I'm not sure what that is, but I would love to see a closeup of those leaves.

Jeri

Here's a closeup of the leaves, weird right?

No spray has been used of any kind.

I've never seen a plant with this so widespread, but I've seen plants with just a few leaves distorted in this manner. I've been told this was a virus.

Go to the link below, and scroll down to ROSE LEAF CURL. You might also look at ROSE SPRING DWARF DISEASE (tho I don't think that's it).

Jeri

Here is a link that might be useful: Viruses of Roses

Please note:
"Rose leaf curl has been found only
in public rose gardens, usually in or near
plants of “antique” roses. Recent data
indicate a slow natural spread, although
the vector is unknown. Hybrid tea roses
exhibit RLC symptoms, but rootstock
varieties do not. Symptoms on hybrid tea
roses are downward curling of leaves on
established plants and dieback of canes
(fig. 4). Leaves easily drop off new
shoots, and the shoots are characteristically
pointed with a broad base."

Here is a link that might be useful: link for above

Mr. Kuska link was written in 1977. There have been many advancements regarding the study of rose diseases since roses became such a large industry.

lynnette, Please post any more recent research that challenges the original paper. I put the original paper

http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19761326991.html;jsessionid=29E4B0E28D38090F36BDD0B79400D14B

into Google Scholar and did not find any.

Davis wrote this in 2009.

"Infected rose plants. Slow natural spread."

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r280112611.html

Here is a link that might be useful: link to 2009 Davis paper.

Oh Goddess of Gardens -- PLEASE let there be no more questions about virus, to trigger bombardments like this.

Jeri

A few of my roses from Heirloom have done that from Day 1. I thought it was sometjing I was doing wrong.

I read something somewhere, when I was first concerned, that said certain clases of fungicides cause it.

From a Google Scholar search, I found: "A survey of viruses infecting Rosa spp. in New Zealand
EJM Milleza, LI Ward, C Delmiglio, JZ Tang… - Australasian Plant …, 2013 - Springer ... pers. comm Rose leaf curl virus RLCV Begomovirus Li et al. (2004) ... 1978)."

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H. Kuska comment: there appears to be personal communications among rose virus researchers that rose leaf curl is a Begomovirus.

I searched further and found the following:

Khatri S.M., Nawaz-ul-Rehman M.S., Fauquet C.M.; "Rose leaf curl disease associated begomovirus"; Unpublished.), see:

http://www.dpvweb.net/dpv/showseq.php?seq=gq478342

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H. Kuska comment: Apparently in this genus transmission is suspected to be by insects:

"The virus is obligately transmitted by an insect vector, which can be the whitefly Bemisia tabaci or can be other whiteflies.[6] This vector allows rapid and efficient propagation of the virus because it is an indiscriminate feeder."

H.Kuska comment: The above is taken from the following wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begomovirus

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H.Kuska comment. Of course, we should wait for a reviewed published scientific paper, to be sure what the actual scientific facts are about what is causing the observed slow spread; but until then this is what the situation "appears" to be.

Here is a link that might be useful: Google Scholar Search

Oh boy...I read about leaf curl and spring dwarf, and that's what's plaguing my roses for sure. I have both. Will post pics in daylight. What do I do? I thought they'd grow out of it...I have bands from Heirloom and RVR with these problems.

I don't believe it to be transmitted via whitefly, at least in my particular csse but I could be wrong. I think it's spider mites...

Rose Spring Dwarf is spread by aphids, see:

http://home.roadrunner.com/~kuska/rose_spring_dwarf_virus.htm

Here is a link that might be useful: link for above

Wow...thank you Henry.

What should I do? My older bands that I got in the spring put out growth like that but it was fine during the summer. Coming back now and the new ones have it too.

Man that's a lot of money down the drain if I have to get rid of all of them...
How do you at least *try* to prevent something like this from happening?

Apparently neither virus can be cured by heat treatment. I am not aware of any sucess with tissue culture regeneration of small fast growing buds (attempt to outrun the virus) either alone or with the addition of antiviral chemicals, but that would be my guess as to where sucess could be achieved. Since recent evidence has called into question the "old thinking" that virus infections are always systemic, it is possible (but probably not very probable) that a cutting made from a branch that does not exhibit symptoms during the height of the "symptom season" could produce a clean plant.

