Some canes will be red when young before turning green. What is the usual length of time before they turn green? 1 to 2 days, 1 to 2 weeks, 1 to 2 months? I realize it depends on the shrub but some guidance here would be helpful.
IN MY WARMER THAN YOUR GROWING CONDITIONS, THE REDDISH NEW COLOR IS GENERALLY GONE AT ONE TO TWO WEEKS. I'VE SEEN THE RRD RED ON A ROSE FOR OVER A MONTH.

Same question regarding soft canes & thorns. At what point should I expect them to harden?
AGAIN, FROM MY WARMER CONDITIONS, A WEEK SHOULD BE ENOUGH; DEPENDING ON YOUR TEMPERATURES AND LENGTH OF DAY, YOURS MIGHT TAKE 50% LONGER IN SPRING, BUT BY MIDSUMMER WE SHOULD HAVE CLOSE TO SAME GROWING CONDITIONS.

What are some of the *earliest* signs of RRD?
HOW I'VE BEEN SAVING MY ROSES IS CATCHING ABERRANT GROWTH WHEN IT'S OUT ON ONE CANE. OCCASSIONALLY THE GROWTH GOES WRONG AT THE APICAL MERISTEM AND THE TIP OF THE ROSE OVERGROWS, BUT MORE OFTEN (90 %+) I'LL SEE ONE LEAF AXIL WITH TOO MUCH GROWTH AND THE NEXT ONE DOWN THE CANE/SAME SIDE STARTING OUT TO MAKE TOO MUCH GROWTH. THIS IS WHEN THE REST OF THE ROSE IS NOT PUSHING OUT NEW GROWTH AT ANY LEAF AXILS OR WHEN ALL THE OTHER LEAF AXILS ARE MAYBE TWO INCHES INTO GROWTH AND THE ONE OR TWO IN QUESTION ARE PUSHING MULTIPLE AXILLARY BREAKS. OFTEN FOUR OR FIVE AXILLARY BREAKS WITH NO REASON FOR BEING. AND THE LEAVES ON THOSE BREADS AREN'T THE SAME IN COLOR, EDGE OR TEXTURE AS THE OTHER LEAVES ON THE ROSE BUSH.
IF YOU CAN CATCH THE DISEASE WHEN IT'S OUT ON A CANE, YOU CAN OFTEN/SOMETIMES SAVE THE ROSE DEPENDING ON IF THE DISEASE HAS GOTTEN INTO THE ROOTS OR NOT.

Again I realize it depends on the shrub but if there is, for example, a list of 5 things to look for then I won't have to wait until witch's broom appears to confirm the presence of RRD. ABOVE IS MY WAY,

Are unsymmetrical leaves *always* a sign of RRD or can mutant leaves occasionally show up on healthy sbrubs?
YOU CAN GET MUTANT LEAVES FROM INSECTS OR WEATHER, BUT NOT AS CONSISTANTLY.

And, yes, I am still reading. BUT WON'T cap answers below as it gets irritating.
Last year, in my part of the world, it was our third year of drought and the RRD vector mite spread was pretty terrible when I see how many more wild multiflora are infected this year.
___Is is possible you have another wild rose upwind of your garden that has become the source for your problem?

Individual comments follow:

So far my process has been to look for
red canes,
Bushes that push RRD red canes may push green RRD canes at midsummer

rubbery canes,
Rubbery Canes stay rubbery much longer than in regular situations. On my HTs, with a new basal of six inches, the bottom is already hardening, with RRD all thirty six inches may remain very flexible.
hyper-thorniness,
Doesn't happen in all classes of roses, but can be really terrible with RRD

soft thorns
as with soft canes, they will evenually harden
, bright red canes or thorns or both,

red-edged leaves

With the red edges you'll often see more red along the veins of the leaves.
, pebbly textured leaves,
The pebbly texture MAY be a reflection of the sick roses' propensity to powdery mildew. Even out of PM season.
assymetrical leaves,
really totally out of whack when the plant gets even sicker, may even have different leaflet counts on either side of the rachis/stem of the compound leaf. Esp bad on some multiflora kin roses.

