The abstract may be misleading on one aspect. The tested roses were not selected at random. The full paper states: "The majority of samples were symptomatic, however, a few had no symptoms."

"you could get a bad plant from so many vendors, but once I get an obvious yellow zig-zag one, I don't trust the vendor anymore." Ahh yes, the "baby and the bathwater" approach to buying roses. Unless you know for a fact that a particular rose you are buying has never, ever been grafted onto a different rootstock, then you have no guarantee that its not infected with one or more viruses. A second reasonably trustworthy scenario is if the nursery is grafting onto certified virus free rootstock and they have certified the scion variety is virus free as well. (aka VID) If you are prepared to abandon a supplier because it sold you one virused rose, then you can't trust any of them. Believe me, every rose nursery has some virused plants in their collection and they probably don't even know, since so often they show no signs of the disease! How can you fault them for that??? Many experienced rose growers prefer to ask the nurseries they buy from about the rose's provenance and whether or not the nursery knows the infection status of that variety. Most suppliers have a pretty good idea what's what. Lastly, I'll say this again: any rose that has ever been budded to a foreign rootstock is at risk of being infected with virus. That's a lot of roses, by my count.

For someone in zone 10, there probably is very little chance of mosaic type virus spread as the rose's immune system is effective at high temperatures. ----------------------------------------- Concerning Davis's indexed roses. Davis has recently published a paper where they announced that they found an aphid spread virus in their indexed rose plantings (see page 511): "In this test, RSDaV was detected in many different rose species and cultivars from the Foundation Rose Collection at FPS. In all, 129 plants in this collection were tested, and 77 were positive for RSDaV. Some of the hybrid rose cultivars tested positive for RSDaV included Queen Elizabeth, China Doll, Heirloom, Lowell Thomas, Jack Frost, New Dawn, Uncle Joe, Bridal White, Butterscotch, and Cynthia. It is interesting that the virus was detected in more than 69 plants in two rows (total number of plants in these rows was 89) of the collection which were planted in the mid 1990s. In all, 162 samples of R. multiflora from the virusindexing rose blocks also were assayed in the spring and RSDaV was found in 94 plants. The majority of RT-PCR-positive R. multiflora plants were symptomatic. Another 40 additional plants from the same virus-indexing blocks were tested in the summer and 6 were positive." Here is a link that might be useful: link for above.

Thanks so much for posting this every year, Diane! I would otherwise miss the survey, and it's interesting to ponder the list every year to see what's surfacing. There were some truly outstanding roses on the list this year - Florentina, Navy Lady, Love Song, Poseidon, Dark Desire - so it was a pleasure to rate them. I had 44 that I have had long enough to have an opinion, plus another dozen or so that are too new to know much about. It's always fun to see what others have to say too, and if you fill out the review they send you the summary when it's complete. Cynthia