Sorry to see you are still obsessing. ;-);-);-) Maybe we can try again to re-assure you.:-)

I have a couple of roses right now that has growth that looks exactly like yours - New Zealand, especially. Very red, thin and sharply folded red leaves, with very fresh light green stems (almost yellow in places). It looks almost weak and diseased - but it will change.

Meanwhile, curved buds can come from a multitude of reasons - aphids or midge damage at an early stage, a small touch of mildew on one side, - this can happen without the tell-tale white powder, a touch of Botrytis, a bit too much fertilizer, etc. Do you have every single bud like that - or just a few? My guess is just a few. That's common, if not perfectly normal. Stuff happens ... we don't always know why.

In my experience, fresh new growth looks different at different stages through the season. The beginning of each new flush may look different than the one before - especially during spring. Once summer kicks in for real, and temperatures are consistently high most of the time, new growth is much more consistent. There is very little to alter it at early stages - unlike the stuff during spring.

As for curving in general with RRD, you'd have the entire stems doing that - not just curved and folded leaves (folded leaves are normal if they eventually open) - along with a tremendous number of thorns and red color. Although, that said - it's a good thing you don't have Tropicana or Voodoo. I have to take a double-take every time I look at a new shoot on one of those: deep red stems and thousands of tiny thorns. However, once I see that they shoot up about 4-6 feet straight and begin to turn green, there's little doubt that it was normal. ;-)

I don't know if this will help you. After I had RRD on a couple roses, I became so freaked out that I once cut a huge cane off of Fourth of July thinking it was RRD when it was just a new cane. The canes on RRD are rubbery and a strange pink color. But rest assured, once you have seen RRD, you will most likely not mistake it again. I guess the witches broom effect can be confusing against new spring growth but as I said, the rubbery canes were a definite sign for me. I understand your agony because I still am not certain about this Cygon and when to use, etc. Now, on to Ann.

Carla

aggie, I went through what you are going through. I had a few roses that I think had RRD. This was before I was on GardenWeb and I didn't know about RRD. I thought they had a really bad powdery mildew infection, because they were also covered in PM (but now I know that RRD makes growth more susceptible to PM). I kept cutting back the deformed new growth and it kept coming back worse. Then the next spring, it came back just as bad, so I shovel pruned those two roses.

Now every time I see something 'weird' I kind of freak out. But I just wait it out. I did have one rose that would consistently put out weird growth and it never got better. So I SP'ed that. I'm not sure if it had RRD, but it was causing me too much grief, so I decided I was better off without it.

Just wait it out a bit more until the weather stabilizes. It's been a weird spring, weather wise, so anything that shows up now can change. I looked at your pics again, and I still don't see anyting that would make me think RRD. The red/green motling on the leaves, I have that on a few roses as well. I still think it spring weather affect.

Time to get past the colors.

In my garden, I first see potential RRD from a distance. Remember how I said in your other post that roses are predictable? They are. If you see a mass of leaves within a huge rose, often it's just a birds nest. But occassionally it's witches broom, which happens when the back up leaf axil buds break, break again, and may break as many as 21 times. So that there's a cluster of new stems emerging from where there should be just one.

Colors also draw us, especially when they are unexpected. And this is the hardest thing, because I wasn't used to seeing colors on the bushes...only on the blooms. That very deep reddish purple color comes with some roses.....it's always been there, we just haven't noticed it.
But when it comes to Rose Rosette, we HAVE to look past the distant view. In my garden I have come to demand that there are three different symptoms before I say RRD (followed by expletives). Color is just one. And for color, I have asked on here (and will continue to ask) is anyone seeing that color on the same cultivar in my part of the country.
Then I look at leaf symmetry, at leaflet symmetry, at the edges of the leaves, at the stipules (I place a lot of emphasis on stipules), on the spaces between leaves (internodal distances), on the buds themselves...some lack the hip part, some have too many rows of sepals and no stigmas...all sorts of things basic to the rose that go wrong.

Aggierose, what you're going to have a real problem with is that your leaves are hitting serious summer heat too early. Those roses are putting out what are potentially good leaves (check the leaf edges), but the afternoon heat (I saw Dallas' temps yesterday and that was hot) is going to crisp up some leaves and stunt others. So you're going to get bushes with big healthy leaves from last month and early this month followed by skimpy leaves. (In my garden, the early spring leaves were small, followed by great honking big leaves from April when we had one great slow rainfall with 2" of rain and lots of N thanks to thunder storms, and now we are back to dry.) So we both are going to have to ignore leaf size and get to the up close look for the basics tield to the genetics of the rose. RRD messes up the rose morphology in ways that we can see, but we have to look closely.

Sadly, this looking will continue as long as we grow roses. But knowledge means we can continue. We just learn more and share it.

Thanks everyone. Yes, I am still obsessing, but not about RRD anymore. I know something is wrong, but I don't think it is RRD. I just wanted to get clarification on what to look for if I ever did get RRD because the other pictures looked just like my roses.

So...any other suggestions on what may be wrong? My leaves are stll contorted with lots of the tips being curved all the way around and meeting the base of the leaf and they aren't straightening at all. My buds are starting to become deformed, almost s-shaped. Not all of the buds, but a lot of them. I also have buds that look like they have been cut in half horizontally and the top portion is black. I'm assuming something is eating them, but the only bugs I see are aphids and thrips. I do still have aphids, I know I have had lots of thrips, and I'm pretty sure I have had some botrytis as well since several of my blooms had pink spots all over them them. I am trying not to spray insecticides this year so the thrips and aphids have been really bad. As far as the heat goes, I guess that could be causing damage to the leaves, but they never did this last year. All of my roses are also in full shade from about 2:00 on, so that should help. I fertilize with rosetone once a month, but I don't measure. I just throw a handfull down, so over fertilizing is definitely possible. I just fertilized again on Saturday. I'm going to release more ladybugs today. Should I spray for pm? I don't see any signs of it at all though. I'm assuming it would look like what gets all over my crepe myrtles. Other than that, I'm not planning on doing anything else. Not knowing what is causing my roses to not look pretty just really bothers me!

Call your county extension agent and ask him/her to send some of the buds to TAMU.
I hope this is totally wrong, but ask them to look for chili thrips. (Chili thrips have been reported from Harris County (Houston) and I wonder if they've gotten to Dallas.)
Do this today.

I'll check into that too Ann. I have a potted deep secret that I got from heirloom this year. The first 2 buds opened last week. They were so pretty and looked great. I bent down to smell one of them, and when I touched the stem and moved the rose, what appeard to be hundreds of thrips were instantly crawling around my beautiful deep red flower!I guess they were all nestled deep inside just feasting! I'll send some off and see what they tell me.

Chili thrips are different from regular thrips. Currently they are a problem mostly in south Florida, but there's a TAMU website that shows them in Houston.
It takes a microscope and knowledge to identify them and they affect the foliage as well as the blooms.

I have never seen them (knock on rose wood). But because they cause distorted foliage and are a rose pest, I've tried to read about them and something in what you wrote just made me wonder if that could possibly be a part of your problem.
I really hope it isn't.