A picture would help. I keep my hybrid teas to 3 to 5 canes, removing the oldest down to the base. My goal is to keep new canes breaking from the bud. Al

I don't have a photo but the browning begins to appear near the base and slowly goes up the cane. It may be unnoticed until the cane breaks off. At this time the part that is left of the cane is all dead wood. The cane will not regrow. I treated for fungal, but no effects on this problem. They say new canes can grow from the base, but so far no new canes are growing to replace the ones that die. They could have some kind of monster virus that is taking them out. I don't know.

The rose forum would be a better place to ask this question, since they are experts over there.
Renee

I already did that a while back. I was just wondering if this is trend in this area, so I asked here. There are also some tiny green worms that are really eating underneath the leaves of my china rose, this year.

I think now, it is rose canker. I researched it.

The tiny green worms under the leaves are likely rose slugs. Squish if few. If many, direct hits of insecticidal soap.

It was rose slugs, now I know what they were, I think I got rid of them now.

Some varieties are more prone to dieback than others. And same with other diseases.

In my experience, I found it pretty impossible to over feed roses if going the natural route --they love horse manure and alfalfa pellets, and that often stimulates new basal canes.

The one time i used a chemical fertilzer the growth was much more overpumped and nitrogen-y.

just watch the soil it was in if it was canker. The canker soil can do in the next rose unless you get rid of it and get new soil. This happened to me last year. A favorite rose of mine mysteriously died. I replanted in that spot and a year later that rose was in decline. Canker got 3 of 4 canes but I chopped away the roots and canes with canker and bleach watered the remaining cane and roots to see if it would survive. Now its doing better in a pot than it ever did in the ground. That spot is still empty and I'm going to wait a while before I replant there even though I plan to change the soil. The canker hangs around looking for cut roots or injured stems to get into so you have to be careful digging around your roses if you think canker is in the soil.

Kitty, if I had known there was a possible treatment, I might have tired to treat them. They were down to one cane, but everything I read said it was incurable. Once the canker is set into the rose wood. So, I discarded those roses. I did not think they would grown any new canes. But, then I posted on pests and found a possible treatment agent also. I compost a lot so my soil is filled with stuff, but I never compost roses.

Jerijen says to get rid of any roses that had canker but my potted rose is doing great still. I know I can never put it in the soil or around other roses because the canker is in the wood. I have not looked at the roots to see if new canker is growing again because the plant is doing so well. Karl advised the bleach treatment to someone else and it worked for me. There is a treatment that will kill the critters that cause canker for use on the soil but it isn't 100% effective and its costly.

I had a rose die off exactly as you described. It was healthy in December. I cut it down and moved it in January to a new spot. The old leaves fell off. The new ones grew a few inches then suddenly died. The canes turned dark at the base and continued until the whole cane was dead. I was wondering if I overwatered. One outlying cane is still growing leaves. I'm going to dig up the dead canes and look for cankers. Usually the plant goes into slow deline with canker-fewer, smaller flowers and small slow growing leaves. Eventually canes begin to die. This was a rapid die off of all the canes from the bottom up. Roses on either side are doing great. Wish I had not decided to move it but too late now. I had buried an old possum there the year before. Maybe he didn't appreciate me disturbing him when I planted the rose.

Kitty, I also thought a canker was like a carbuncle. I thought was something like a wart that I could see. Although they call this rose canker it has no big lumps. This is why it took me so long to figure out what it was. I thought it was called "cane die back", so I keep asking people on the rose forum what to do for cane die back.

I got all kinds of rose advice but no advice how to keep the canes from dying. If I had known to ask what to do for "rose canker", then I could have some advice that would have helped. One is to spray with sulfur and the other is use physan 20. I got both of those now to have on hand in case I see any more of this canker stuff on my other roses. But, so far I am lucky that all my roses did not get it and only two of them got it and also that it mostly happens in the winter. I hope this advice can help someone else. What a stupid name for something that does not make any cankers. They should rename it cane die back, because the canes die. That is what it is. If I look up stem die back, I can also find some stuff, but this was not killing the stems. It was killing the canes.