@Cecily I'm located in Brooklyn NY. The rose is a Graham Thomas climber. I got it in the fall of last year. It's still quite small. Photo below...sorry it is so shaded, the sun has just come out in full force. The "cane" farthest to the right under my finger is a stick .... Thanks!

I think its cold damage. Sorry.

What does that mean? Do I have to cut off the canes? all the way, or just till the brown part is over?

If it is cold damage it is NOT a disease or a bug, and you do not have to treat it with anything. Since the damaged canes seem to be producing healthy new growth, personally I would just leave them alone and see what happens. If they start to die back, you can always chop them off then.

One thing I would do - I would weed out all of that grass surrounding the bottom of the rose to at least 18 inches away from the canes. Then I would put down a layer of compost or mulch in the area you weeded, and sprinkle on some sort of "weed seed prevent" product there so that the grass seeds don't grow.

Jackie

I would prune the canes. The cane in the first photo has active canker you should prune below that point. When you do that notice the color of the inside of the cane. It must be white to apple green. Sterilize your pruners as you cut so as not to spread the canker. Then lightly prune the other canes to check the color of the pith (inside of the cane).

A new rose planted in fall will not necessarily have too much surviving cane left after winter.

Before pruning, which i think patty could b right - but it's hard to tell unless I saw the rose in person or better picks. With canker- the inside of the cane would be dying , so sterilize some pruners or a blade in bleach & do the scrape test. Lightly Scrape the outer layer of the cane off - in a couple of the bad areas- ( just a small area tho) to see if it's nice n alive inside or if there's dead or dying tissue. If it's nice n whitish green or light green then I wouldn't worry ab cutting off canes.

For whats worth the scratch test doesn't worth for a rose. The inner most part of a rose cane is the pith it is where the plant stores it's water and nutrients. This surrounded by the vascular system the xylem. So scratching will not show the pith.

Oh and Ido not mean to prune off the other canes just trim down some to check the health of the pith.

I always had problems with the health of GST canes and I had 26 of them in a hedge.

First, could you check and see if the brown damage is just on the southern (sunward) side.

Then use your finger to scratch into the brown and see if there is any green just under the brown, or if it's brown all the way to the pith?

Canker and sunburn have different long term solutions.

I didn't mean scratch lightly u have to scrape into the cane removing the outer layer. It does work on roses -for me!- I do it anytime I see something that's questionable on my rose canes & I can't tell if it's just making the woody bark or if there's a possibility it could be canker.

If u know what ur doing it works no problem!

I've had canes similar to that on my roses after I burned the crap out of them with too much fertilizer not paying attention to the amount I was applying :(. Anne's right also! It very well could be sunscald on the canes

I've burned a couple of my roses so bad the canes turned a dark reddish brown!! Nearly killed them few years back I was lucky to salvage them but the canes color remained until new canes where put out

I scratch hard take first layer off but only do SMALL areas so u don't tear big holes in your rose canes that's what I meant to say it came out wrong I guess but scratch test always works if canes dying inside maybe I should call it the shave test instead

I also think it looks like canker. The organisms that cause canker are around all the time and enter through the "skin" of a plant when it is injured, cold can cause injury so that spring is a common time to see canker damage. If the canker encircles the stem, all nutrients are cut off and the stem above the canker dies. If the canker does not encircles the stem, then it should recover. I agree that pith will show if the stem is alive or not, but you must cut off the stem off to see the pith, it is that corky stuff in the middle of a stem, but now the cane is dead for sure.

You can check for life under the bark with the scratch test, and as long as there is green under the brown, there is hope. It can be false hope because the stem could have died below where you scraped and the top of the stem as yet to die, that's why a stem can continue to produce foliage for a short time even after it is dead lower down.

In my experience, you can kill a weak plant by pruning off all the canker damaged stems, when if you just left it alone, it be would be ok. You can always prune the stem later if it dies, If it is a vigorous plant then pruning it won't hurt, do clean your cutters after each cut. You do not want to spread it to healthy wood.

Winter damage can be tricky to catch. I've had plants come out of winter looking completely green only to have them slowly start to turn brown and black over time. I think sometimes they freeze green and stay that way all winter so when you go check them in the spring they look like they're OK. Actually they're not. They've been frozen and died but it was to cold for them to turn brown. When they warm up in the spring the canes thaw and start to deteriorate. I had a lot of this happen the first polar winter we had. I thought most of my roses had made it through when I uncovered them only to see them slowly shrivel and die off as it got warmer. I sometimes have to prune 2 or 3 times in the spring as they die back further from winter.