>I will be happy to be wrong. What do you think? There's a reasonable chance that you're wrong. I've seen this same stuff too here, not nearly so much as what you were looking at, but to a noticeable extent on a very young rose that was clearly suffering, suffering. The rose here was planted in the ground on the north side of our house but very near a pot ghetto yard area that RRD had spread like wildfire through, so I kind of gave it a second thought at the time I started wondering what to do about the rose. But none of the roses I ended up throwing out due to RRD looked like this rose, and the fact that the rose has grown and looks completely normal now (though still small and somewhat leggy) convinces me that this rose totally escaped RRD. The rose, Little White Pet, did have a few black canes that I cut out. We then moved the rose to a much sunnier spot about a month ago. It's doing much better now, and looks as if it might be the rose we were hoping for. If your spot already has plenty of sun (looks as if it does, going by the heavy, beautiful blooming shown in a previous year), maybe think about assuming a fungus problem and do whatever you might do for that, including, perhaps, pulling the rose a little farther out from the wall to get more air circulating. We didn't do anything other than to cut out the black canes and move the rose to a sunnier spot and it appears to have worked. Best of luck with your beautiful Baltimore Belle. Mary

My understanding is that any rose on which the wind lands a mite is susceptible to getting RRD. I have dug up one rose with RRD per year for the past 4 years. The last one was just last month--and now I'm worried that my new climber has RRD. Spotted some slightly odd growth a couple weeks ago--cut out that entire cane in hopes that I caught it soon enough to help--but I don't really know if it was RRD or not. I'm just paranoid enough now that I look around expecting it to pop up anywhere! As to the hybrid musk's being more susceptible idea, I don't think so--at least as far as my garden goes. Of the four that got it, plus the new one that maybe has it, only 1 was a hybrid musk. The others were 1 new tiny floribunda, 1 big old climber, 1 newer climber, and perhaps 1 brand-new Austin climber. I think what is so aggravating about RRD is that it seems totally irrational and entirely a "by chance" thing--nothing predictable or controllable about it! I too know of no source, although there is some will stuff growing outside of town, about a mile from here. Don't know if that includes wild multifloras or not. Kate

Did Blue Girl show other symptoms of RRD? Did the canes that started red turn green? Or did other symptoms arise on that bush? Transmission within a garden seldom has ever happend in that sort a period of time. The vector mite populations don't spike until September in zone 5 conditions (this from the juried scientific literature.) When the rose arrived at your home from Michigan Bulb, was it leafed out, or was it bare of leaves, and had it been dipped in wax? You may not have heard of RRD before this happened. Most people haven't. But you might want to consider that the disease has been to the north of you in Canada, to the south of you in Pennsylvania, in every county in Ohio to the west of you. And so far, I've seen it to the east of you in the BBG in Brooklyn...in the middle of the city. The vector mites are easily carried by winds and fall infections on hybrid teas show most often in new growth the following spring. This I know from my own garden experiences and it fits what others see, as well. There is no way to say where the vector mites came from that infected the rose in your garden that is near your new rose. (And there is no lab test to identify the disease; experienced plant pathologists depend on a collection of symptoms for identification.) There is NO reason to tear up an entire rose bed. As suggested above, remove the sick rose(s). That's what we do when other diseases strike and it works for RRD. Do look upwind of your home for Rosa multiflora. You may find it along stream beds or even growing up into trees. With the disease pressure on roses to the north west and south of your state, RRD is moving into New York, even though it doesn't get talked about. Good luck. Don't panic or make yourself ill about this. I can say this because I've been dealing with RRD in my garden for ten years. I continue to grow roses. I loose a couple of plants each year to RRD. There's RRD in wild roses three miles away. It's become a fact of life, but I can enjoy the ones that live and try to mourn the ones I loose....a lot like life, really. My E-book linked below has twelve chapters about rose rosette as well as a FAQ. It's based on a lot of visiting other gardens with RRD in them as well as a lot of research. The Bibliography at the back is up to date, science wise, if you can stand to read about the intentional spread of RRD to kill multiflora.

Dorothy, I'd blame it on the wind and on those little aphids that get blown around by it and they vector the RRD.I'm sorry you lost your roses. So far, I still have three roses left---two old passalong climbers that I brought with me from Fort Worth in 1999 and one Graham Thomas rose that we planted way back in 2005. I love the David Austin roses and used to have more of them, but either drought or flooding wiped them out, and I'm afraid to plant any more roses at all. I do not want to bring home RRD on a purchased plant and have it spread to the few roses I still have. I think those of us in rural areas have less chance of having RRD spread to our existing plants, but that doesn't mean no chance---as is evidenced by what happened to yours. As far as I know, no one within at least a mile of me even grows roses, and I hope that doesn't change. I do feel like it is almost inevitable that RRD shows up here sooner or later and gets my plants because it just seems like it is everywhere any more. All it really takes is a good stiff wind carrying some aphids here and there all bets are off. Patti, There is no cure. The only solution is to immediately remove the affected plants and put them in sealed trash bags and dispose of them. The longer you put it off, the bigger the chance that the RRD will spread to other roses---if not your own, then to others in your neighborhood. I wouldn't delay. I'd get rid of those sick ones ASAP because now they are carriers and will only spread it as it further develops on or within them. Think of them as Typhoid Mary. Some people try to prolong their plants' lives by pruning away the obviously infected foliage, but since the virus inhabits the entire plant, including the roots, this only allows the disease to survive as long as the rose plant survives, and if it is surviving, it is vectoring the disease and infecting other plants. I believe it is, in part, the slow reaction on the part of people who don't want to give up their RRD-infected plants that is allowing this terrible virus to continue spreading at such high rates. As long as people keep clipping off the worst branches, they are allowing the disease to continue to thrive in that plant and that means it can spread to other plants. Attempting to control aphids (they spread the RRD) might help slow its spread, but it is almost impossible for a home gardener to be able to completely kill all the aphids with the types of products available to home gardeners. Commercial landscaping companies may have access to stronger systemic products for aphid control, so if you are concerned about the survival of your other roses, you might consider talking with a commercial landscape maintenance firm and see if they think that having them treat your roses for mites could possibly save the rest of your roses. Sad to say, but these last few years, RRD seems like it is at epidemic levels here in our state and it shows no sign of slowing down. I think that ultimately the only solution will be that perhaps the breeders can breed resistance of this disease into roses, but that sort of solution is a long, long way off if it ever happens at all. I ignore all those people (often people within the horticultural industry) who encourage us to keep buying and planting roses to replace the ones lost to RRD. Really? This is good for whom? Well, the horticultural industry because they sell more roses, but I'm not willing to put my long-term happy and healthy roses at risk by bringing in more that might be infected when I purchase them. I wish there was a way to buy new roses and grow them on for a couple of years in total isolation before putting them in the ground and risking them bringing in an infection, but there's just no practical way to do that since the wind here blows every which way. Dawn