longer-than-usual sepals (not entirely sure about this one)
not just longer than usual, but often with many, many more odd growths coming out almost looking fringed at its worst

and unusual growth appearing next to a normal looking cane on the same shrub. If the shrub has 2 to 3 of the symptoms then I believe it has RRD

One other...stem and cane calipers out of whack. Usually a stem is only so wide and the stems emerging from it will be smaller. With RRD, you may see a wider stem emerging from a small stem ...or even multiple wide stems emerging.

Some canes will be red when young before turning green. What is the usual length of time before they turn green? 1 to 2 days, 1 to 2 weeks, 1 to 2 months? I realize it depends on the shrub but some guidance here would be helpful.

Same question regarding soft canes & thorns. At what point should I expect them to harden?

What are some of the *earliest* signs of RRD? Again I realize it depends on the shrub but if there is, for example, a list of 5 things to look for then I won't have to wait until witch's broom appears to confirm the presence of RRD.

Are unsymmetrical leaves *always* a sign of RRD or can mutant leaves occasionally show up on healthy sbrubs?

Unsymmetrical leaves can also be symptoms of infection with other viruses. I believe the viruses that cause rose mosaic occasionally cause leaf distortions (beyond the usual yellow blotching of the leaves).

If I only saw unsymmetrical leaves I wouldn't necessarily immediately conclude from that alone that RRD was present, but then again I don't live in an area where this disease is yet prevalent. If I was in your situation and saw distorted leaves it would make me look at that rose very carefully, and repeatedly as the days went past, to see if there were other RRD symptoms on the rose, too.

It would be unusual for an entire garden to be infected so quickly and already down in the crowns. I think you would have noticed some obviously weird growth last fall.

I'd say, focus your attention on the lowest leaves of basal shoots. As these expand and firm up, they should assume the normal shape and texture, even though some can retain purplish color for weeks.

"After one or two seasons of watching my Madison landscape shrub decline I noticed witch's broom growth. At that point I knew nothing about RRD and assumed the weird growth was due to over-fertilization. I removed the shrub after deciding it had declined to the point of no return. Late last year I noticed one of my Cherry Meidilands had bright red, rubbery branches with spiraling canes. I removed it this spring after I found out it was RRD."

One of the problems with short season growing is that infection can come in-in fall and then the following spring it's in the roots and often the above ground parts were lost to pruning. The Cherry Meidiland description is spot on for RRD...I've seen it on Cherry M in our part of the world.

I may have missed this but how did you rule out RoundUp type damage?

"red, rubbery branches with spiraling canes"

This is so sad-----to lose all these roses----

I lost New Dawn and Dr Van Fleet-----My DH dug them out ---So far ---two of my other ND bushes that are very close to the infected one are not showing signs but I will be watching all my roses closely

Ann---thanks so much for all this information.

Florence

Sorry anntn6b, I intended the question to be addressed to "run_with_scissors" as I (like Michaelg) cannot imagine so much RRD damage in such a short time.

Once one rose has RRD, if it remains in a garden, it is a potential source of sickness for the roses around it. Please read what she wrote, three years isn't a short time.
A woman in Arkansas lost 70% of her Hybrid Teas to RRD before she found out what the problem was. A woman several counties to the north of me lost three of her five rose beds to RRD.
You may have missed Patricia's problems in Alabama; she also had horrific losses.
Heck, my worst year I lost twelve roses in one single year.

Three years isn't a short time and this is the third year.

I'm afraid MichaelG may still only be on the cusp of the disease in an area where only one rose per garden is the normal. But the Asheville Blue Ridge Rose Society test garden very near him has lost eight roses this past year, which includes the loss of a 30 sq. foot mass planting of Alba Meidialand and Red Meidiland and two large shrub roses about 70 feet away.

Large losses do happen.

