I think a few clarifications are needed. RRD according to Epstein and Hill, the profs who studied it and encouraged its spread, found that RRD interferes with the plant's ability to convert sugar to starches which, in turn, interferes with a rose's ability to survive winter and come back the following spring. They even illustrated a simple test of cutting a stem and testing with medical iodine the presence of starch and the total absence of starch they said was evidence of RRD. When I visited Jim Amrine, we found that there were some starches in early summer in RRD infected canes, but not comparable to what E&H illustrated. A friend burned RRD infected rose canes and found them (undried) to burn very fast, surprisingly so. You might have gotten lucky and the disease not spread all of the way down the canes into the roots. IT it got into the roots, you will see hideous aberrant growth by midsummer. RRD IS an automatic death sentence if you do nothing at all for two or three years.

Ever since I pulled out a rose with DEFINITE symptoms -- 'Yellow Sweetheart, Climbing' showing red new growth is fine, but when that new growth is suddenly STUDDED with prickles, you know something's terribly wrong, because this rose is "thornless" -- I examine my roses pretty much daily. When I see growth like this, I mentally imagine taking a picture in B&W -- does it still look weird? Are the leaves taking on normal shape? It still freaks me out, knowing RRD is in my area. I think it's inevitable that it'll hit me again. But when I see "not obviously RRD" new growth like this, I wait a few days to see if it greens up. So far this year, it all has, or is about to. Another thing I am noticing this year -- many cases of multiple shoots coming from the same area. Why am I not freaking out about this? Because what is coming out looks normal, albeit "enthusiastic". Generally, the first bud to emerge is the central bud -- the two side buds are "suppressed" by the central bud being in an active growth phase. But then we had that week of nights dipping into the mid 20s after over a month's worth of leafing out. Many of those central buds were damaged -- some growth even melted away entirely. That meant the side buds were no longer being 'suppressed", and they started to grow. In some cases, the central bud's growth recovered, and the resulting "three shoots from one point" looks scary now. But as I said, the shoots coming out look normal -- it's just that there are more than the "normal number" because of that late freeze. :-) ~Christopher

What bothers me the most is that the bud with pink petals looks normal, and yet NONE of the supporting leaves have turned green, nor do they appear to be going to turn green. I saw something like this in the now-lost garden at LMU. A rose with stems and leaves magenta red-mid summer- and it never turned green and then the buds opened normal color. Things just aren't supposed to happen that way, and where did the chlorophyll go- or is it totally overwhelmed by excessive anthocyanin production. Same picture with buds: damn. those buds are lacking receptacles- no place for ovules so something is really messing with the reproductive parts of that rose. I have seen that before with RRD symptoms. Your backgrounds on those last shots are lovely, and that bed has great plant spacing. If that were mine, I couldn't live with it in that bed. Ann

The unexpected sometimes just hits us in the face. The first RRD in my garden happened when we had taken out a 'volunteer' wild rose that was a bird dropped multiflora seedling. (Darn.) My husband dug it out midsummer and it put up one puny cane in August. September came with a ground cracking drought, and the cracks in the ground were right next to the volunteer cane. Then suddenly every leaf axil on that cane sprouted aberrant new growth A midwinter thing I saw on RRD sick roses in other peoples' gardens. Winter had hit, rose leaves were brown and canes were totally dormant. Out of the dark, came single massive bright green canes with gnarly looking leaves at every leaf axil. Bright Green. When nothing else was. The canes quickly died in the next freeze, but really unexpected.