Thanks for the heads up, Harmony. I'm not familiar with that one. I'll keep a loot out for it.

In northern California you may not want to risk rose virus spread in your garden as definitive research on PNRSV, a temperature sensitive virus which is one of the viruses that is collectively known as RMV, has not yet been done in cool climates and one of the other viruses, rose spring dwarf, that sometimes gives RMV similar yellow vine banding systoms (and is known to be present in California) is known to be spread by aphids.

Also virus spread by underground root grafts is possible.

HWGA

LOL, jax!

Updating this prior post as the bareroots are just starting to come in, at least in California.

I LOVE Bareroot season (sorry you guys in snow). I've never purchased/planted them in the middle of winter before, hopefully I won't be sorry for that.

But, I had a flashback yesterday. I picked up a few bareroots from Lowes, and I've never had any problems with their bareroots. But from this post (I'm so glad I documented the name here), I picked up a few Golden West bagged bareroots from Home Depot in April that clearly had very visible RMV. As I peeked at the selection at HD yesterday, all they had was the Golden West brand. I don't know if my experience was a fluke or not, but I will not buy this brand again, so I'm sticking with Lowes for my lower priced bareroots.

And yet there are still those who get all upset and defensive when we recommend avoiding these notorious body-baggers for precisely this reason!

HWGA, indeed. To a hammer, apparently everything looks like a nail ;-)

Also, given our huge ag industry, and the propensity of viruses to hit more than one species of plant - who's to say that RMV won't affect something that is a cash crop out here? An awful lot of things affect multiple plants, and assuming that RMV is only going to affect roses seems short sighted to me. Even if roses themselves aren't a huge cash crop here in California, the chances of them affecting something else that IS would not seem impossible to me.

Good for you harmony.

As for bareroots, here is the problem with just abandoning body bags at Home Depot or whichever retailer. If enough sales decline then they will just think the product category isn't popular and stop ordering as much product in and thus we have less choices. We need to be vocal about WHY a product is being abandoned so that they understand it is the wholesaler they do business with and not less demand for product. I used to work for a large retailer (completely different product category) but unless we got complaints about a product, if a certain category had declining sales, we just ordered less. This year I went and returned every rose I bought at a nursery or HD that showed signs of RMV, spoke to a manager, and called their complaint department (if they had one) to make sure they knew.

Thank you for letting us know about the brand to be suspicious of though! Keeping the bags is brilliant!

RMV (rose mosaic virus) is not an actual virus. It is a group name for viruses that give mosaic symptoms on roses. I mentioned earlier in this thread Rose Spring Dwarf. Rose Spring Dwarf (aphid spread) has been show to have the ability to infect barley and oats. It would appear that we also should be concerned about spreading rose spring dwarf infected roses to areas that are "clean" of (at least) that particular virus. How do we know which virus our infected rose has? Most of the time we (individuals) don't as the visible symptoms often overlap from virus to virus, and may be strain, variety and temperature dependent (and also depend on how many other viruses the plant has).

Other rose viruses may infect other food crops. One example is Blackberry chlorotic ringspot virus (BCRV) which is known to infect roses, blackberries, and raspberrys.

http://home.roadrunner.com/~kuska/Blackberry chlorotic ringspot virus (BCRV).htm

Even the "classic" rose viruses (see the Help-Me-Find summary):
http://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/gl.php?n=293

can infect food plants.

A recent Ph.D. thesis involved rose viruses. It is discussed in the following thread:

http://www.rosebreeders.org/forum/read.php?2,48891

Here is a link that might be useful: my rose spring dwarf information

I wish Home D would carry a decent line of own root virus free roses. What is the point of bins full of half dead sick bareroots? They are all the same kinds they have every year and most are mislabeled anyway. I have talked (nicely) to several store managers and written letters to the corporate offices. I think they just don't care. The money they make on the ones they sell must offset the many that get put in the trash. I hate to see them there by the boxful in the sun. It's like looking at bags of dead spring bulbs in the dollar stores. Every year the quality is worse if that's even possible. Karl was the king of speaking about this as I recall.

No high-5's for me. I have some rose bushes that I know are diseased that I leave in. Because their symptoms are minor, and they do just fine. I'm not on a RMV bandwagon.

But these roses I got from this company were horrible, and I didn't want anyone else getting the same unpleasant surprise that I got.

I'm not on the RMV bandwagon either, harmonyp. I've never purchased a body bag rose, but the two roses I have that show signs of RMV were expensive roses from David Austin. Both are vigorous and bloom normally. One is going into its ninth year with no problems. Many of those years this rose has displayed no characteristic markings of RMV. Once in a while a few marked leaves will appear. The second rose is much newer, but so far is growing fast, and shows no symptoms other than the marked leaves--which I don't like, but ignore. There a lot worse gardening problems I have to worry about than RMV, though I wish high quality (supposedly) sellers would work on this problem. Diane