In my no spray zone 5 northern Ohio rose garden of about 1000 plants I average 1 case (or less) of RRD a year. In some/many (I have not kept "score") of the cases I am able to save the plant by cutting the cane down to the ground.

I wonder if my garden being "no spray" has had some "critter(s)" reach an equilibrium with the RRD spreading mite?

I have been suspicious of Geoff Hamilton for two years now. He met with the shovel after reading this post. Just hope my lazy pruning practices of this past spring did not spread the disease throughout my beds.
KArol, I am sorry for this disappoinment. It is frustrating.
Susan in Nw Indiana-25 miles outside of Chicago

Henry,
I think your 'no spray' may have saved you. My loss of 12 was back when we were spraying fungicides only and it was very dry that year. Since then, I've had one to three infections and a few saves by early removal of sick canes.
A recent dissertation at Iowa State by (now) Dr. Laura Jessee looks at Rosa multiflora and two of its biotic mortality factors. The link below has that ref. as the first ref. Two of the four parts are already published in Weed Science. Our library can't access the full dissertation; yours might be able to.
She looked at all the biota on R. multiflora and found a lot of predators. As well as other potential vectors that are so far untested as transmitters. I think there may be one predator specifically that we've so far underappreciated.
Dr. Jim Amrine had already talked about the predaceous thrips and predaceous mites (predaceous spider mites, not predaceous eriophyids)(not identified to the species level) that he and his grad student and co-workers have seen on multiflora.

When I've had fall RRD in my garden, I generally bring some of the sick stems to my binoc microscope to see if the thing is crawling with eriophyids. So far they haven't been; there have been lots of shriveled carcasses and some predators. If I were to see ravenging hords of Phyllocoptes fructiphilus, I'd take really a**l efforts to contain the rose totally as we rogue it out.

Here is a link that might be useful: A quick look at specific scholar refs

I have a Popcorn mini rose that showed signs of RRD last year. The cane showing symptoms was cut off and the rose appeared to be normal through the fall. Today I noticed more RRD symptoms on it but they were confined to just one branch so I cut out that portion of root it grew from. I'll watch it closely and if symptoms reappear, I'll remove and destroy the bush.
I lost a large John Cabot last summer but had cuttings taken from the bush in the spring. They show no signs of RRD.

susan4952
I think you're not too far from me. E-mail me. I'm in Wheatfield.

You have my sympathies.

Oh my! Such a nice group of responses to my post. And I thought I was the only one visiting this forum during the holiday weekend.

anntn6b - I'll have to get up to speed on the terminology ('abnormal' is about as technical as I get) but will take your advice and look for the doohickies you mentioned.

The asymmetrical leaves will sometimes have lobes (think of mittens with one or two thumbs). These lobed leaves are found directly under or very close to the rose bud itself but not in a compound set. The compound sets, however, will sometimes have an uneven number of leaves or be asymmetrical from one side of the stem to the other. And some sets show the beginnings of a spiral - perhaps a 90 degree turn. I'm thinking these are early signs of RRD - especially in conjunction with other signs or when I see more than one occurrance on the same cane.

My garden is a no-spray zone. Not because of any principle but mostly because I'm a lazy girl. My roses have been selected for hardiness and disease resistance. I've learned to tolerate or squish the bugs and my robust feeding & watering seems to take care of the rest.

The more I look at my roses the more I see signs of RRD - or maybe I'm just paranoid. My cats and other family members are worried that I'll see signs of RRD in them and take the pruners to 'em.

I suspect that RRD has been in my garden for at least 3 years. It was nice to be blissfully unaware of the situation but I can't go back to that.

Have a lovely weekend everyone, Karol

I so sorry.

Here is an example of when I found RRD very early on American Pillar.
Now, several years later, that bush is still healthy, but for the rogued out cane.
(You may find the fuschia disease equally repelling. On the link below, read from the bottom up.)

Here is a link that might be useful: RRD on American Pilar

Today, I found #2 RRD on an Austin...don't remember the name. It is gross!