I believe USA DA roses come from their operation in Tyler Texas.

Just a guess, but I think most of their roses are grown in Litchfield , AZ, near Phoenix. In all the times I have been to Tyler, I have never seen a David Austin growing field. Francis Roses, which is based in Litchfield, has shown pics of large fields of patented Austin varieties growing in thier fields. Whom could they be possibly be growing for besides DA itself?

Certified Roses is also headquartered in Tyler TX, but most all their roses are grown by Francis in Litchfield. I know that for a fact because I asked one of their production managers.

If both are grown out of LItchfield by the same grower, it’d also explain the prevalence of RMV in both their stock.

I’m only talking about their bare root operations. The own root 2 quarts, I have no idea.

Hey Ben, you nailed it!

From the web:

Francis Roses near Eloy has become one of the top rose breeders in the world. The over 600-acre farm recently moved down to Pinal County after previously being based in Litchfield Park.

They grow, breed and sell some of the best rosebushes in the state and send them out all over the country as well as parts of western Europe, to wholesalers and nurseries. They also run a rose research and development program. Tyler Francis is the owner of Francis Roses. He is a fourth generation farmer, and his father saw an opportunity to produce roses that could last in the sweltering Arizona heat.

“Agriculture has been in my family since before the Civil War. Originally we were Georgia farmers, then my great-grandfather decided to open up a cotton gin in Peoria and Glendale,” Francis said. “When my dad had the opportunity to start growing roses back in 1989, our first crop was 10 acres of roses, which is approximately 250,000 units, and now we are exceeding between seven to eight million units per year.”

The rose industry has blossomed into a huge business for Arizona, with about 75% of production in the United States moving to Arizona.The idea of Arizona being the perfect climate for rose growing may surprise some, but Francis said the industry is only going to get bigger.

“I think it has always been kind of a best-kept secret about Arizona,” Francis said. “Of course cotton is a part of our culture, and I think roses have always been a part of our culture. I think it is something that Arizona agriculture should be proud of, because we dominate in this category.”

The Eloy-based rose farm employs around 200 people and is ready to continue the success it has had with the secret cash crop of Arizona.

“With how the economy has evolved, it is really important that we have a vertically integrated business model,” Francis said. “We don’t have any retail centers, but from here, we integrate the roses, grow the roses and send them to our nursery in Texas, then distribute them out.”

Francis only sees bigger and better things for the future of the industry.

“Roses are the best selling flowering shrub in the country right now, and quite honestly, I attribute a lot of this to the new varieties that we are introducing,” Francis said. “As we bring these new varieties out, they are able to provide the consumer with a beautiful show, and if we continue doing this, it is just going to get better.”

That is strange as I have found David Austin roses hard to grow here.

an image from the web

Anything grown in Arizona should thrive in Austin, Texas

Debbym,

A grower’s goal is just for the plant to grow fast, with minimal fungal disease. I agree many Austins shrivel in heat, but the grower doesn’t care about the flower, just that the plant is big and healthy, as quick as possible.

Bob

Interesting they ship to Western Europe, I had thought there’d be import issues .

So. They're sending RMV to Europe. ...

Librariangardener, unfortunately we already have RMV, all over Europe and very prevalent in Turkey and other parts of the world as well. Luckily it's pretty benign in most cases.

RRD is another issue. We don't have that one. I would appreciate if they can avoid shipping infected plants here.

@librarian_gardner_8b_pnw European rose producers were already complaining about the US exporting RMV to their shores back in the 1950's. Jack Harkness wrote in his wonderful book, "Roses", 1977, that the US attitude about it was rather laissez faire with some producers actually stating they felt it brought a "decorative effect" to the plants. ONLY in America! MANY OGR's were exported to Europe from Roses of Yesterday and Today and they were notorious for their RMV infected stock. Back in the 1990s when a friend and I visited ROYAT and were taken up the mountain to their potted rose area, we noticed the plethora of RMV symptomatic plants. She exclaimed, "they all have VIRUS!". Mrs. Wiley's son, who had admitted us and taken us up to select the plants we had come to purchase, responded, "Oh, mom says that's chlorosis".

@roseseek Oh, I'm sure that WAS just chlorosis! LOL

Unfortunate that ROYAT was responsible for distributing so many virused plants that have persisted in commerce and collections ever since.

