen in the stipules, the little 'wings' at the base of the compound leaflets where the compound leaf meets the stem of the rose...anyway, a characteristic of multiflora is to have distinctively fringed stipules. When multiflora and its kin get RRD, those stipules go from fringed to ornate, asymmetric growth with lots of odd growth coming from them. Other plants will get odd on their stipules, too, but with multiflora kin, they really get stranger.

I don't think the one year to showing RRD is 'garden' conditions. I know that Jim Amrine kept some HTs in isolation chambers. The roses were from gardens in Madisonville Indiana and had had RRD which canes they removed, and it took over a year for the disease to reappear on those plants. Those plants couldn't have gotten it from mites; there were no mites. But the lag time was probably for RRD to move from the roots that supported the then removed side of the grafted rose, through the contorted tissues that are in the bud graft and into other canes. And roses in isolation aren't getting N bursts from thunderstorms and they aren't getting goodies from worms working within the soil. So (and this fits my own garden experiences) when I've cut off a cane, sometimes the disease is stopped cold. (YEAH!) Other times, the sickly growth shows up when the next good growth cycle begins. For fall cut offs, that can be early the next spring. For this year's mid October removal of a firewood-sized cane on James Galway, new bad growth showed two days ago (and that's with no rainfall and coolish temperatures.) On JG, I think there was a cane-to-cane transmission on the first infection, I could see the problem just beginning on a cane that the aberrant growth had curved around and run into (most roses never make curved growth, but when one side of a cane is growing faster than the other, you get curves) and the second one then kicked out a cane with a caliper three times the stem it came from. JG had had it longer than I realized and I do have a feeling of guilt as I write this.
'nuf for now.
Ann

Jim, this is completely heart-breaking. I feel so bad for you. As soon as I read what you wrote about what's going on in your garden, I went downstairs to the basement to euthanize my PPS cutting. I don't think I have the nerve to follow through with it just yet, because this is what I found when I pulled it up:

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So many nice roots on a cutting that was planted not quite 3 weeks ago (it hung around in a vase in the kitchen window for a week after you gave it to me.) I don't know whether to keep it isolated in its yogurt container/soda bottle set-up and watch it, or be ruthless and toss it into the trash. Any advice, anyone?

Connie

P.S. The Breeze Hill cuttings are also doing well, it seems. They lost their leaves, but the stem is still green and the leaf buds are starting to swell.

Connie,
Keep it.
RRD doesn't spread instantaneously through a rose.
I've saved the germplasm of my R. multiflora platyphylla (that has been at this old farm for over a hundred years) by taking cuttings from the plant as far as possible from the sick parts. And so the plant lives on.
And multiflora does root easily and happily.
Just watch for the first really new growth. If it's ok, then the plant's ok.
(See my comments above on how long Nearly wild stayed alive before the disease got throughout the plant. This is the kind of thing we won't see in our own gardens because we get rid of the problems faster. And I also watched a fenceline multiflora opposite where I found the rose Rhodologue Conoco and it got sick on a few canes one year and five years later still had a few ok canes in the vicinity.)

>Darlow's Enigma (being a found rose) is of uncertain ancestryDo you have more information about this? Darlow told me he "got it from a lady in the Willamette Valley" and that was about it. He was selling it as Rosa moschata 'Plena' until I brought him a flowering sprig of R. moschata, after which the mystery variety became "Darlow's Enigma".

Later I saw a picture of what appeared to be the same kind in a coffee table book; an unfamiliar French name was given for it in the caption. For some reason I didn't write down either the name of the book or the rose at the time. When I looked again at what I was sure was the same book (at the same library) I could not find that picture.

More recently some here have decided "Darlow's Enigma" = 'Cascadia', based in part on that being one the "Lady in the Willamette Valley" had. However, when I found that one in Modern Roses it said it was pink.

bboy,
I haven't grown Darlow's but I expect that Darlow's is one that will only give up its secrets in ten or fifteen years when there's a much larger gene pool for comparison.
I don't know what kind of variability is in your wild rose population. (I'm not even sure what variability is in our eastern roses, but the more I read, the more surprised I am at how many different varieties people used to appreciate in R. setigera, 1800's.) (Supposedly there was a double pink setigera on an island in the Ohio somewhere near Cinncinnatti.)
And the difference between pale pink and white ...could it be cloud cover and how far north the rose is when it blooms.
Have you written up and published your interview with Darlow? It needs to be saved somewhere permanent, because it's the kind of info that is so rare, but welcome.
Ann

Ann,

Thank you for your reply--it was comforting. If Jim Amrine has a website, it may have been there that I saw the three weeks to over a year estimate. I am sorry about your JG and understand that feeling of guilt quite well, but one can't be everywhere all the time, and I know that you have many roses to watch.

