Kmama -- You NEED to come to the Celebration of Old Roses, so you can ask this question of multiple people from your general area!

Jeri

After I wrote what follows, I looked at my catalog and noted that what I have is RdR (original) rather than RdR(of commerce), so take my information with that caveat:

Rose du Roi has been in my yard for 5+ years; she is pretty well established, although she is in the "back" where the chickens get to do their thing and often dust bathe in their shade. In any case, I'd suspect she has attained her favored size and she is probably 3' tall and 4' wide. I will try to remember to look at her more carefully later today, and let you know if she has been suckering. She certainly hasn't been suckering to the extent of taking on more and more space the way r.virginiana has, but she might be sending up suckers that could be used for further propagation.

Susan

Kmama, suckering roses, such as gallicas or the wild Rosa californica, expand and send up new flowering canes via underground rhizomes, eventually forming a thicket or patch. My Rose du Roi of commerce has been in the ground just 3 years and has yet to do much of that (so, perhaps not as vigorous that way as some. For many years I have had an unnamed mossy pink gallica-type that, really, is a weed, though with a very full and beautiful, well-perfumed flower. Every spring I need to circumscribe its perimeter with a shovel to keep the patch around 5' diameter, and more than a year after digging up one population of it, I am still digging it up! I always take care to never plant that one anywhere near the "civilized" part of the garden.)

Thus far, the canes of my Rose du Roi have not exceeded about 2.5', so I can't imagine pegging it, but, anyway, each cane puts out several branches without pegging. The leaves are very healthy (saying something, this year) and cover the plant well. Current flowers are about 4" in diameter. This is one of my favorite rose flowers of all: beautiful deep red-going-to-purple, heavy scent, huge number of petals arranged in intricate swirls, flower flat and quartered. Just love it -- it is more beautiful in person than most of the photos on HMF would indicate (tough rose to photograph).