Are the canes really black, or are they just brown/grey? Many OGR's are hard to tell they're alive in spring - they look dead, but trust me, they do bud out. Give your rose time, don't do any pruning back until you are absolutely sure there is no growth.

I've been growing this one in the same spot for six years now. The year-old canes that sprouted from the base last summer are now withered down to their points of origin. The buds on the older stems, which should be pushing at this point like my Salet is right nearby, are brown and shrivelled in appearance - not plump at all.

In New England we had a freaky December and January, with temperatures warm enough to make hybrid teas start pushing open.

Then came February..........

Never heard of a York alba, tell me more about it.

I will lose some mid summer to fall canes on some albas that did not harden off in time and the easiest tell tale is a drooping tip in spring. Though I was very pleased to note the first 6 1/2 foot cane pushed out by Alba Maxima last year at the beginning of summer after the bloom had minimal tip burn and Great Maidens Blush is just dandy after 5 winters with this being the first left uncovered - super mid to dark brown canes but no brittleness to them.

Canes that have hard to the touch buds that pop off easily are usually dead in my experience.

Celestial which a hard pruned last fall of old canes but left all the new has lots of deep purpling but canes are just fine and turgid (bent and covered). The Blush Hip that was covered is fine, but the one left exposed has 3/4 of it's canes length dead and this is the classic light grey brown shade of death ... nope they don't recover.

Well it does sound as if last year's new canes are goners, but maybe the older canes might push out new buds...I'd still take a wait and see approach. The other thought I had was to check the roots for vole damage - it's possible it was girdled below the soil. Sorry this has happened to you. People everywhere have been reporting unusual problems caused by this winter. What a shame if a 6 year old plant is dead!

Albas are always slowest to leaf out in my garden.
Where this might be meaningful for more northern climates is that my Fantin Latour only this past week started to leaf out. FL ignored the heat of December and January and the 70 degree temps in March and did nothing until this week, a full week after our unseasonably late freeze.
I was about to start thumbnail testing for green under the gray.

I've done a very little thumbnailing, and all I've seen (and I've only checked on canes that have bloomed at least once already) is brown & wet under bark.

"York Rose" is another name for R. x alba semi-plena, since it was the emblem of the English House of York during the succession struggles between the houses of York & Lancaster, much as R. x alba maxima is sometimes known as the Jacobite Rose.

In zone 6, I wonder if the rose was killed by voles eating the roots, or something of that sort. I wouldn't think winter could kill old canes of a very hardy rose.

In an extremely urban area where there's there's little lawn lots of pavement, and no shortage of cats? If it was voles, nothing else in the bed was damaged, not my Salet, not the flowering cherry, not (so far as I can yet determine) any of the perennials.

The weather in January had to be experienced to be understood. We were having weather that was normal for APRIL/MAY, then February was colder than it usually is (more like a cold January), and the transition was sudden.

(Nor have voles ever been a problem. I only once or twice recall obvious squirrel damge, but to other roses, not this one.)

When I have seen this sort of damage on hardy once-bloomers, it's usually a combination of a rose that for whatever reason doesn't naturally produce a lot of basal breaks, combined with a gardener who doesn't believe in pruning out live wood. The result is a rose with a lot of canes of a certain age, and very little strong younger wood. It goes along fine for years until all those canes finally get to the point where they are ancient, and easily killed off by any sort of stress.

Thanks forgot about that name origin. My alba semi-plena has no damage as it is an almost forget it and leave it rose - not covered.

It is a toss up between four albas in my zone as to who is hardier. Alba Maxima added this year to the old list consisting of Pompon Blanc Parfait, Semi-Plena and Suaveolens - none of them get covering. Cumulative inches of pruned die back in spring has probably been less then 6 inches adding all 4 together. Good luck and probably does no harm in waiting to make sure.

Mad Gallica, this rose has regularly put out one or two new canes each summer right after the June flush is finished. It hasn't produced an abundance of canes so I haven't yet really needed to prune stuff like crazy. I always make a point of cutting out weak crossing branches and since it's at the base of the townhouse I take care to prune to outward facing buds so growth gets directed in ways that ehance its landscape appearance.

I'm not the kind to let a 6' X 10' rose turn into a mini-thicket, especially not when it's in such a prominent place.

Well, you could tell if it was vole damage, which sounds unlikely at this point. They are wiley creatures who spend most of their time underground, gnawing on roots, so cats have to wait patiently for them to pop out of their holes in order to catch them.

