Rosecollector, On "All my roses" is one thing, on a single cane on a multicaned bush is very different. I'm glad you don't have RRD. I've dealt with it for more than fifteen years and I am cited in the published literature. I'm not new to the problem. What I've tried to do is help people avoid getting RRD in their gardens and finding out too late what the problem is. Over a decade ago when I spoke at the national ARS in Philadelphia, a woman from north central Arkansas came up to me after the talk. She had come to the meeting specifically for my talk as she had lost 70% of her hybrid teas to RRD and no one in your area could help her at all. Now that Federal Funds are being devoted to the problem, you have a local specialist who you can pay to do a PCR test and she has a website with a few of the symptoms. So you are lucky to finally have an expert working for your state.

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

Thanks for the assurance everyone. The leaves are all dried up now in zone 6a. I will put up more close up pix tomorrow

Kali, your DJ looks fine but unfortunately you will probably lose that lovely basal break over the winter. Unless it has several more weeks to harden off before you get hard freeze the soft tissue in that cane will freeze and die. Not to worry though, it looks like your DJ is ready to climb and will put out new canes next spring! Ken, I'm really surprised you haven't seen any bagged roses around there. They are every where here in Metro Detroit. All the big box stores (HD, Lowes, Menards and Tractor Supply) get them in in early March. Places like Walmart and Meijers have them too. I've even seen them in fruit markets and Krogers! They're very cheap, both in price and quality, but I have gotten some great roses out of them. Just go in knowing that at least half of the time they are mislabeled and you can end up with a lot of mystery roses on your hands.