Ani, leaves harbor pest eggs and disease spores. By removing the leaves you open the canes up so they can be sprayed with the Neem or a dormant oil spray. It really has nothing to do with hardiness or root growth, just the general health of the plant. Roses in our local climate start to drop their oldest leaves as a natural growth cycle. By removing the leaves, we're doing what nature is going to do for us anyway. The only spray I use in my garden is one round of Volck's Dormant Oil spray after I prune in January. When using any oil-based spray, the temperature has to be under 60F, including reflected heat coming off block walls, so it can be tough getting even one round sprayed. The dormant oil spray helps to suffocate eggs and spores and should only be sprayed when the roses have no leaves. Because I often have roses from other people's yards come through mine for raffles or trades, I'm also trying to keep a disease called San Jose Scale out of my garden. Some great nurseries to purchase roses from in the metro-Phoenix area are Berridges, 4600 block E Camelback, Bakers, 40th Str & Osborn and Harpers, Hayden, south of Thomas. These aren't the only nurseries, of course, but they're well-known for quality roses and knowledge of rose culture.

Here's the lowdown on patents: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/07/26/how-long-does-a-patent-last/id=50534/ If you go to this site, you can look up when a plant was issued a patent, and therefore know when it expires: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/result.html?sort=relevance&srch=top&query_txt=AUSrimini&submit=&patents=on The rose shown in the search results is David Austin's 'Strawberry Hill', which has the "Varietal Denomination" of "AUSrimini". It's very difficult to find a plant if you don't search using the Varietal Denomination. You can usually find that listed on the HelpMeFind site, http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/plants.php, or on the breeder's website (They're listed for most of David Austin's on his site). Tony

So our friends at Kordes have a new white climber, 'Alaska' http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.71050 The US patent was approved as of April 25th, 2017. It isn't showing up on Kordes website, or Certified Roses (who I believe is a new distributor of Kordes in the US). Does anyone have any idea how long it is from when a rose is patented to when we can get our grubby gardener hands on it? It's looks lovely, and from Jedmar's photo it doesn't look super-thorny (compared to the usual Kordes armaments). After getting slashed up by 'Quicksilver' again (this rose has drawn more blood from me than the rest combined!) I'm thinking maybe I want something less thorny than 'White Cap' to pair up with 'Florentina'. But how long is too long to wait?

Again, Thank you to all for this amazing information! When I look at Helpmefind sometimes it only list Australia patents and UK patents, but the US David Austin site list US introduction year. Nothing like a little confusion to make this harder to understand. I guess I will use the most recent patent date from any country. Malcolm ...Lim Ping mentioned that China was completely ignoring his patents and he was trying to be flattered, but it would be easier to be flattered, if money came along with it. Paul...When I listened to DA PR director she seemed to indicate that they were more or less dropping the roses with disease issues and only producing a few out of patent roses, if they did not have disease issues....soooo...I am guessing that they won't renew those trademarks....but I am thinking better to use the breeder code even if I am giving away an old out of patent, out of commerce David Austin. My husband suggested asking my cousin who did international law for MS....but I figured asking here might get me an answer that applies to roses, with all the smart people around here!!