Check this site for the answer. Hope it helps.
http://www.sactorose.org/rosebug/index.htm

Carla

The top two really just look to me like old foliage that's ready to drop.
The light may be fooling me, but we get some of that whitish blotching at
times like -- now -- when rain has been so scarce that mineral salts have
really built up in the plants.
See how it collects along the edge of the leaves?
We're seeing more of that than I would really like -- but I'm not going to
start filtering water for the roses.
===============

Queen Elizabeth is sometimes called "The Rust Queen," in the Western States.
Maybe it's healthy in the East??
It can really have problems, here.

Also, HTs and Grandifloras will, not infrequently, drop their bottom foliage.
It's why they are sometimes said to have "bare knees."
(My husband once called them "ugly plants with bare bottoms.")
So that's pretty common for them, particularly in hot weather.
To be fair, many Hybrid Perpetuals do the same annoying thing.

Jeri

It looks like sunburnt old leaves at the end of a dry summer. The white areas may be some powdery mildew.

The foliage doesn't last forever--it gets old and dries up and the plant lets it go and it falls off.

Newly planted roses can't support their foliage as well as long established roses can. Well fed, well watered, established roses have better foliage than stressed roses that are short on nitrogen.

How much are you watering and what are you fertilizing with? Are the roses newly planted this year or are they well established? How hot was your summer? How hot is the area where these roses are located? Is the ground around them mulched to preserve moisture and reduce soil temperature?

All these are factors in a rose holding on to, and having, good foliage.

It also vaguely resembles what I thought was fertilizer burn on my potted Caramel Antike a few weeks ago. Of all the roses I fertilized that day only CA showed leaves that looked crispy at the edges. I thought I might have dosed it twice by accident that day so I pulled all the affected leaves, gave it more than the usual amount of water for about a week and now everything seems fine.

Hope this helps.

Kate

Hi everyone:

Thank you all for your responses. But what baffles me is if these are environmental damages, how come other roses are not effected.

These roses are very very old and established, Eglentyne is about 8 or 9 years old and the other two came with the house and are much much older than that, easily over 20 years old.
I have two other established roses living near them and also have planted about 20 new roses in the same strip of land in the past two years and non, old or new, show the same symptoms. They get same amount of water and organic fertilizer.

This happens every year. Last year I assumed that I burned the live with chemical sprays. But it happened this year again in mid July or some time in Aug.

Maybe, I need to do what Karl suggested in another post, prune them very short after July flush and see what happens.

Thanks again,
FJ

Cutting back fairly hard after the first flush is probably a reasonable approach.

But Queen Elizabeth left us many years ago precisely because her foliage was
poor. And that was when we sprayed!

And DO expect many of these roses to be "bare-bottomed," once the weather heats up.
It's just their nature.

Jeri

wantton, almost every rose in my yard looks like that, LOL!

I have a climbing QE and the old leaves tend to just get yucky as time goes on. In fact, in anticpation of a (hopefully) nice fall flush, I'm going out today to yank every old yucky leaf off my rose bushes.

As far as environmental or spray damage, different roses react differently. We've been in drought conditions all year and when I sprayed my roses with fungicide a few weeks ago, some of the roses leaves turned almost black! That never happened to me before. I'm guessing they weren't hydrated enough. But then we had a lot of rain and they all began pumping out new bright green growth. Just I'm just going to cut all the ugly stuff off!

I'm interested to know what is effecting your leaves also. I know this forum is in regards to roses, but I have a Sundown echinacea with leaves that look exactly like that. They turns brown and crumple. I suspect that it may be some sort of rust or less likely sunburn (since the more exposed leaves on my plant don't necessarily get "sunburned"). I will soon be planting a rose near that area and would like to know what I'm dealing with too.

When I started growing roses 20 plus years ago I visited my local ARS rose garden several times during the year to makes notes on the varieties planted there. This went on for many years and I made self described notes about varieties I liked or didn't. One of my minus comments was "dead leaf syndrome". I noticed over the years that the DLS almost always appeared in late summer and that some roses were more susceptible to it then others. Roses are not cookie cutter shrubs with just different colored blooms. Their genetics play a big part in how they respond to varying climates, soils, care etc. That's why given identical treatment etc., some rose leaves respond differently then others.

To me, the first 2 pics look like powdery mildew, the 3rd pic looks like spider mites because the leaves look dried out and curled.

Deanna

Funny, every one of my Sundown echinaceas also have leaves that look like this. I did find little black worms eating on one the other day. They weren't hard to spot. If these are causing the problems on your roses, you should easily see them by looking around under the leaves.

I'll second what Hoov said. It is the end of a very hot, dry California summer, with a good chance of more heat and no rain in the immediate future. I have many roses with that problem. I just take the leaves off. This is not a disease, just aged leaves. Relax and enjoy the blooms.

I took some of the leaves to a rose expert in the near by nursery. She basically said same, no disease, just age and excess heat due to the white wall right behind the roses.

Since the wall belongs to my neighbor, I guess I have to live with the condition.

Thanks for your help in the matter.

FJ

Heat, drought, age. Some leaves just don't age gracefully, lol. This is the reaction many of my roses have and they're collectively telling me is that summer is finally coming to an end... which is daytime highs of 90's here instead of 100's. I could give them more water if my husband didn't literally watch the meter. I could also stave off much of the dry leaf syndrome if I'd erect a shade structure over them every summer. I used to do that until the number of roses and my age both got bigger. Now, if they want to play prima donna, it's the Phoenix method of shovel pruning.

The second photo shows a stem in the lower right corner with the same problem, not just the leaves, so it can't be just old dead leaves. Looks to me like it could be anthracnose fungus, with spider mites accounting for the little white dots in the third photo.

FJ -- One way to deal with that white wall problem ...

Get some lattice-work panels, and put them up against the wall, behind the plants.
It cuts down on the heat bounced off the wall.
This has worked well for us, in dealing with plants at the bottom of our 14-ft-tall retaining wall.

Jeri

And if they are not already mulched, mulch to hold moisture in the soil longer and keep the roots cooler. Over time this also improves soil quality and adds nutrients.