It depends on the age of the cane, and the type of rose. Older canes on large, hardy roses can produce a type of brown heartwood that is the same as the interior of trees. It isn't a sign of anything other than the cane being a few years old. The determining factor in pruning it out is how well it leafs out.

Hybrid teas here don't get a chance to develop big, several year old canes. So the pruning involves canes that are young enough that they should only have white centers. My DH spent this afternoon pruning old canes from Captain Samuel Holland. Those are almost 2 inches in diameter, and very different in character from something you would find on a tender rose in this climate.

Thanks. Maybe my best bet is to prune later in the spring, after I see where the new buds are coming. I wanted to do an experiment and leave some canes with different kinds of interior colors and see what happened, but I'm not that organized, I guess.

If it has a layer of green and then white I'd be inclined to leave it and wait and see. It's still very early and my roses have not even started to bud out yet. I'm waiting on some to see if there's any growth. It makes it a lot easier to tell what's good cane. You can always go back and do some more pruning later on. I usually have to do that anyway.

Thank you so much for the input. It's wonderful to have the opportunity to learn from those who have been growing roses longer than I have.

On HTs, there is a temptation to leave the "iffy" canes unpruned--the ones with some white but with a small tannish center. Sometimes that may work, but I have found that other times, leaving those canes unpruned meant that the rose bloomed during the spring cycle and then started giving up trying by mid-summer--underdeveloped blooms, sparsely blooming--and sometimes just fading away by the end of summer. To me, it seems like they use up all their energy in the spring and have little or nothing left to make it through the rest of the season. In those cases, it would have been better to prune drastically prune them and encourage the new growth from the healthy portion that is left.

I know it is discouraging to prune those HTs nearly to the ground, but they will start growing and be looking terrific before the spring cycle is over--I promise! I sometimes think HTs thrive a bit on severe prunings.

Kate

Thanks, Kate - I thought I might have read that somewhere here. Is it the same for all roses, not just hybrid teas? I actually have more than aren't HTs than that are.

And thanks from me, Kate. I value your opinion so much. I currently have about 60 nubbins that used to be ht's. You comments give me hope. And the way you phrase your advice is always so positive.
Susan