I don't have personal experience with RRD, but to me that's what it looks like your rose has.

RRD. I'm so sorry. Doesn't look like herbicide to me. With the infected multiflora around you, I think the diagnosis is clear. I have seen RRD many times in person, in gardens and in the wild. (Took a great photo of RRD while sitting in traffic trying to merge onto the Washington Beltway the other afternoon.)

This is the time of year when I have found both of my new cases ... both on large roses. I found an early, subtle one on Glenn Dale on Saturday, while I had customers in the garden. I used it as a demonstration for them about what RRD is and what to look for. Once you see it in person, you'll never mistake it for anything else again.

You're not done with roses, and I know I certainly am not. I will remain vigilant, spread copies of my rare roses off site so they're protected, and I will continue to enjoy my roses ... while this ugly disease lurks. In the meantime, your Red Meideland is a source of infection sitting right in your garden. You can remove the infected cane, hoping to have removed the extent of the infection. If it were mine, with symptoms like you show, I would remove the whole thing. Again, I'm really sorry.

Connie

It is RRD. (I've seen it before on Red Meidiland, but not yet on the ones in my garden.)
You aren't done with roses, but you may have to prune them a bit air-ier and next spring you need to go out and see how much multiflora is upwind of your garden. And how sick it is.

The problem with living in areas where farming no longer happens is that the land is bought by speculators, they no longer maintain the fields for livestock, not even for hay, weeds move in (including multiflora) and when RRD moves to that part of the country it will find those multiflora fields and from one rose to many in only a few years, and an infected field can become a source of RRD for a huge area downwind of it causing a worse disease pressure than a single infected rose.

I am glad you learned enough from the previous scare that you recognized it this time.

Ann

So now that we have the unfortunate diagnosis of terminal illness, what are my next steps? HOW in the world do I remove this thing? The bush is about 7'x 7' wide x 6' tall. I'm going to start by pruning away section by section, and I guess bagging (not easy to put a thorny branch in a plastic bag, if you've ever tried it).

Do I have to pick up every single dead piece and thorn and gather every single living leaf? That's an impossibility. Mine is not a neat and cultivated garden. Also, I envision using at least 50 bags for this whole bush to fit in. Burning is not allowed where I am.

How can I protect my other roses, besides just euthanizing them right now which I'm tempted to do. ? Will spraying them with sevin or wilt-pruf help? Should I cover them with bags while I remove the infected bush? Or it doesn't matter anyway since the whole world around me is infected too and what's the difference?

Please help. I need quick and pointed directions; I don't have time to read the whole ebook again right now.

Thanks.

Bag the affected parts before you cut them off. Then cut and seal the bags. The reason is to keep the potential vector mites from abandoning ship as you 'sink that ship'.
For the bottoms of the affected canes, does the contageon appear all the way down those canes? If so, the whole canes need to be bagged.
If the contageon goes all the way down the cane (phloem transport) then it's in the roots and the bush needs to come out,, but you don't need to be as careful about the other canes---- can you get the city to pick up the canes the day after you cut them off? Or is there a waste facility you could take them to?

Because the forested area is protected, contact your state Dept of Natural Resources and see if they'll do anything about the diseased multiflora. It's on state property!
Unfortunately, many states consider RRD as a way to get rid of unwanted wild multiflora so won't do anything about it.

It isn't that bad to cut a huge rose. Cut smaller sections, and put them in one at a time. It is amazing how fast that will go once you get started. I would get a white kitchen trash bag for the diseased looking ones, then put everything together in a large gardening bag. It should only take a couple.

Are roots of other roses around? How close to you are other roses?

Consider spraying it with something. Ann are you still reading. Wilt Pruf might not work, but what about horticultural oil or hair spray?

Sammy

Jenswrens- How awful! Your poor roses...how many do you have? Are they close to the house, or out by the edge of your yard?

I would think you could try to save some of your most precious roses, maybe by putting them closer to the house. I have no idea what to do about RRD, but would it help to plant some kind of windbreak or tall shrubs around the edge of your property? Are there any roses that are resistant to RRD?

