Looks like classic Round Up damage to me - roses are very susceptible. I would just prune it off, and make sure the rose is well watered.

Jackie

I second RU damage.

I don't use anything--weeds are green, too, and can be cut with the grass--much better than having a yard full of poison. My definition of organic means nothing at all. I'm glad to hear perfect lawns with grass as soft as a rug isn't an obsession elsewhere.

Lindsey

Bit of a lapse in your logic there, Nik! "We" may be using too much, but glyphosphate doesn't have much to do with "lawn culture", as it kills grass, too. Broadleaf herbicides like dicamba and 2,4,D (agent orange, anyone?) are the weapons of choice for the lawn-obsessed. Round-up more likely to be used by gardeners to clear paths and edges, in relatively minor amounts.

The preponderance of use here is in industrial agriculture, in conjunction with "Round-up ready", GMO crop varieties. The other large use is by road maintenance departments, which use it to keep roadsides clear of vegetation (a big deal in California, where a tossed cigarette or cars pulling off the road can easily start a wildfire in the dry season).

It is also used, with restraint, in ecological restoration, where it can be a useful tool.

What do you see as a problem with glyphosphate (other than a flurry of accidental damage cases showing up on these forums from time to time)? I do assume that not all of its longterm effects are understood at this point (as is the case with many of our "brilliant" molecular inventions!) -- time will tell -- though it is still considered relatively low-impact, short-term, the last I heard. Any and all biocides must be considered to have potential for unintended consequences, since everything is connected -- especially considering the very last organisms we think about when using these "remedies", those living out of sight, microscopically and/or underground, and carrying out key functions for life. Use of fungicides and bactericides are, on that score, a more fundamental concern to me.

I'm not an advocate for glyphosphate, by the way -- I consider any and all of these "-cides" a last resort and am very much a fan of IPM, without spray bottles.

Nik, I do notice regular postings of Roundup damage on these forums by regular gardeners. I don't want any near me, but at one point a neighbor had sprayed some in one weedy corner of our yard. I asked him to stop. I was appalled but it was nothing compared to what some people have reported here.

Actually while the narrow leaves look like Roundup damage, the roses themselves look like proliferation to me. I have seen such roses in my own garden from time to time, and without any leaf damage.

Catspa, yes you're right about glyphosate's unsuitability for lawns, it was too late last night when I posted.. Still, my point was that it is too often I read here about incidents of herbicide damage due to husbands / neighbours etc and I can't believe everybody gardens in between farming plots or orchards.. Herbicides, selective or not, are abused here also by farmers but I don't think they are used too much in gardens. Maybe we are more weed tolerant or we love making noise with our strimmers.. Additionally, not all reported herbicide damage attributed to glyphosate may be actually caused by that particular herbicide.

Rosefolly, I think that proliferation may result from the use of herbicides although I'm not sure about glyphosate.

I have Evelyn roses that have some buds each spring showing this very thing, and it's proliferation. I don't use Roundup or herbicides. Diane

Proliferation arises from hormone imbalance and can have a multitude of causes, nicely discussed here in a paper from U.C. Davis, which maintains the Foundation Plant Services collection of virus-free roses. The article mentions environmental conditions, water stress, insect damage, and infection by phytoplasmas (a weird class of bacteria lacking cell walls and a focus of this article) and viruses (e.g., rose rosette), with hot weather during the period of bud formation mentioned as a common cause in roses. It can also be induced by application of cytokinins (plant hormones involved in shoot elongation and cell division), so what Nik mentions seems at least conceivable, if the herbicide in question were an analog to some cytokinin.

Too true, Nik, that overspray damage by significant others, etc. are recurring themes here. My own experience is that the non-rose or -plant oriented person (e.g., my husband) doesn't even SEE the plant in question while focused on what they are doing, so, yeah, getting "help" in the garden can be fraught with peril.

Does anyone know if pesticides cause proliferation?

Lynn

They shouldn't..

Thanks, Nik. This has been a point of curiosity for me, as my roses are not sprayed, but a professional service sprays around the perimeter of my house, and property line. This keeps the crawling unwanted; especially the poisonous types, out of our home.

I think the stunted buds could be from cold snaps when the buds were developing. Teasing Georgia is one of those that will have that happen to it. I've had it a few times with late freezes.

