Can't wait for Ann's assessment. It looks better than most of the others. But I don't like it. Down on that main stem that you are showing. The lateral breaking on the left looks like it is getting thicker at the top. The short one on the left is twisting. It looks like there is a stipule on top with no leaves attached. All together too many breaks on one lateral.

Second photo looks like the whole cane is throwing bad growth. All of the leaf sets are in threes not five I'd take off the whole cane. It may be time too think about removal of the bush. Maybe it was hit with a herd of mites. Or you could try cutting the whole bush back quite a bit to hopefully remove any other mites that are on there.

Thanks a lot Patty. I appreciate you always chiming in. What has me really scared is that these three canes were not isolated to a single area. If cane 1 was in the noon position looking down at the shrub, cane 2 was at 3:00 and cane 3 was at 6:00. I have never seen early RRD on so many separate canes on one plant. I feel like I am running a mite buffet here.

I'm sorry oddyssey,I forgot to ask you something. While these growths are happening are you seeing any new growth that looks heathy. Are there other parts of the rose that are also growing. I have First Crush but moved it a while back. It is just starting to grow again. Your leaf edges look good and thickness of most breaks look okay. Wait for Ann

Tomorrow I will force myself to check out one of my two First Crushes. Both have been in the ground for a year. One had a questionable cane about eight weeks ago that had odd growth only on one side and that from the top of the cane down. It looked ok until Friday. I was weeding grass out of my beds (we've had nine inches of rain in August and no day time highs below 89 and hellish humidity. I didn't have the heart to check it out. Should have but I'll blame my hesitance on the heat. Anyway, at a distance the color shook me up badly.

That said, the combination of the two First Crushes this spring at the base of a Dr. W van Fleet were totally beautiful and meant to be.

More tomorrow around lunch time.

Patty--yes, there is definitely normal growth on other canes.

Ann, thanks for your response and I'll look for you to check back in tomorrow. Summer Romance and First Crush both seem to throw really red new growth. It freaks me out too. Makes it easy to miss the RRD symptoms.

Stay cool tomorrow!

I think this growth looks normal for First Crush, mine looks like this from time to time and we do not have RRD here.

That is good to hear Ninkasi. Her leaves are the correct shape they look as thou they are turning green. The thickness is not bad except for the shoot on the left that I cannot see that well. Don't like the leaves of three and I do not like any strange growth on a rose that has already had 2 cases of rrd. I'm hoping for the best for your rose. If she makes it she deserves a medal or a showcase light at her feet.

So true dublinbay. I freaked out when my New Dawn threw out a huge cane that was all bendy with soft thorns. However, within a couple of days it greened and hardened up and was perfectly normal. I'd just never really paid any attention to the new growth on her before and in fact, she had declined before I transplanted all of my five and they were rejuvenated.

New growth on my Summer Romance is all very red.

My day can't have been much worse.

Two Summer Romances. Same bed, three feet apart. One with green growth. The other, the one I removed a suspect cane from ...three problem canes. Two (there was only one three days ago with red growth) with red growth at the end and it is classic witches broom, at least as much as the deer left uneaten. And a new previously unseen third cane six inches long with two sprays of blooms that are light yellow petals and that redefine b**t ugly as well as hyperhorny, asymmmetric discolored leaves and internodal distances of less than half an inch.

I don't see the side growths of new breaks along the stems of either of my roses. And we have darn near drowned with 9+ inches of rain this month and almost eight inches in July and warm temperatures.

I'm in a foul mood because of the lost buds....damned deer seem to have a taste for Perfuma rose blooms as well as RRD freshest growths. This flush of roses is flushed.

I hope RRD never makes it to Europe. But there are so many things beyond leaf color that are tied to the 'normal' order of the way a healthy rose grows.

Go to my adjectives: aberrant, excessive, and unexpected.

I think they still apply.

Ann, in the worst funk in a long time

I'm very sorry Ann you have had so much of this to deal with. Thank you so much for all of your help on here.

Odyssey, I'm kind of hoping you cut it off. Even my reddest of red growth has five or more leaves.

Thank you so much everyone. I do not want to be paranoid, and fear sometimes I am. But I have had so much RRD here I think I have PTSD from it. I have not yet cut the cane off. I'll take another picture and post it in a moment.

Ann, I am sorry to be the one who initiated your look outside that brought bad news. I can so relate. Some days are so discouraging because of this awful disease.

Here are some pics of the cane I left. I don't know. The terminal bud looks OK to me.

True to the title of the thread though, this growth on Jubilee Celebration scared me and I cut it off two canes. I really worry when buds start twisting.

Why would that be paranoia those are certainly not normal sepals on JC.

If you don't mind a dumb question. Is there any chance that you use a lot of alfalfa tea.

I had similar on my drop dead read a few weeks ago and panicked. But based on my experiences last year, I decided to wait. It turned out to be normal growth after all. It could be weather related.

I haven't used anything this year to feed except holly-tone.

It could be normal, but I am too afraid to risk it when I see bizarre, long leaves attached over a bud.

Update: I was on vacation for a week and wished I had cut off the suspect cane before I left! I came home to a much clearer case of RRD and cut off the cane.