I hope you find a way to save your roses. Don't do anything for a couple of days, except take out the infected rose. There's no reason to believe all the roses are done for...maybe wait until spring. If they're okay, maybe you can keep them. If not, it's an opportunity to redesign some of your garden spaces.

Whatever happens, I hope you don't let this get you down. It sounds like you live in a beautiful area with a lot of wilderness around you. Although it harbors RRD, I'm sure it offers a lot of beauty and privacy, too. Try to stay positive and see if some of your roses are a little tougher than the Red Meidiland.

If there are some sick canes with lots of leaves that are so big that handling them is difficult, spray them with high holding hair spray. That's the way that scientists take samples back to the lab to count and id the eriophyid mites.

For gosh sakes, don't transplant roses based on internet panic. When this one is under control, sit back and try to figure out prevailing wind directions and why the vector mites dropped out of breazes onto that rose. Planting roses up against a solid surface that faces into the wind generally leads to those roses getting RRD when regional disease pressures increase.

We were in NJ two months ago and it wasn't difficult to see RRD infected multiflora along the interstates. It wasn't dense (nor was the multiflora dense) but it was definitely moving into the state.

And here's that link at the server we moved it to several years ago.

I have a few questions...is R. multiflora more resistant to the RRD (since it can linger on for six years before dying) or does their location (mixed in with other plants and weeds) enable more natural predators of the mites to have a chance to slow down the disease?

Is this another reason cottage gardens are a good idea? Do a variety of flowers not only separate the roses, but bring in more beneficial insects?

Would it help someone like Jenswrens (who is surrounded by R. multiflora) to plant a barrier of natural weeds around the garden, to bring in beneficials, who might eat the mites, before they all end up on the her roses? I have a lot of weeds around the edge of the pasture (on the outside edge of the garden) and those weeds brought it huge amounts of ladybugs and other "good" insects that soon moved to my roses and started eating all the aphids.

Wendy, that is so sad to hear that is it so close. I'll let the rose society know, and have them keep a look out. I knew it was in Somerset County, I didn't know that it had reached here.

I hope you have success in keeping your roses. If you need support with the state, let me know. I know folks in the Penn Jersey District who were successful in lobbying the PA Dept of Ag. against using RRD to eradicate R. multiflora a few years ago.

Unfortunately, with the economic issues in the state, a disease on a decorative, non-cash crop, may not generate a lot of interest.

Somerset County Pa. is about 50-60 miles from where i'm located.
First time i'm hearing about all this.
I need to read over Ann's site real good on RRD.

I'm in Somerset County, NJ, and unfortunately we have lots of RRD in the multiflora around here. I have lost several roses to it. I have to confess to feeling somewhat defeated - I wonder if it really matters if I remove infected plants in a timely manner, when there is so much of it everywhere around me. However, one (maybe?) bright spot: it seems to me (this is just anecdotal) that I'm maybe seeing a little less of it around lately. Is it possible that RRD eventually "burns itself out" or am I just in denial?

As it is now, I have (I think) removed everything that had RRD from my garden, but am always on the lookout. Jenswrens, wish I could offer something more comforting. Well, one other maybe bright spot: Brooklyn Botanic Garden has had major RRD problems lately. When I was last there, they had a sign up saying they were working on research into ways of eradicating it, including predatory mites to kill the RRD mites. So let's hope they come up with something soon!

In nature there are both predaceous mites and predaceous thrips that kill the known vector eriophyid mite. The problem for us with high disease pressure is that predator mite populations only spike AFTER the prey population builds up and what I want in my garden is hungry predators sitting on my roses, waiting.
Ironically, conventional spider mites also kill the vector mite. So, I tolerate spider mites which seem to spike at the right time in fall when the vector mite populations spike in September.

I think that drought can cause the vector mite populations to spike; that's what I"ve seen in this part of the world especially when the vectors land in a succulent, actively growing garden.

