James, I have no issues with the heat because they grow inside my house. I never put them outside, even for a couple of minutes. I grow them in a spare room that has a large window that gets early morning sun. I also have them under cheap grow lights that clip onto something that's near the plants. The grow lights take an ordinary grow bulb or you can use those long square grow light bulbs. Either type will work and the total cost is really cheap. Ever since I found out about the water my plants are growing fast. I use only organic fert. since the other types of fert. can burn the roots. The organic can not burn the roots. A guy that I purchase miltoniopsis plants from told me that since most tap water is purified to get rid of bacteria and other things most tap water contains chlorine and chorline burns the delicate roots. I never thought about this before and since I found out about chlorine being in most tap water, this makes sense plus you can smell the faint odor of chlorine in the tap water. I can't tolerate the heat so I stay inside and I set my thermostat at 70 degrees. If I'm happy with the temps. the plants are probably happy too. I almost forgot one important issue. I have a humidifier working 24 hours. It's a real cheap humidifier that I purchased off of Etsy. The humidifier looks like a fat white stick. I stick it in an old plastic water jug and you can see the mist coming out. Apparently it works real well. I can't tell you the brand because it came in a company box and everything is in Chinese including the instructions. I think that the humidifier cost me around five bucks. My set up is cheap but I haven't killed any plants. I currently have about seven plants putting out spikes. I have about twenty plants and I don't want anymore. I'll probably get another one only if the flower color appeals to me or if it's a cross that I don't have.

First of all, if new growth is coming off the dead canes, and not themselves quickly shriveling up and dying, then the 'dead' canes are not dead. Your photo shows canker on the first canes. They're not dead, they would not have put out that much growth as I see in your photo if they were dead. Pruning out the canker would leave you with nothing, though. When you prune out dead or sick canes you have to prune to a bud, you shouldn't just whack it off any old where. New growth only comes from buds, and any length of cane left above a bud will die and is one cause of the cankers you see on your new rose. You could keep it, it might still grow, but HD has a pretty good return policy, so I'd try to take it back. It's not dead, but it's in very poor condition and they should never have sold it to you like that. A newbie gardener is really better off buying plants from a reputable nursery. Big box stores don't qualify. You'll pay more, but you'll usually get a better quality of plant that's less likely to come with incurable problems that you then blame yourself for when the plant dies. And there'll be someone on staff who can help you with advice and recommendations. You can find that at the big box stores, especially in bad economic times when good sales staff are forced out of other jobs and end up at places like HD, but they're fewer and farther between at these places, and have less time to spend with you or keep the plant stock in good shape. Plants are a loss leader at HD. They don't invest anything in taking care of them.

Here are some photos of the tree and leaf damage. Here is a shot that shows the new growth that died. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/w6qd-Q90yFsEMJFnGolhXw?authkey=Gv1sRgCKq8-Mqyxr-AhgE&feat=directlink Here is one leaf without holes but with some sort of discoloration. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/KZ2BbOvjR8Z8FgTHgbTeJA?authkey=Gv1sRgCKq8-Mqyxr-AhgE&feat=directlink Here is a minor holed leaf. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/qktsc6QjoXh0yknZPlEYKA?authkey=Gv1sRgCKq8-Mqyxr-AhgE&feat=directlink However, when all together you can see how bad it is. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/3t07gyPYzywSYy7CXlqL3g?authkey=Gv1sRgCKq8-Mqyxr-AhgE&feat=directlink Finally, although it's always somewhat looked like this, the bark on the tree is torn off a bit. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/wWBpyzQA6xBY5wAoPE9F6Q?authkey=Gv1sRgCKq8-Mqyxr-AhgE&feat=directlink

I think if you show the whole plant it would be helpfull, it's a relative of the Stapelia family. I don't know exactly which one this is, and it could be a open hybrid.