Your reply to Connie was helpful, too. My PPS sucker came from the same source, perhaps a week or so later, and my first question was what to do with it, but it's already isolated from my other roses and seems to have struggled anyway, right from the start, not because any canes appear diseased--they just look dry and the leaves are dry; I can't figure out why this should be, since I planted it in a big pot with plenty of good rich soil from the woods and watered it well. It ought to be happy; however, I had bad luck with my first PPS sucker so maybe it resents being transplanted.

I'm particularly encouraged to know that RRD doesn't spread so quickly through a rose that it is instantly doomed if it does show symptoms.

What about wild multifloras? I've allowed a few to grow in my garden when they appeared in likely places. Do you recommend getting rid of them if one doesn't have an outbreak of RRD?

Lindsey

What an education! This is an Excellent thread!
Please forgive me, I still do not understand the differentiation between RRD and HD(herbicide drift).
If herbicides are taken into the plant to kill, how does it look the same as damage moving slowly even only one side of a cane? Is that to say herbicides can travel one cane to one root and not effect the total plant?

"Darlow's Enigma" is yellow in the bud, have never seen any pinkness shown by multiple propagules seen locally. Have mentioned experience with Darlow and renaming of this plant several times here, but not in print. The Clements of Heirloom Roses, St. Paul, Oregon think he gave it the "Enigma" study name because of input from them. Maybe the eventual decision to give it that name did come about from corresponding with them, what I do know is that the minute before I walked in with the true R. moschata he was still thinking his plant belonged to that species. Later, before "Darlow's Enigma" was settled on he wanted to call it Fringed Musk, based on a brief description in a rose book by William(?) Paul. If Darlow had recorded and retained the name that was being used for it in Oregon there might not be any of the rest of this at all.

I've seen it growing among grass and native shrubs, along with similar roses in an unsigned and uncultivated area on the fringes of the International Rose Test Garden in Portland. When asking if a name might be known for it there, I have been told I must speak to the head guy - who has happened to be away the same two times I have gone there and inquired.

Connie,
You CAN do cuttings! PPS looks marvelous. Yes, I am kind of down about all this but such is life. I had checked the plant quite well when I took the cuttings and in fact discovered the witches broom only a few days ago. I agree with Ann; keep it but just observe it and isolate it. What upsets me is that is was closely interplanted with several other favorite roses which appear clean. Needless to say, my roses will have to be inspected weekly from now on. Luckily, I tried to keep duplicates of varieties in different beds so this will be a help if they should come down with the disease.

Bboy,
I remember well your mention of your experiences with the origin of Darlow's Enigma. It seems totally Orwellian to me that the gardener you spoke to at the Int. Rose Test Garden in Portland couldn't put a piece of string or surveyor's tape on the DE in question with the request when the head gardener returned that he email you or phone you with the named of the rose. Absolutely no common sense; sounds as convoluted like something out of Washington....DC that is! Would love to know it's origins. It is such a favorite of mine. Thanks for telling its story.
Jim

So sorry to hear the bad news. Of all rose diseases, RRD is the most disturbing. I had a couple of false alarms myself, one of which turned out to be pesticide drift. I wish you the best of luck, and hope you have no more encounters with RRD.

Rosefolly

Hi rosefolly, can you tell me what spicifically concluded it was drift to blame? I'm still trying to understand what makes one absolute against the other? If they look identical, what is/not seen for proof of fact? What am I not understaanding?

It was Baldo's opinion, based on some photographs I took. I do believe him, but must admit I pulled up the rose and bagged it Just In Case. The rose I suspected some years earlier he actually examined in his lab. It is possible for an amateur like me to be wrong. I was very concerned on both occasions.

I wish you the best.

RF

... the one I heard was that the owner of old garden where he found "Darlow's Enigma" thought it was called "Cascades" something or other.

I've put up two contemporaneous description of 'Cascadia' on HMF, one from an old American Rose Annual and one from a 1937 Bobbink catalogue. The Bobbink description:
Cascadia (Capt. Thomas, 1925) A very distinct member of the Climbing Rose family with small, semi-double, blush-pink flowers, paling to white, borne in heads like phlox; slightly fragrant. Grows 6 feet or more. Continuous bloomer. Try one or two in the shrubbery border. Highly recommended.

