No expert but as far as I know thrips damage and RRD don't look anything alike. What it could have been is herbicide spray damage, like from RoundUp. Did you (or possibly a neighbor) use any kind of herbicide? The spray can travel long distances on a breeze and may have affected your plant. A photo really would be the best way to determine if it's RRD or not.

Do you have your pictures at any place like Photobucket or Picturetrail? I've found that's the easiest way to attach a photo here.

Go to Ann Peck's online booklet on RRD to identify your symptoms: http://www.rosegeek.com/ Thrips usually just attack the flowers/buds. Odd growth is going to be RRD or herbicide.

Herbicide generally doesn't make for soft canes (they're soft because they grow excessively fast.) They will harden up eventually, but RRD-totally-infected canes remain flexible for a long time.

Unless the nursery person was thinking of Chilli Thrips, their answer was suspect.

Thanks for responding to my question everyone. I posted a couple of pics on PhotoBucket. Hopefully that will show you what the roses looked like.

I did have a lot of mold on the roses last year, so I used several bottles of spray on them. As well as rose food...Bayer (blue bottle). I may have over fed them. I didn't use any RoundUp and didn't notice anyone else using it, so not really sure if that would be the problem.

Here are the links (I'll try to put one in the optional link too).

http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/n543/jlovely98/Roses/100_5181b.jpg

http://i1139.photobucket.com/albums/n543/jlovely98/Roses/100_5182b.jpg

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:260914}}

Yes, those two pictures are of roses with Rose Rosette Disease (now Rose Rosette Virus). I can count at least eight symptoms on the first (linked) photo. I'm not sure what causes the pebbly texture of some of the affected leaves...but the leaf margins don't match the margins on healthy leaves, and on and on... What people should take a look at on the first photo is that so many of the buds are missing receptacles- they are missing the hip part that should enclose the ovules that might become seeds. I have seen this five or six times and it IS distinctive. Also the spacing between the leaves is totally wrong on the second photo.

Does that side of your house get hit by wind a lot during fall? That would explain the mites dropping there onto the roses. You will need to look upwind and try to find the sick roses that are the sources of your roses infections.

The wind does blow from the front of the house to the side where all of the roses are planted. I believe there might be a wild rose in some woods toward the back of my property (down wind though) which I didn't know was there until this fall. This possibly could be the cause. When I moved into my place the roses that were already there had some strange growth on them; and, I think it has shown up worse on the new roses I've planted.

So...is the only solution (from what I've read) to destroy the roses?

Thanks

The sick canes are gone-ers. The problem is that the disease has probably gotten into the roots and from there back outward into additional canes. Those areas are also goners. This means that grafted roses are almost un-saveable.

But if some of the roses have gone own root, and if the disease is only on/ only visible on one side of the plant, you might be able to save the other side by splitting the rose and getting rid of the rest.

If one of the roses had great scentimental value, it would be worth the effort to try to propagate it, carefully, either by rooting or budding it or grafting it.

There's not much else we can do but react by removing sick roses before they have the mites that can vector the disease to other roses OR root graft sick roots onto healthy roots on other roses. Getting rid of sick roses upwind is also necessary.

Thanks very much for your help on this. I appreciate it.