Okay.... so it looks like I'll have to evaluate AF this season and see how she does. I originally said that I give my roses no special care... no spraying because we live along a tidal river with lots of birds and animal life... no dusting, no fertilizing.... just renewed compost each spring and watering occasionally. We have a wide variety of roses, love them and try to be as organic/non-chemical as possible. But I can still recall the color ... the ruffled petals and fragrance of the Angel Face I grew about 30 years ago in my first home. Loved that rose!

I'm glad to see Paul killing the rumor.

And the article is from someone in Yorktown VA. Less than accurate is this: Rose rosette disease, first documented in 1941, is traced to the multiflora rose, which came from Japan in 1866 as a common rootstock for ornamental roses. Unfortunately, it was found that multiflora roses are bad because a single plant can produce a million or more viable seeds; over time, the roses have become invasive weeds with enormous disease problems. Multiflora was first introduced as a garden plant. NOT as a rootstock. Multiflora spread not from rootstock but from the USDA's encouragement of its use as a substitute for barbed wire, as a stabilizer for stream banks, to prevent erosion from strip mining, etc. And the disease problem is a single disease.

I'm new to roses (planted my first rose garden in 2011) and, thus far, they're all healthy, but I do read a lot and want to be educated and ready to remove plants if it becomes necessary. I saw my first RRD rose at my local independent nursery a few days ago. A landscaper had brought in a branch and blooms. The horticulturist on staff at the nursery was kind enough to gather a few of us around and point out what to look for. In all honesty, it looked really different in person than what I had here-to-then seen online and read in descriptions of the virus. It was really helpful to see the "witch's broom"-like growth, the blooms that looked like it was grown at a leaking nuclear plant, and the weird thorniness that were like thorn-hair. This particular afflicted plant was off a Knockout variety but I know it can affect all roses, so I'm watching everything at my house, praying that I don't have to "euthanize" any. Pretty scary. Wish there was something we could do to avoid it. Makes you feel so helpless. . .