Or you can leave the soil hilled up over the canes after planting and let Mom Nature wash it off. The new canes and leaveswill grow through the hill of soil. To protect the bud union during unexpected (in your area) bitter cold, plant the graft 2-4 inches below the soil surface then hill the soil over the canes above that. I'm one who advises planting as soon as you can work the soil. Your dormant rose will stay dormant in the cold ground until the sun warms the soil, promoting roots and leaf out. Better to store it there than potted in a garage. Even though it's cold, water it well. This settles the soil and prevents the canes from drying out. I soak mine in diluted fish emulsion, then pour it in the hole and on the bush when I plant. Although the wax is suppose to prevent the canes from losing moisture, it's often colored green to make the bush look fresh and blemish free. Either way it'll melt off in the sun as the weather warms. You'll probably have some dieback due to harvest damage. A grade 1 1/2 is suppose to have at least two canes 3/8 inch in diameter or larger. It can have more. Because you bought yours so early it sounds as if you may have gotten a pretty nice grade 1 1/2, depending on how the roots look. Most bagged roses I've ever got had roots no more than a couple of inches long. That's one reason it's a 1 1/2 grade and hidden in a bag.

I don't think roses on Fortuniana can go dormant. I've growns (and continue to grow) both R. x fortuniana and four or five roses on fortuniana. From it's parent R. laevigata, fortuniana gets genes that make it grow through winter and to set bloom very early in spring. Remember that where it comes from, winter is not what we know as winter...it's just shorter daylight. Fortuniana roots keep pushing nutrients and wanting to grow into the above ground parts, whether they are fortuniana or something else put on by grafting or budding. Jimmy Moser out in warm, warm Memphis years ago wrote about overwintering his roses on fort...in plywood boxes that fit over his roses. That said, you need to grow a rose on fort in conditions where it never slows down. It's both eyeopening and a bit depressing because never will you and I get growth like that, short of moving way far south with the flying cockroaches and fire ants and buckmoth caterpillers and chilli thrips and need to air conditions six to eight months of the year. WIth two decades in Houston and NOLA, I say that without wistfullness.

Toni, right, except that we never, ever reach 105. We only get to 100 about once in 5 years. But from mid-June through mid-September, we'll go above 90 every day, and July and August, at least 95 every day, with night temperatures falling only into the high 70s all that time. We've not had a night below 70 since May. 74 tonight. So we normally get a big growth flush in early June, then no growth at all until about now. Under our summer conditions (unlike in the North, where you get breaks from the heat now and then), plants which use the C3 photosynthetic method (citrus are prime examples) barely break even on their energy collection balance. Photorespiration, a process which uses the photosynthetic machinery, but which wastes energy, becomes a serious drain on energy resources when temps are high and in bright light. So trees (not just citrus, also the pecans, magnolias, etc.) in our type of climate make most of their net carbon gains in the spring and fall, and therefore, that's when the tree has enough energy to actually grow. The high night temps add to the problem, in that they keep the "normal" respiration rate high, burning off even more energy. Plants which use the C4 pathway, such as sugarcane, corn, sorghum, redroot pigweed, Johnsongrass, just grow faster and faster, as it heats up. They love high temps, as long as they have adequate water. That's because they do hardly any photorespiration. But the C3 plants (99.6% of the earth's species, and almost all of our commonly grown crops) really are not well-adapted to growing during such weather; rather, they are adapted to surviving it while waiting for cooler temps.

Whether you're seeing damage or dormancy kinda depends upon your temps and where you live. I don't think Desert Rose is too fond of cold. I've killed more than my share from either too cold or too wet (or both). If the stems and trunk are still firm, likely it will recover, but I'd probably make sure it does not go much below 55 degrees -- like plumerias -- and keep it out of the rain. Hopefully others with more experience will respond.