So far, my centifolias are untouched, even though they are fairly large. But they are not active growers in fall.

Jim, I meant Somerset County, NJ, where Frances is located.

I am in southern Morris County NJ, very close to Somerset County, so RRD is definitely on the move. This is just so depressing. Diane, if you can let someone-in-charge (or someone-who-cares) know about this infection, that would be great. I wouldn't know who to contact.

Planting roses up against a solid surface that faces into the wind generally leads to those roses getting RRD when regional disease pressures increase. This could very well explain why my Red got infected and my others haven't (yet anyway). The Red was planted right in front of a large thick hedgerow of buddleia and forsythia, and yes, in the path of the prevailing winds. The forsythia probably acted as a windblock. Incidentally, I also lost a huge old Constance Spry last summer that was planted against the northeast wall of the house. I was living away for the year previous so I don't know if she was infected or not. I just came home in August to find her completely dead and DH had ripped her out with the tractor and dumped the remains in the woods. It never crossed my mind to look for RRD - who knows, maybe that's why she died too.

Would it help someone ... (who is surrounded by R. multiflora) to plant a barrier of natural weeds around the garden Somehow I don't think so, since I AM surrounded by too many "natural" weeds. LOL. (That's what the fenceline herbicide was all about.) I am constantly battling an influx of all manner of weeds. It seems I spend my whole summer beating back the wilderness. My neighbors spend thousands of $$ each month (literally) having the landscaping companies beat it back for them.

Ironically, conventional spider mites also kill the vector mite. Interesting. Is that why there was all that webbing on the Red (see photo above)? In fact, before I posted, I was kind of hoping in the back of my mind that someone here was going to tell me that all this was just caused by spider mites. Oh well, of course I really knew deep down that that was just wishful thinking.

Well, the Red is gone now, sitting in bags waiting for the garbage pick-up (nowhere for homeowners to legally dump or drop-off here in NJ). I will watch my other roses carefully, but sadly I won't be adding any new ones this spring. I think I will wait a while to see if maybe this thing will "burn itself out" but I'm not holding out a lot of hope. It almost seems if I want to grow roses I'm going to have to move to an urban area or something. Ugh.

Jen

Jen---this is so sad------I lost a beautiful old New Dawn and Dr Van Fleet----It is heartbreaking to lose such lovely old roses---

So far we haven't noticed RRD on any other roses---

Hope the rest of your roses are afe.

Florence

Jen--I just checked your home page---Your pictures are gorgeous---Where is that beautiful body of water ?----Those pictures of clouds are amazing.

Sure hope you don't lose anymore roses----it can be heartbreaking-----

I lost a gorgeous Dr Van Fleet-----It was a cutting from a rose in the yard of a home we were renting Martha's Vineyard. That rose meant a lot to all of us-----

Florence

Well, Jen, I'm sharing in your pain. I have 4 roses under RRD watch...Soutine (a custom prop. from Vintage), Graham Thomas who is about 15 years old, and two new ones from Palatine this year - Moonstone & Stephen's Big Purple.

Graham, Moonstone, & SBP are all next to each other, and all show the same signs of infection...hyperthorniness, twisted soft huge canes, and distorted leaves. I've cut off the offending canes down to the ground in an attempt to save the roses, but will be vigilant. It's so discouraging...RRD is such hateful stuff.

Ann, FYI, I too have RRD this year. I have a long line of multiflora along my reek/property line. I can only curb it back to my side of the creek (and what hangs over). This is the first year I've seen it and so far it is only at one end of my property. It has hit four roses so far. I've been cutting back canes, but....

Ann, e-mailed you weeks ago.
I'm so sorry Jen. I lost a huge Mons. Tillier to RRD. This year Perle d' Or had some. :(((. Such a sinking feeling to see RRD on our roses! Not being well educated on RRD, I was a bit surprised to see it in the middle of summer.

Carla

Catsrose, you might ask the person who owns the property near you with the multiflora if they'd mind if you killed it. My neighbor had an infected multiflora plant and was very nice about letting me get rid of it.

