I forgot to mention.... I live in Virginia just south of DC. I've attached another photo.

I don't know what is going on with gardenweb, but I haven't been able to post a response on here all day. A while ago I tried for the umpteenth time and the prior post is all that showed up. I am going to try this one last time and if it doesn't work, then I give up. *Ok, so my husband just figured out what the problem was. I mentioned Daves Garden in the post and Gardenweb saw that as my posting an ad for them. Here is my update on the trunk: Well, I have my answer. As dismal as it is, at least I know what is going on.We had our neighbor stop by, he's a tree farmer, and has a couple hundred acres of trees he sells. He asked me a lot of questions. I told him I bought this tree from an online nursery, and that when I received it, it had spots all over the leaves. It was not dormant when I got it, it was fully leafed out. I then called the nursery and said I think the tree has leaf spot, but the nursery told me it was not leaf spot, but instead it was their overhead watering, and that it wasn't a fungus or anything. It being my first tree I never questioned them for a minute. I found out the next year that it was in fact anthracnose and after that I picked up every single leaf it ever dropped in the fall and sprayed the tree before the buds opened in spring. I thought that would work and really never gave it another thought. Even yesterday the whole anthrascnose never entered my mind as a possibility. The tree has 4 cankers. He believes that the anthracnose never left the tree and eventually the cankers showed up. He said the best thing to do is to remove the tree and demand my money back from that nursery for selling me a tree that they knew had anthracnose. I actually had contacted them when I found out what it was, and they said they weren't aware of any problems with their trees, however, on their Dave's feedback someone was completely irate that their trees arrived with anthracnose. If I remember correctly he was livid that the nursery had not taken them off the website and not notified anyone about the anthracnose.. I am going off of memory as this was a few years ago but I remember it. Anyway, I'm not calling them and demanding my money back or a new tree. The tree cost us $30, we gave it the best start that we could, we loved it while we had it, and in the end this was all out of our hands in terms of this tree's future. Thank you for everyone's suggestions and advice.

Thanks for the comments. My County Extension office didn't have anyone available to look at the leaves and didn't have anyone scheduled anytime soon. Because of that, I took the leaves to a plant clinic at a local arboretum. The person who looked at them said the cause is most likely environmental, but that vegetables aren't his area of expertise. Byron, Which particular viruses are you concerned about? If I can find photos on the Internet, I can compare them to my leaves. Thanks in advance, Cheryl

Hi Linsul I agree, the first rose looks like transplant shock (messed up rooot system) or it could be too much fertilizer of some sort (burned roots). Either way, it is all about keeping the soil wet, and protect the plant during the hours of the day when the sun is at it's harshest. Some kind of semitransparent fiber cloth is often used to protect, it's easily available. Roses (plants in general really) grown in green houses get this too when they are suddenly planted outside in full sun. They need time to adjust, or leaves will burn. It looks like you have amended soil generously, and if you have hard clay soil adding compost yearly can be a must to improve it. Cotton burr is new to me, and sounds very interesting. I like seaweed meal too, it's great for improving clay soil. I like to alternate with amendments and use different stuff. Where I live composted cow manure, seaweed meal, and regular garden compost are the easiest to find. You probably don't need to fertilize with anything until the plant has bloomed. Liquid organic fertilizer, the kind that you can use for all potted plants, are pretty safe to use on everything. If you have hard clay soil it will improve with time, but yearly additions of compost, ground seaweed can be a must. Regards and best of luck with your roses :-)