Thanks for this history, Roseseek. Wow, just wow

@librarian_gardner_8b_pnw you're welcome. @Paul Barden unfortunately, you're correct. That is one reason I created the ROYAT archive on HMF. From this archive, you can see which varieties passed through their hands and stand a much better than average chance of having been infected, even if they hadn't already been by the time they filtered through the other sources and landed at ROYAT as their final source. Often ROYAT was the last source before Vintage obtained them. The Vintage Big Catalog lists ROYAT as the source of many of their offerings.

Who knows when RMV made it into the contract grower they used, but it was likely fairly early as I've heard from more than one source that they used the same contract grower as Armstrong Nurseries did and Armstrong was infamous for the level of RMV infection. All of the AARS varieties were their introductions, often exclusives and they frequently distributed them to other growers. It's a very good bet the AARS collection were all infected when introduced. Nearly every Buck rose was introduced by ROYAT and I've not encountered one of them yet which wasn't infected. Some have been cleaned in more recent years but by the time I grew them in the 1990s, they were not. https://helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=17:23148

@roseseek All true. And unfortunately, many casual gardeners are of the opinion that because a rose doesn't display obvious visual symptoms of infection, that their plant must be "clean"! And yet we know that so many of the OGR types (and pretty much all the period AARS selections) have passed through "the contamination mill" before landing in our gardens.

Very interesting, Kim, and here I was blaming David Austin Roses for the spread of so much RMV. As far as Austin goes, I'd be willing to bet that Evelyn is one of their roses with the most prevalent RMV, and this is maybe one reason she was so quickly retired, while Tamora and Eglantyne are still sold, for example. Just my anecdotal opinion, given my long experience with Evelyn. All Edwards' Austins sold here are own root this year. Diane

@Diane Brakefield "All Edwards' Austins sold here are own root this year."

And I'm willing to bet these are all raised from cuttings taken from grafted inventory plants.

I had picked up a propagation text book at a library book sale in NOLA. It had Roses in it mostly from Dixie Rose Growers (company name ). One picture got me bad.

It was a long stem of rootstock (probably multiflora) and a different rose was grafted to each and every leaf axil. I know they were different because each one was labeled and all the names were different and all were OGRs whose names I recognized. How to share a vascular disease !

Going back to the 1800's there was a magazine called the Southern Agriculturist (available only on microfiche). Several articles talked about how to grow roses with bigger blooms: exarch /endarch graft them onto fruit trees and the strength of the fruit tree would transmit to the roses.

So, our bare-root DA roses are dug up in Eloy, Arizona, shipped to Tyler (3-4 days?) and then are FedExed to us (4 more days?). That takes 7 to 10 days to reach us from Francis Rose fields. I'll bet this weird weather and all the rain and snow is affecting the condition of the fields. Maybe there are delays in shipping as a result.

@stillanntn6b " Going back to the 1800's there was a magazine called the Southern Agriculturist (available only on microfiche). Several articles talked about how to grow roses with bigger blooms: exarch /endarch graft them onto fruit trees and the strength of the fruit tree would transmit to the roses. " And, isn't a remarkable coincidence the viruses we can test for and treat are FRUIT viruses which were INTRODUCED into roses? Prunus Necrotic Ringspot, Apple Mosaic, Strawberry Ringspot just happen to be an issue with roses.

@Diane Brakefield remember, it wasn't that many years ago the Austin Nursery reportedly responded to someone here on this forum when contacted about viruses in their roses that they saw virus in rose fields all over and felt there was little to be done about it. I had book marked that thread several years ago and Houzzless in their omniscience cleared it out with everything else. They've obviously "evolved", though. Several years ago they began demanding small nurseries guaranty they would ONLY propagate their roses on VI root stocks in order to obtain an Austin license. Of course there was no report whether Austin would ONLY supply VI scions for production. I don't know who produces for them currently, but at that time they bought from whomever had stock of the varieties they desired, as well as contracting with some to specifically produce for them. Syl Arena had complained years ago the Austin "machine" had contacted him about purchasing from him. He didn't sell to them as they were demanding 100% of many of his varieties produced that year. So, when they were simply shopping around, cherry picking what they wanted from producers all over and seeing RMV "everywhere", they thought nothing (or little) of it and officially took no stand on the issue. NOW, they won't sell you a license unless you guaranty in writing you will ONLY use VI stocks to produce their varieties. Of the three varieties you mentioned, only Eglantyne appears on the current FPS/Davis list of available indexed cultivars. https://fps.ucdavis.edu/roseselections.cfm