If I saw a few leaves like that on my roses in my garden after some days of rain or heavy fog, I would think it is caused by mildew and while those leaves will never look good, the new ones will be just fine when the weather changes again

Although this is a year old thread, this published, reviewed full scientific paper appears to settle any doubt as to the existence of this virus. Of interest is the picture of a diseased rose and the finding that this virus is whitefly transmitted to the following plants: roses, cotton, radish, tomato, papaya, chili, and bhendi (see Table 1).
" Our results showed that the virus was transmitted by whiteflies in a persistent manner and caused systemic leaf curling and stunting on host plants (Table 1)."

http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13314-014-0147-9.pdf

Here is a link that might be useful: link for above

Mildew was my first guess also because it's definitely the right time of year for that. My second guess would be some light cold damage since the canes look new and tender still. Mine sometimes freak out like that if we have a sudden cold front after being warm.

" Oh Goddess of Gardens" I haven't had a good laugh all week. Thank you Jeri that reminded of the good days.

Looks like cold damage to me.

Or, maybe it's Ebola. You never know.

I think Buford's got it. It is the Ebola VIRUS. ;-)

Jeri

Since several have brought up the subject of Ebola Virus, the following may be of interest.

Around 1990 scientists started realizing that plants utilized the production of RNAi (RNA interference) to fight plant viruses.

"The discovery of RNAi was preceded first by observations of transcriptional inhibition by antisense RNA expressed in transgenic plants,[145] and more directly by reports of unexpected outcomes in experiments performed by plant scientists in the United States and the Netherlands in the early 1990s.[146] In an attempt to alter flower colors in petunias, researchers introduced additional copies of a gene encoding chalcone synthase, a key enzyme for flower pigmentation into petunia plants of normally pink or violet flower color. The overexpressed gene was expected to result in darker flowers, but instead produced less pigmented, fully or partially white flowers, indicating that the activity of chalcone synthase had been substantially decreased; in fact, both the endogenous genes and the transgenes were downregulated in the white flowers. Soon after, a related event termed quelling was noted in the fungus Neurospora crassa,[147] although it was not immediately recognized as related. Further investigation of the phenomenon in plants indicated that the downregulation was due to post-transcriptional inhibition of gene expression via an increased rate of mRNA degradation.[148] This phenomenon was called co-suppression of gene expression, but the molecular mechanism remained unknown.[149]

Not long after, plant virologists working on improving plant resistance to viral diseases observed a similar unexpected phenomenon. While it was known that plants expressing virus-specific proteins showed enhanced tolerance or resistance to viral infection, it was not expected that plants carrying only short, non-coding regions of viral RNA sequences would show similar levels of protection. Researchers believed that viral RNA produced by transgenes could also inhibit viral replication.[150] The reverse experiment, in which short sequences of plant genes were introduced into viruses, showed that the targeted gene was suppressed in an infected plant. This phenomenon was labeled "virus-induced gene silencing" (VIGS), and the set of such phenomena were collectively called post transcriptional gene silencing.[151]"

The above quote is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_interference

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It did not take long to recognize that the same mechanism(s) take place in other virus infected forms of life.

Here is a very recent paper concerning RNAi and Ebola (plus other human infecting virus).

Title: "Postexposure Protection of Guinea Pigs against a Lethal Ebola Virus Challenge Is Conferred by RNA Interference"

"RNA interference (RNAi) represents a powerful, naturally occurring biological strategy for inhibiting gene expression. RNAi has been used in cell-culture systems to inhibit the replication of a number of viruses that cause disease in humans, including HIV, hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus, influenza virus, herpesviruses, poliovirus, human papillomavirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and coxsackievirus (reviewed in [4, 5]); more recently, it has been used to inhibit some emerging and reemerging viruses, including Marburg virus [6], lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus [7], and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus [8]. "

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/193/12/1650.full

Here is a link that might be useful: RNA interference (RNAi) and Ebola Virus