Maybe 12 years ago, I wrote the article linked below. The 3. at the end is a foornote to the 3 after susceptibility. George Mander "has made arrangements with a wholesale rosegrower, Jan Verschuren, to graft his budwood on R. canina. Jan prefers R. canina currently. R. canina is what was used there before WW2. The original canina was notorious for suckering. There are new canina selections since then. R. canina cv. "Inermis" is the most widely used variety. Much less suckering takes place, but it still suckers. R. canina cv."Heinsohn's Rekord" is regarded as the very best for Hybrid Teas (Jan agrees out of experience). R. corymbifera cv. "Laxa" or R. dumetorum cv. "Laxa" is more and more being grown on Europe's mainland. It was always used as a rootstock for Great Britain only. Because it suckers little and is, therefore, a cheaper way of growing roses, the mainland now also grows more and more on Laxa. However, Laxa is not as winterhardy as R. canina. For treeroses, R. canina cv. "Pfander" is the best one (his family has a well established R. canina cv."Pfander" weeping treerose of The Fairy in their garden at home surviving at some -24 degrees C unprotected, its budunion up in the air). Cheap fast production for big box stores has opened a market for multiflora cutting rootstocks for treeroses in Holland, but they have little winterhardiness. He also points out that R. multiflora is softer and the grafts a little more likely to be weak during the first year (Brad had one of George's Canadian White Star break right at the bud union; it can happen in a strong wind). Multiflora is much faster in production, but has a shorter lifespan than canina. Brad's experience is roses grafted on R. canina suckered freely and didn't produce as many basal shoots as R. multiflora or own-root roses. However, Jan points out that multiflora was shipped to Sweden because they had guaranteed snow cover in their winters. All other parts never wanted multiflora because of its frost susceptibility 3. Obviously, there is great debate going on here concerning the relative merits of various rootstocks." "3. This has always been a hot topic for Jan. Another former local grower here lost his crop on multiflora when temperatures went down to minus 24 degrees C. "I should have put more straw on" was his thinking... Jan hills up his budunions in fall and sleeps easy, even with minus 24. In his opinion, multiflora is never as winterhardy as R. canina selections are. As his father mentioned when he said to him that all growers use multiflora in Canada. " What?! Are they backward there?" The name Verschuren is closely related to rosegrowing in Holland. They are rootstock specialists. They produce seed, stratify and produce rootstock (about 6,000,000/ yr); and are only a medium size rootstock grower! Combined with Germany and the huge rosegrowers, competition is immense. Out of the competition, the best emerges because of the scale in which things are done there. The scales are different in Canada: here, rose production is done on a hobbyfarm basis. Multiflora is easy to grow; that is why it is used here; that is Jan's conclusion. When he met Otto Palleck, the just retired Ontario rosegrower, Palleck said, "What? You grow on canina? That is the best rootstock there is, but we cannot get No.1 quality here...." That was most likely not his only problem, as seed germination with canina requires 2 years of stratifying. Brian Minter told Jan initially when he started out doubtfully here with canina rootstock, "Do the best you can and grow the best product possible, and you will succeed" Now, Jan has customers who are coming back raving to buy more. His treeroses did not blink their eyes at the cold last winter." Here is a link that might be useful: A Visit with B.C. Rosemen

I couldn't get the link to work for me, but did try Googling Brownell roses to see if I could find the article. Nope. But I did find this article by Dan Russo http://www.heritagerosefoundation.org/4resources/Rosa%20Mundi/3/RM3_Russo.pdf and it brought up an interesting point that we had been discussing on another thread about the fact that some roses are/were not intended to be grown on their own roots. The article states "When grown as the Brownells instructed in their catalogues, i.e., grafted on multiflora rootstock with the bud union placed several inches deep, they have indeed proven to be very long-lived, floriferous roses." Even though this has been mentioned very recently, it had not truly registered with me that a rose might actually have been designed to be grafted. Wow...sorry, but that's a mind bender for me. I'm still only gonna grow own root roses, but a serious crack in my mental fortress has been noted.... Here is a link that might be useful: Dan Russo article

"The virus used in this study was obtained from naturally infected plants of Rosa rugosa âÂÂCharles AlbanelâÂÂ." This is all that I could find in the full paper. It does refer to a 2011 paper: Lockhart B, Zlesak D, Fetzer J (2011) Identification and partial characterization of six new viruses of cultivated roses in the USA. Acta Hortic 901:139��"147 Since the 2011 paper has Jodi Fetzer's of the New York Botanical Garden name as one of the authors, perhaps the sample came from there. Please notice that this is only a "PERHAPS". "Recently, we described a virus with spherical particles [8] associated with one of several new foliar diseases of rose. The virus was named Rosa rugosa leaf distortion virus (RrLDV) after the typical symptoms associated with infection by this virus. Both the disease and the virus were graft transmitted from diseased to healthy R. rugosa, suggesting that RrLDV is likely the causal agent of the disease (our unpublished results). The objectives of this study were to characterize the RrLDV genome and determine its taxonomic and phylogenetic relationship to known viruses." ------------------------------- H.Kuska comment; I am frustrated that so many of these individual papers offer so little information of usefullness to the average rose grower. Possibly the editors pressure the authors to be as consise as possible.

Naptha? Isn't that kerosene? Yuck! Oh, right. Aldehydes. I guess that goes. Some O-Chem hydrocarbon petroleum thing. (shudder) I use 7th Generation Free & Clear. It doesn't smell like much of anything. And glycerine handsoaps with flower scents (rose or cucumber). (Method green tea + aloe pump is foul (much too much tea) but the color looks good with my powder room sink top and the guests don't seem to mind.) MaryS, thanks for bringing up the cumin thing! It's fine in a complex curry, but it tastes like dirt to me on it's own, and I can't eat samosas, and things like that, that are heavy on cumin. Or taco meat without the rest of the taco (tomatoes help). On the other hand, I love turmeric. It's been decades since I did this, if I had a soup that just wouldn't come together, I'd dump some turmeric into it. I called it my yummifing agent. Which probably makes up for the cumin in the curry. :) Hey! Speaking of tea, I wonder if this all that we're talking about is also why some people think green tea ice cream is a good idea? I don't even like the smell on my hands from the soap, and think green tea ice cream is an insult to Flossie. Though back when I did caffeine, I didn't mind drinking green tea as tea.