Ann, you have a good attitude about keeping on planting roses even though RRD might get them. It might or might not get them. The great thing about growing roses, to me, has been that you believe that every year your garden is just going to get better and better. RRD takes away that great optimism. But even so, it's better to love and lose than never love at all...so I plan to keep planting.
I lost a big Gertrude Jekyll plant and the adjacent plants haven't come down with it in about 6 years, so that's not too bad ( for that area).
Linda

Early on I realized that there are some places in a garden where roses are at higher risk. My friend (Denae) up in Greenville had a huge rustic arbor above a spring. Lovely site. First her New Dawn there got RRD way out on one cane that reached over the structure. The infection was on the leeward side of that structure. She caught it really early, took off the bad cane all the way back, and the disease came back from the roots. She took out ND, waited two years and then replanted with Colonial White (sold as Sombreuil). Two years later, when its canes were up and over, dam*ned if a cane in the very same place as the first one started showing RRD up on the leeward side.
So now she has clematis there.

I've got one place that seems especially at risk. Where I have my Orleans Rose lineage polyanthas, I've had high losses. Maybe it's the site and that these are fairly close to multiflora in lineage and that may mean that hte vector mites can more easily find leaf buds to bite and infect. There, my ideal is to keep replanting and start lots of companion plants. IF I'm going to loose roses, I'm going to learn something while I do it.

I never thought I was particularly stubborn, until now.

When I cut my infected roses back, rather than plastic bags I used large cardboard boxes and when they were full, just closed over the lids. AS you mentioned, plastic bags rip.
I tried pruning mine back to the ground and they all came back looking healthy UNTIL late summer the following year the signs appeared again. So, I cut them back AGAIN and sprayed the stubs with concentrated RoundUP or brush killer.

From now on, at the first signs I will just cut back and spray to kill the roots. All three roses I had tried to save by cutting back still contained the virus and letting them grow back just provided a source to infect mites that might land on them so the new policy for me is cut back and kill the roots.

Too bad you have some many multifloras nearby.

this spring one of my huge new dawns had rrd. i removed the plant, removed the 19 multiflora patches at the edges of my property and bought and distributed predatory mites.
well another huge new dawn [i had three in all originally] has just put out fall growth full of witches brooms, so i am removing it now. it was about 30' away from the previously infected plant.
there is a belinda's dream nearby with red new growth, which is small, but not really strange looking. i am keeping an eye on it, as i cant find any descriptions that mention if its new growth is supposed to be red. most of my HTs have red new foliage, and always have in the past.
it is so frustrating that the biggest most vigorous established plants seem to be the hardest hit.
i noticed the plants mentioned as getting RRD seemed to usually be huge climbers esp. new dawn, and shrubs, then HTs. i realized i hadnt seen minis mentioned. i searched gardenweb mini rose forum for rrd and rosette, and got zero posts about rrd. i dont know if minis are too short to get it, or mini growers are spraying miticide non-stop to kill the red spider mites, or the red spider mites are eating the eriophyid mite [which i've read can happen]
ann, you posted last summer:
The reasoning behind using wiltproof ties to the way that the flightless eriophyid mites get around- they are dropped by breezes when the breeze slows down. Thanks to the dissertation of Abdullah Kassar at WVU, if they land on a rose, they sense it and stay. If they land on a non-rose they try to catch the next breeze away. What we hope is happening with the wiltproof and other anti-transpirants is that they land on the wiltproof and reason "not rose" and leave. So as to how often to spray wiltproof...you'd like to keep the leaves and stems coated. Spray accordingly

i bought wiltpruf to spray the new dawn i am in the process of removing, and the belindas dream i am watching. i am using it instead of hairspray. it forms a polymer coating, which i think might trap existing mites on the plants, just like the hairspray.
i wouldnt give the mites that much credit in terms of intention -- it also might be that the anti-transpirants seal up the crevices they need to crawl into to not get blown about in the wind.

in http://www.ars.org/pdfs/rose_rosette.pdf, it says shrub roses are most affected because their petioles provide a tight crevice, whereas HTs arent as good a host. if the mites are so prone to be blown about by the wind, maybe if the do land on a plant without good crevices,either because of the plants natural anatomy, or because wiltpruf has filled in those crevices,the mites get blown off on the next breeze before they can transmit rrd.