As far as herbicide usage, yes we Americans like a manicured look. I have used RU on invasive honeysuckle and other invasive stuff and weeds I don't want to pull, like Poison Ivy. Actually the worst weed in my yard is my lawn, Bermuda grass spreads under ground and it's always invading my flower beds. Usually I pull it up, but sometimes I do use RU on it. I have switched mostly to an organic herbicide (rosemary oil) which I really like.

I do use RU on poison oak, and also on milk thistle which will form impassible thickets without attention. I've been working hard to reduce the amount I need to use and it's down quite a bit. I suspect I'll never be able to drop herbicide usage completely. The birds keep reseeding poison oak, and I am not able to handle it even in gloves.

Buford, narrow leaf selective herbicides can be used against bermuda grass in place of roundup.

Rosefolly, if I had a real problem with poison oak, which I don't since it does not exist here, I would use triclopyr ester (a brush killer) against it rather than glyphosate.

However, Nik, a potential problem with triclopyr ester is that in many circumstances it does not degrade quickly and can remain potent and in the environment for months after it has been applied. I personally know of at least one restoration planting that failed due to triclopyr still being around more than four months after it had been applied, killing the newly installed plants. It is also mobile in the environment, including via sheet flow of water, which is a problem when it doesn't break down quickly. So, if using it, those factors need to be kept in mind. Roses are particularly susceptible to broadleaf herbicides like triclopyr (as well as glyphosphate), according to this University of California IPM page.

The grass-selective herbicide that might be used for bermuda, sethoxydim, is much less persistent (a few weeks) and, of course, has less potential for collateral damage, since it is specific to grasses.

At least one thing glyphosphate has in its favor is that it degrades very quickly, despite its other flaws.

just a mention that Prolifera de Redoute predates most of the -cides that we (aka our neighbors) use nowadays, Combined Rose List has it before 1824.

Nik, the brush killers are you mention indeed more effective against poison oak (and its evil cousin poison ivy east of the Rocky Mountains) than RoundUp is. My DH Tom is an amateur radio enthusiast and he has a couple of retractable antenna towers in the back part of the property, one in the midst of a bed of roses and the other further back outside the fence behind an old stable. We had that area out in the back cleared of poison oak with a Bobcat (small bulldozer) about ten years ago so he would be able to work there. Now it is just the new sprouts and bird seedings that I must work against. RU works fine for that tender growth, and as Catspa explained, it is less persistent in the environment, which is my reason for choosing it.

If I did not work on the poison oak every year it would right back to where it was very quickly.

Much of this area is a steep hillside, barely walkable, though it is level where the tower is. This is one of the places I have been planting trees. So far in this area two Quercus douglasi (blue oak), three Pinus sabiniana (ghost pine), a Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine), Cupressus arizonica 'Blue Ice' (Arizona cypress 'Blue Ice'), Pinus brutia eldarica (Afghan pine), and a Cedrus deodar (deodar cedar) have survived and even thrived, though a number of my earlier attempts failed. It is brutal out there, and I won't water past the second year. Well, maybe one or two waterings for a couple years longer in a really bad drought year. I think I could squeeze in one or two more trees, and perhaps I will, but I will wait a while. Because of our low rainfall, trees must be spaced well apart so that each has its own area from which to pull water.

I'm just grateful that we have enough water to grow trees. I love them as much as I love roses.

I don't kid myself that these trees will suppress poison oak altogether even when they are grown because poison oak is quite a shade tolerant plant. However it probably would not get enough light to form a solid six-foot-high thicket like the one that was here before. As for the vast ocean of shoulder-high milk thistles, my thought is that if I can spray enough to keep any from going to seed, we will eventually exhaust the seed bank that has built up in the soil. I hope that is true. We have already switched from discing for fire prevention to mowing, so we aren't stirring up the seeds anymore. And it is less shade tolerant than the poison oak is, so I am hopeful about shade suppression as well.

I call my garden 'Hundred Roses' as a play on the name of the town of Thousand Oaks in the southern part of the state. But it has quite recently occurred to me that I could just as easily have called it 'Two Towers' in honor of Tom's antenna towers.

Rosefolly