The 1932 American Rose Annual description:
From "The Bloomfield Seedlings," by Capt. George C. Thomas:
Cascadia. (1927) Hybrid climber. Blush pink to silver-white. Small, single flowers grown in heads like phlox. Foliage varnished. Continuous bloomer. Recommended for Central East as pillar, for the entire Pacific Coast as large climber.

I agree that I've never seen any pink in those buds.

Yes, clearly not the same cultivar.

Yes, Jim, it seems I can now do cuttings. I think I can attribute my new success to good-quality cuttings (thank you again, BTW), and 1/2 gallon milk jugs with 2-liter soda bottles. This is the method that a friend of mine showed me a couple of weeks before you came here. My cuttings are in the coolest part of my basement under lights on a timer, so they're getting 13 hours of sun a day -- kinda like it's April.

I have great results so far, though I believe PPS is probably one rose that roots very easily. That's the only explanation for having so many roots in under 3 weeks time. I will keep the little guy in isolation and under observation to see what (if anything) develops.

Connie

Bumping for the pictures on banksias. AND for all the information here

This was a lot to read, especially for a non-rosarinan, but am I correct in understanding that it is possible to root healthy cuttings from a sick rose? I am sure my beloved old Seven Sisters has RRD (there are wild multifloras all around here). Some canes emerged this spring looking wonderfully healthy, and I considered rooting some, since the old plant clearly has disease. Would I just be raising more RRD plants? Can anything done to prevent it from attacking my other so-far healthy roses? You are such learned people, please indulge this dummy. Thanks, Topsie.

Topsie,

Lack of symptoms on new basals *could* mean they are clean so far, but a recent study says asymptomatic plants are sometimes infected, and I'm sure that would extend to canes. I would try to root them, however. Just keep them apart from other cuttings and plants. I would thoroughly spray them with 5% Wilt Pruf in hopes of smothering any mites that might be on the cuttings.

In agreement with Michael. The disease doesn't spread instantaneously through a large rose. We saved cuttings from my original and very old Seven Sister (as in next to our 1790's log cabin old) and the cuttings stayed healthy.

Watch them closely and be ruthless if the growth looks off-color or odd.

Hi Ann, I wanted to chime in. Last fall I had a cane on my Madame Lambard that was growing weirdly and became curved at the very top (it was all new growth and very red). I asked you if it could be RRD, and you said possibly and that I should remove the cane at the base.

Well I did and I am happy to report that there has been no new aberrant growth on this rose (although it is near some ornamental cherry trees and there is a root sucker coming up underneath the rose and the sort of similar, but different looking leaves of the cherry nearly gave me a heart attack thinking it was more RRD...)

So I do that that if it is caught early you can hopefully stop it. It does take vigilance and the discipline to watch the roses carefully both for new RRD symptoms and return of RRD symptoms.

Ann, How contagious is a rose with RRD? I presume it must have mites on it to spread the disease. How long do the mites linger? Do they winter-over? What power microscope does one need to see them?

How contagious? We don't know. Some roses like New Dawn (except in Texas) seem to get it throughout their vascular system fast. Same with some multiflora-kin roses. I have saved roses in fall with the cut off the cane procedure more often than it's worked in spring.

Mites are the proven vector. Root to root graft is possible for other viruses and I have two examples of situations when RRv has probably moved from root to roots. I had one rose where a blatantly sick cane rubbed against a healthy cane. Two weeks later, after I'd taken the sick cane off, the heathly cane was looking RRv-ish and we took the whole rose out.

The mites don't overwinter in the 'form' that they are in the warmer months. Jim Amrine this past winter found one form of the fructiphilus mites on (IIRC) one in four bushes infected with RRD that he examined. In previous winters he hadn't found any (that's decades of looking).

Jim uses a 20x hand lens to look for them in the field, that's the lens with the very small lens. I have put sick canes on our scanner and scanned at max magnification and then used the computer to zoom in further. The mites are the size of the lowest segment of an aphids leg. 200 microns long, slightly smaller than a thrips.

The mites you are looking for are on the stem, not out on the leaves (the ones that are found on leaves are a different species and apparently aren't vectors.)

Buford, it's always good to hear this kind of good news. It's not an instantaneous death sentence, but this only works for we who actually look at our roses beyond their blooms.

So, an infected rose that has no current mites would not be immediately contagious. It would only become contagious if more mites dropped on it, chomped it, and flew off to another rose.

If this is correct, it would explain why you can have an RRD rose next to a clean rose and the clean rose remains clean.