I disagree with the ARS stuff as I've seen Hybrid Teas get RRD really easily and some shrub roses in a mixed garden remain RRD free while all around them HTs were dropping like flies.

New Dawn is often the first rose to get sick in a large garden. It may be the size, that acts as a mite drop, or it may be that the leaf axils are especially endowed with thin bracts that the mites' stylets can penetrate.

This is the kind of thing where I really wish the classification "shrub" didn't exist. It is often a catch all where roses end up when the hybridizer says they don't look like a HT. Some roses in there have a lot of HT breeding in them. Some have none. Some are all over the place in terms of their breeding. So painting shrubs with a "more susceptible" brush is just wrong, rose-breeding-history wise.

I agree with your observations, Ann.

My first losses to RRD 5 years ago were 2 magnificent 'New Dawns' that sprawled up and across the top of a huge arbor that spanned the southern French doors. Both became infected at the same time, necessitating removal of both.

This year, I have six infected roses...five HTs and one Austin. It's been my experience so far that HTs are more easily infected for some reason.

I have had to remove several very large wild roses. The method that worked for me was fairly simple.
Get some lightweight but stout cord and wrap it in a spiral around the bush. Start at the bottom and pull the canes inward as you tighten the cord. It helps to have two people to do this. You end up with a tightly bound pillar. Use your shears to cut it off at the base. Paint the freshly cut base with straight Roundup. Haul the rose off to the burn pile, or other disposal area.

has anyone seen RRD on mini roses or rugosas? as i posted before, a search for RRD on the gardenweb mini rose forum yielded zero posts. i am considering spraying wilt pruf preventively, and rugosas tend to react badly to spray as they accumulate it in their texture leaves. i realized i hadnt seen rugosas mentioned as having RRD. i suspect not many people grow rugosas, but i thought minis were very popular. i'm not searching for resistant roses, really just bewildered by the patterns of infection. the cranford rose garden at the BBG had a lot of losses to RRD, and said the multiflora and wichuriana hybrids were hardest hit. of course, that is the parentage of some of the largest climbers.
i have a huge no-spray rose bed that consists mainly of new dawn [and her children and grandchildren], rugosas, and some non-recurrent OGRs. it now seems the very plants i chose for health and disease resistance are now the most vulnerable. my albas are 8 feet high and a solid wall of foliage. i dont know if i'm better off leaving them as a sacrificial planting to catch passing mites [and removing them if they are affected], or removing them now. i only have them because they were supposed to be vigorous and disease proof, which they are. oh, and they are supposed to be wonderfully fragrant, but with our hot spring weather their scent is always burned off by the sun before i get a chance to smell them.

I have seen RRD on minis. In my garden Rouletti, a predecessor to many minis got it one fall. I caught it early when it was at three nodes out on a long stem, and cut it off before it got into the roots. That plant still lives. I've also seen it on a mini up near Kingsport TN, a very modern exhibition type mini that just looked terribly contorted and deformed although the blooms looked off, but were still trying. Out in Kansas City, it was on some unnamed minis in a public garden.

Rugosas are more of a problem. In the huge garden at LMU, there were no rugosas although the modern roses in that garden were wiped out by RRD. In front of the old dairy, there were about eight rugosas. I expected them to sicken. They had a stem borer problem that was cured by cutting off the affected stems. We kept watching and after five years, one of them got RRD unmistakably. Symptoms were even denser thorns, and the sprays at the ends of canes were severely contorted. Sepals were oddly overgrown and the buds barely opened. None of the symptoms were herbicide-damage-like, but all were excessive aberrant growth.

