Look closely to see if the buds were removed -- squirrels do this to some of my roses from time to time.

:-)

~Christopher

The canes may have survived but being a once bloomer the flower buds it set last season may have frozen off. I don't have any once blooming roses but I do have many flowering shrubs that did not bloom at all or had dramatically reduced amounts of bloom this spring, Anything that set it's flower buds last season for this season was affected.

Thanks Seil, I think that is likely what happened. The alba/damask/gallica roses while not totally empty have far fewer buds than usual.

Once-blooming gallicas do not set their buds the previous season like other shrubs that do so such as azaleas and rhodos (which you can see the buds if you look). New buds are formed in the spring on old wood for the old European roses (if you look at the canes in the winter there are just slight leaf bumps, no flower buds at all). If you had winter damage to the old canes and have mostly new ones from the base they would not bloom. I had one gallica (Tuscany) not bloom for me this year, but it had been transplanted in the fall which probably contributed because it lost a lot of canes this winter and is putting energy on the root growth and cane regrowth. My other once-bloomers are blooming more or less normally.

So I think Christopher may be on to the culprit as to a critter having a tasty snack.

snack theory undermined by the fact that Darlow's Enigma, two David Austins, two Therese Bugnets all within 10 feet surrounding the Cardinal are untouched....

Or did you get a late freeze after the rose had broken dormancy and begun to set bloom buds? Flower buds are more susceptible than leaf buds to freezes, and roses have "extra" leaf buds to bounce back. However, if a once-bloomer looses its flower buds for the year you aren't likely to make more. That would explain why some of your roses had less spectacular blooms this year too... while here we stayed cold and the roses broke dormancy late, so the blooms were abundant.

Some critters are quite selective in their eating. My squirrels, for example, prefer spinossisima hips to any other kind. So just because other nearby roses of different types weren't affected, doesn't mean anything.

Some gallicas and damasks do set more than one generation of flower buds. In that sense they repeat, though the generations are quite close together, and usually overlap. Ispahan definitely does this in my garden. So I wouldn't count things out quite yet.

For me, the only buds that got nibbled were those which were dark-colored and withtin easy reach of the ground. Thus I saw no flowers on "Eugene de Beauharnais", and 'Pierre Notting' lost a few. But those which were light-colored and/or out of reach were left alone.

:-)

~Christopher