Keep us posted. This kind of information is particularly relevant after such a winter as much of the U.S. has just suffered through.
Melissa

yes Ann, please keep reporting. I keep checking my Marie d' Orleans and Rosette de Lizzy for some new growth, but nothing so far. Some of my other teas look perfectly fine and are putting out new growth. Some have some dieback (which I usually don't get with teas) and some need some whole old canes removed.

This has been one of our coldest winters. Historically, this did not break a record, but to me it is one of the worst. Our freezes began early, and we had few breaks in the cold where we could run the hoses. It seldom ever rained, and I don't think the snow gave our roses that much water.

I have cut almost all of my roses (own root ones) almost inches from the ground. I like the effect of putting three roses together, and it is heartbreaking to cut all the SDLM roses to only a few inches. However, at that height, they look clean.

I have clearly lost Rosette Delizy and Souvenir de St. Anne. I have had to cut Cramoisi Superieur (3 of them) and Perle d'Or (another 3 ) to the ground.

I am responding to your thread with tea and bourbon info instead of tea.

I always think that you live in a parallel zone to me, but you are in the mountains, aren't you?

I sure hope your garden bounces out of this.

Do keep us posted.

Sammy

Grief Sammy, I (mis)read your post as you were drinking tea WITH BOURBON. Yep, I thought, I would be resorting to strong alcohol too. I lost a few plants this year due to carelessness (of other people) and have still not stopped gnashing my teeth (good job they are falsies)

Like you Ann, I'm waiting for the full damage report. But I am hopeful. I have an Alliance Franco-Russe, one of the 1st roses I put in here, 9 years ago. The first two years it didn't do much--not enough sun. Its 2nd winter I thought for sure it was a goner, but when I pulled off the leaves, there it was! Since it insisted on surviving, I moved it. It got more sun, but the soil in that spot, as I have since discovered, is marginal. So it just sat there, 5" tall, for two more summers. Then I moved it again-- more sun, better soil, but more exposed. It began to grow. This fall it was almost 1' high. After reading your post, I went out to check it. It is, once again, 90% beaten back, but there is one thin green branch (I wouldn't call it a cane). So, my faith in own roots renewed, I am betting most of the rest make it back, also.

Well, Bourbon does mix nicely with Earl Grey. GOOD Earl Grey, not that supermarket tea-bag trash. It's just the thing after a wet afternoon in the woods.

Yes, I would love to keep this thread going! So far nothing is dead other than Lady Hillingdon and the MAC I transplanted foolishly. Most of my ghetto has thrived (and they are mostly 1G) up near my house Southern exposure with fir branch protection.
Pulich Children and Edith Schur have died and that breaks my heart because I got them at the Florida Southern conference. Fields of the Wood (my other purchase there) is trooping on...
McClinton Tea seems to have died (got that in November too).
Have two Safranos. One in the "wetter shadier" part of the garden has not done well but the other is leafed out and doesn't seem to have lost a cane (whoops...it's not own root but on fortuniana).
Marie d'Orleans is down to one cane but still alive. All the HMs look great. Noisettes too...but they are babes. All the Polys I have in the ground have done very well.
Susan

This is the first winter in about 17 years I've had major damage on teas and Chinas. It looks like my Lady Hillingdon is completely dead, Rosette Delizzy is mostly black but is still trying to leaf out, Anna Olivier is dead, Le Vesuve has a lot of damage, and Cramoisi Superieur has a lot of black canes.
Right next to it Madame Berkeley, Rainbow, and General Gallieni are all fine. My large Comtesse du Cayla plant looks undamaged. It is amazing to me that there is so much variation in cold tolerance. I don't see any damage on my noisettes. The potted plants on the southern side of my house came through well but I had a lot of losses of plants on the west and north sides.

I'm so grateful that you started this conversation! I have two teas- Mrs. Dudley Cross and Lady Hillingdon- and am watching them both.
From the air, you could see that we live on a hilltop and are on a peninsula surrounded by the Tennessee River. Our springs are a little slower to warm up than, say, Knoxville, but our killing frost/ freeze is usually much later, many years in December or early January. Not this year, sadly. Our protected back yard is about a zone warmer than our front yard. Against the house it is even warmer. I can (on normal winters) overwinter subtropical plants next to our house in the back yard.
Unfortunately, Mrs. DC is in the front yard. So far, no sign of leafing out although she doesn't look entirely dead yet. Lady H is in the back yard at the bottom of a small bank facing southwest. Looks a little more promising, but so far nothing. This week, other roses whose survival I questioned started to leaf out. I am still hoping that I will see signs of life from my teas. I'm so glad that the rest of you haven't given up on them all, because that gives me reason to hope, too.

BTW predictions for a rain/snow mix for later this week!

I didn't find Lady Hillington to be particularly vigorous and she didn't make it to this year.

But with a huge amount of surprise, some of the Teas are leafing out on canes that looked to be dead. Not all, yet, but some teas are surprising me.

Some of this I'll attribute to them having massive established root systems. They are well over a decade old.

Some still seem to be showing new growth ONLY on their year old canes where the older canes aren't. (Maybe it takes more to waken older roots after a hard winter.)

The one comment I'd make is that there is no general statement about hardiness that can be made and supported universally. Each gardener has to learn from a local mentor. Lacking that (and most of us lack such mentors), we're on our own.

Hi Ann, I have updates on my teas.

The two that I was sure were dead (I had to take all the canes off, they were black) have some new growth from the 'bulb'. I had exposed this bulb to the sunlight as much as possible.

The ones that looked ok a few weeks ago, have gotten worse. The canes are darkening to the base and any new growth is shriveling. I hope these will come back as Mare d'Orleans and Rosette d'Lizzy appear to be.

I'm just not sure if I should keep cutting down? When I do the wood looks bad. These are all own root, so they should be able to come back, right?

BTW, my Lady Hillingdon is one that looks ok. So far anyway.

What I've seen about Tea wood is based on not-cold but other damage.

Often I think that Hybrid Teas are wimps. If there's a canker on one side of a stem, here, at least, that canker will gird the entire stem by midsummer and (poof) that stem is lost as is those roots' potential to replace it with a cane that will last through the next winter.

Teas, OTOH, can tolerate canker around a bud union, even if its ugly, so long as it's on woody wood, half a canes' phloem and xylem is enough to support outer growth. The same thing happens when a certain riding lawnmower (not driven by me) hooks a mature cane and breaks it but not completely. Again, the father out growth can survive with about half of the xylem and phloem going to it.

If you see black, if you see a magenta halo that halo is indicative of active fungal activity.

Cutting just below that isn't enough. You need to go down two or three inches below active fungi. Remember that fungal hyphae extend below where you can see the problem.

I worry that we are going to get a PM outbreak similar to the one we had after the post Easter freeze. When the growth normally would be mature and resistant to our PM strains.....I fear that our just maturing growth will be vulnerable (but that means that some of our roses will have survived.)

Thanks ann. I will be out with my saw this weekend. The only saving grace is I had to dig all of these teas up anyway (the county is replacing a drain pipe in my yard) but I was hoping to get a spring flush out of them. Oh well.