@BenT (NorCal 9B Sunset 14) - Interesting information about Francis Roses. I looked at their web page, and their list of their introductions includes quite a few that are well spoken of around here, including Delbard roses: Camille Pisarro, Maurice Utrillo, Marc Chagall, Alfred Sisley, Moonlight in Paris, Lavender Crush, Perfume Breeze, and others. I noted two or three of those as varieties I might get someday. I wonder how worried I should be about virus level in these relatively new introductions? Or, are they trying to use virus-indexed stock for the newer ones at least? I wonder how feasible that is in a large-scale operation.

Thank you Roseseek for this information about how the spread of RMV started.

Regarding potential RRV introduction to Europe, I just read a paper from 2020 which provided some sobering facts.

From the article:

"2,000 kg of roses are imported to Europe yearly from countries where this virus is present."

"all plants showing symptoms of RRD are generally infested by P. fructiphilus (Otero-Colina et al., 2018) if imported from North America. The presence of just one female will be enough to initiate a population. "

It seems it's really just a matter of time. I dread the impact in countries like Bulgaria and Turkey. I wish the EU would implement a full ban on the import of roses from any countries where the virus is present, even if that means we wouldn't get the new introductions from US hybridizers, but I doubt that will happen.

Link:

https://bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ppa.13255

Steve

Francis Roses does have contracts with many of the European breeders, including Delbard, Barni, and Tantau. They’ve brought many great roses to the US that we would otherwise not have access to. I would not hesitate to buy a rose from them, I do understand the plant may have RMV, but I’ve not personally seen the performance affected by it.

@BenT (NorCal 9B Sunset 14) - Thanks! As long as it's "just" RMV type viruses, I guess I won't worry too much. My area is prone to "the bad virus", so I will just worry about that one for now. Even so, there are a few rose bushes in the neighborhood that are over 10-15 years old, and none of them show RRV. Likewise the commercial landscaping around here - I haven't seen any obviously infected plants in any recent years. It may be that our local landscapers are relatively vigilant for it and yank infected plants before too long.

@seasiderooftop - Interesting article. I noted in the table of imports that the USA sends only 0.15% of the total rose imports to the EU - so it's quite limited already. I don't think you would have to forego new varieties entirely, if a handful of mother plants were imported in a careful manner. I mean virus-indexed, quarantined, sprayed with miticide, shipped, imported to quarantine, observed, virus-indexed again, and then eventually released for cultivation in the EU.

It is my opinion/viewpoint that there is no way out of the situation we're in, unless drastic changes happen within the rose production industry. We've had viruses in our roses for so many decades now that trying to create a path forward with clean scion and understock is pretty much impossible. The financial investment required is prohibitive, and then there's the complete lack of willpower on the part of most of the growers.

Pickering was a real standout in the industry: they cared. They worked very hard to avoid budding varieties that had virus, and they used seed-grown R. multiflora for the vast majority of their understock, so that introducing virus via rootstock was virtually impossible. I wouldn't be surprised to find that none of the scores of roses I bought from Pickering had any of the known RMV type viruses. But I don't think there's any rose grower here in the USA now who is invested in the way Pickering was.

Pickering actually did what one US grower has claimed to do forever. They indexed EVERY rose they sold. Ironically, I've never read ANY issue with one of their customers receiving a symptomatic rose from Pickering. I have read of and know at least one customer receiving symptomatic roses from the US source.

Well, who am I kidding? My plants' worst enemies are Old Man Winter and his right-hand man, Lackey O'Space. My average plant isn't living long enough to worry about viruses. (insert laugh-cry emoji here)

I started ordering from Pickering in ~1999, and I still have a number of my original roses from them. None have ever shown any signs of RMV (yes, I know visible signs aren't conclusive), but that's quite something. They are my most lamented lost vendor, with Vintage a close second in terms of selection of rare roses. Vintage sold a lot of virused rare roses due to it being that or nothing, for which I'm grateful. But they started treating some at UC Davis before they closed, and I have 2-3 of theirs that are VID (virus indexed).