Probably the best way to tell is if the ground around your rose feels spongy or a bit hollow. Or, maybe you can see what appear to be vole runs just under the surface of your yard.

How close to the coast are you? I know that parts of the New England coast got hammered with sea swells and flooding during the last storm. Are you close to the water? If so, maybe your rose got waterlogged or stood in water for a while? Just taking wild guesses to see what we might figure out. :-)

Did you get snow with the storm?

I'm with those who say to wait another week or two. It's been a funky, confusing spring. Maybe your Alba agrees. The Albas and Gallicas seem to be "smart" in the sense that they don't break dormancy until they are good and ready to do so, regardless of how warm it has been overall.

Even after last year's zone 7 winter, when all the other roses came alive early and were full of leaves and new growth, the Gallicas and the Albas just sat there, looking like they'd never get with the program. It seems that most of them will not be prodded into breaking dormancy based on temperatures alone.

A lot of my roses are finally setting leaf buds. Just barely. But not the Gallicas (except those that have some genes of more tender varieties) and not the Albas.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

I'm one lot and two street widths away from the ocean, but I'm high enough from the water to not have to worry about flooding. Flooding occurs nearby, but not anywhere remotely close to me.

Flooding was not the problem. Voles were not the problem, either. I would have noticed such a problem somehow before now. This is a climate issue. We had a truly weird December, January, and February. Furthermore, along with its unusually cold weather February was dry. We didn't really get meaningful snow until March (the snow we might have had in December and Jan. was rain instead).

I am indeed inclined to wait (but then I'm lazy that way). On the property is also a seriously aggressive once blooming white climber (name unknown) and also New Dawn. They both look okay (in fact, the frighteningly vigorous white climber looks ready to overwhelm the world), but the York rose (which is in a quite different microclimate) looks to have taken a hard hit.

I will wait until I see where its buds are breaking.

Anne------I'm happy to read that Alba's are slow to leaf out---this is my first year with Queen of Denmark---and she has been slower than the other roses----funny thing is the tips have begun to leaf out before the rest of the cane.

80 degrees for a couple of days here so I will be checking everyday---
Now if only I can keep her safe from the deer.I have a fence around her and over the top---
Florence

Hey, I'm with you on that lazy thing. :-)

It's just so darn hard for weather to destroy an Alba that we're at a loss to give you an explanation.

If there are no leaf buds forming after a week, you may want to try gently removing some soil and get a look at some of the roots and/or the graft (if it's not own root). Check for disease or damage.

The canes being wet inside is a good sign, though. The canes of a dead plant are usually dry and cracked on the inside.

Let us know what happens. Ok?

Deb

I think you experienced something similar to what happens to my White rose of York almost every year.
The weather gets warm, it buds out, then freezes again. Lots of plants just make new buds. A lot of these old antique roses don't. I end up cutting the canes half off. I wait until May here, so I know I'm cutting dead wood.
You can get almost any kind of weather here. I've seen it snow on fourth of July.
The hot/cold syndrome makes it really hard.
This year we got an even stable cold, but no snow in January. My holly is all burnt brown and I think I lost another Annabelle Hydrangea. That would be my third try on her, so I'm giving up.
You might have to cut it back and start over. The only other possibility is you had some nasty wind or extreme cold and if it is grafted, the graft failed.

The canes being wet inside is a good sign, though.

Thank you! I didn't know that!

And yes, I will keep you posted. Today was our first "warm" day, but I was at work into the evening, so I haven't had a chance to see how it looks now. The two hybrid teas behind my townhouse (Fragrant Cloud & Paul Shirville) are both very badly damaged, Fragrant Cloud has lost nearly all of its above ground growth, and Paul is probably almost the same. The good thing about those two is they are own root, so even if they have to come back from the roots, they will. My York rose is grafted, although I did try to bury the graft.

I continue to be amazed at the hardiness of Salet! It's grafted as well. I purchased it in the late 80's when I lived with my parents north of Philadelphia, and it barely survived there (horrible soil), so in the spring of 2005 (right around now) I transplanted it here. It spent the first summer recovering (it was a pretty brutal move), and last year threw up one or two completely new canes. It also produced a few flowers, but nothing to write home about. Hopefully either this year or next it will come into its own.

In the meanwhile, despite having very nasty cold snaps in both of these winters, Salet has shown almost zero winterkill! I get new buds pushing from almost the very tips of the prior year's canes!