Up in the mountains to my east, the multiflora is getting sick. There are plantings of rugosas and they are not getting sick, at least not quickly. Sadly some of them look like heck because of stem borers and lack of care (which would be remove the affected canes.)
In mixed rose gardens, in my part of the country, New Dawn is usually the first to go. Mine hasn't, probably because it's overgrown by honeysuckle by the time that the mites become active in the spring. Sort of a really warped win-loose situation.

re keeping a sacrificial plant. Don't do it. These vector mites aren't smart enough to appreciate it. They are sessile, wingless and move on puffs of air, and they don't have any way to control where they are going to land. Their decision making is ///am I on a rose? I stay. IF I'm not on a rose, I go.
I think they may choose to go from a rose when that rose gets dry and summer dormant and that may be the reason that RRD has been more of a problem this year... summer drought-heat induced dormancy inthe wild infected multiflora populations.

I know I'll never have the rose arches I wanted over a decade ago. I'll still have roses and I'll ahve some large ones. But I'm prepared to loose them as well.

But I'm going to keep learning and so can you.

ann, you wrote:" I know I'll never have the rose arches I wanted over a decade ago. I'll still have roses and I'll ahve some large ones. But I'm prepared to loose them as well."
i have lost two enormous new dawns, both grown as freestanding shrubs. i have a lot of climbers grown that way. i am about to plant more climbers, and i am trying to figure out how to train them to minimize the rrd risk. i have so many climbers because i have always found them to be the healthiest most vigorous roses. i usually grow them as freestanding arching shrubs because i dont want to spend all my gardening money on arches, and in a previous garden the new dawn collapsed two arches [one metal and one very sturdy cedar].
it seems like all the rules are reversed with rrd; big extra vigorous roses are the hardest hit.
you have mentioned growing roses so plants dont touch, much less intertwine, and that tall and big roses, especially those on structures are at high risk.
so the only ways i can envision training climbers to not be tall, and not overlap, is to either train as though on a split rail fence, ie low and sideways, or to train horizontally a few feet off the ground, like a groundcover suspended up in the air. either way, i will need some sort of low structure and a really big footprint per climber.
do you have any other suggestions for growing climbers and minimizing their rrd risk?
by the way i have two hybrid setigera climbers [thor and long john silver] that are very open and rangy, quite unlike the dense new dawns. of course, they cannot be expected to be immune, even if the species setigera is.
i will try spraying wilt pruf as an anti-rrd measure. i can see how a dense plant would be impossible to spray thoroughly.

The open rangy growth form encourages the wind to speed up as it goes through- so the wind continues to carry the mites rather than dropping them.

Years ago, there was a house that had a lot of RRD. Their climbers in one place weren't affected because they were in a space between that house and one one next to it (water front houses with lot prices based per foot of lake frontage). There's something called the venturi effect that explains how carboreuters work (I know that's spelled wrong, sorry), but it is basicly that with laminar flow, when you constrict the cross section it goes through, it speeds up the laminar flow, whether it's liquids or air.

If you can figure a way to speed up air flow near your climbers, the mites are far less likely to drop out of the air flowing by. They can't fly and they walk relatively slowly (they are much smaller than aphids).

Ann

I live 50 miles north of Kansas City in St. Joseph, MO.
In the last 6 years I have lost two wonderful Hot Cocoa floribunda bushes on completely far ends of my rose beds and a Sunsprite floribunda bush that grew next to one of the Hot Cocoa bushes. I have 350+ roses and stay vigilant for any signs of RRD on other bushes. I have seen some wierd stuff from time to time but cut it off very early and so far have been very lucky that it didn't turn out to be a terminal problem. If it was RRD I caught it early enough that it didn't affect the root system and thus the entire plant. So, only losing three bushes is not to bad I think.
I hated to lose those gorgeous Hot Cocoa bushes,but it was better to be rid of just one or two than a whole bed full of roses.
John

Earlier in the post, I had asked about companion planting and attracting natural predators to the garden. I thought this was an interesting article. Has anyone else seen anything like this working, against RRD?