I also came home to lots more cases of suspected RRD! I will post them in the next message.

After vacation I found RRD outbreaks on Zaide and Dames du Chenoceau.

This is really depressing.

Are these still recent enough infections that I could have caught them in time to save the roses? None of this was observable 9 days ago.

Odyssey Was that on the rose posted up above Golden Celebration. This is absolutely heart breaking. Makes me happy that all I'm dealing with is severe anthracnose.

I think there's always hope that we can catch it fast enough. Because sometimes we can.

Had I not had that optimism twelve years ago, all we'd be doing now would be digging out our roses . We HAVE saved some and that beats the heck out of saving none.

General question: have you had a really dry summer?

I see no harm in taking just the cane.. Unless this is the rose that has already had two or three previous infections. Then I would cut to the.ground and wait to see what grows back. That might not be until spring.

Patty, the update was on First Crush, the rose that originally prompted this post, not Golden Celebration.

Thanks Ann. I have so much RRD I guess I am trying to tell how advanced it is on each plant.

Yes, in Virginia summer has been hot and very dry.

I know I talked to neighbors and had them remove three RRD infected roses. I am wondering if the mites that were on their roses left for mine as they were being dug up. It has been so much worse this summer than last.

Thanks Patty. All the canes in the latest picures are ones that I cut to the ground. These are roses that have not been effected before.

The last 3 pictures are of Zaide, and the canes were from different areas of the plant, but all at cane tips. I think there are two ways to look at that--either the mite jumped from cane tip to cane tip biting as it went, or RRD is in the roots and has spread to the whole plant. Not sure which is correct.

Yes that is what I meant if it was from the photos of First Crush that you posted before Golden Celebration. I was thinking that it is possible that the virus became systemic in that rose and that it is to late to save it.

Patty--I am wondering too whether the First Crush infection is systemic. The only hopeful point is that the updated picture is one of the the same spots I posted about earlier. I let it go instead of cutting it because I thought this spot may not have been RRD.

I am thinking I should buy a miticide, since I seem to be running a buffet. Maybe killing off the mites would stop them from infecting their 4th, 5th and 6th roses?

Oh no, I'm so sorry for you. What a terrible thing to return home to, especially considering your instincts were correct!

Thank you Ninkasi! It is so easy to doubt my instincts because I really, really, don't want it to be true that I have more RRD. But now I am going to cut even when I am unsure. It is not worth the risk when there is so much RRD in my garden. We will see which roses have to be dug up.

I am so sorry, Odyssey and Ann.

That is what I do Odyssey. I realize most people think I'm wrong but I have seen enough rrd in my roses. Should I be taking off heathy growth I just do not care. I do have one rose Home Run that always puts out very strange growth. If this one catches the virus it will be too late by the time I see it.

Once again I'm so very sorry. As a last resort with a rose you can cut to the ground. When it starts to regrow there will be no doubt has to it health.

On the dryness:

I have talked about this with the guys at Arkansas and they agree that RRD seems to be worst in dry conditions. Farther north this may not apply, but a swath from OK/AR east and up along the Atlantic seaboard....

This may argue that odyssey's problem this year is coming from wild roses as well (or at least from unwatered roses). Hypothesis is that the mite haven gets dry and new growth slows and more mites migrate than on an average year. And they find a rose garden, well watered, with new growth, and they stay.

I'm not sure there will be a way to test this because of the variables, but it's what I've seen in my garden (My worst losses were a year when it was a serious drought, and I kept my roses well irrigated.)

But Ann, the mites are wingless and thus are only blown by wind. Whether they stay or go - they have no choice in that matter. Correct me if I am wrong.

They do have a choice. As much as any creature with a micron sized brain, if it even qualifies as a brain. I think of it as a series of if-then statements.
Years ago Jim Amrine told me about the mites being placed on leaves of R. bracteata: the mites hated that substrate and moved actively to leave.

When I visited him, the one place he knew he could find E.f. mites early in the summer did yield them. And they were on the stem, even through the move back to his office. And I got to watch the littel b*****ds as they stayed where they were. And I asked him why they were so un-mobil. He said had seen them chased with a probe and they really can move.

Maybe we can make an olympic sport of chasing eriophyid mites with a probe or (in a certain lab in California) a cat's whisker.?

To catch a (very light breeze) they have to get out in the "open" which may not be that large to something 120microns long. They do have six "feet" that will hold them to stems.

Try to think of them as if-then statements:

Rose under me? Stay

Not-rose under me? Go.

Moisture I can suck? Stay

Moisture not? Go.

Also remember these are so small that everything may be a threat to them. Again if-then.

Ann -- that makes perfect sense to me. This is first year that I got hit by RRD in a VERY sheltered garden (surrounded by mature spruces and the house in almost all directions). I started hand watering the garden regularly this year. The mites apparently found a way into this garden. It is of course an anectdote at best, but it seems that as a general rules, insects tend to be smarter/more capable that we give them credit for.

Farmerduck, they could have hitch a ride on a bee to get to your garden. You do have fairly good protection. Lucky you!