If your removing one just go down a shoveful and snip them with your loppers.They will rot.

If soil permits, roots of nearly all woody plants go deeper with time, but a majority of the roots are in the upper third of the root zone. Different rootstocks and different ownroots have different rooting patterns, but the larger plants of a kind will have the deeper roots. With old plants on Dr. Huey, most fine roots are in the upper 8", most fleshy roots are in the upper 12", but there may be a trunklike central root that goes fairly deep. Roots of fortuniana and manettii are shallower than Huey.

And how far do they go horizontally? When I'm occasionally watering by hand, I never know how far out to go.

I have a polyantha rose called Little White Pet that sent at least one root far enough down to get into the sewerline. Unless it was planted real deep a Dr. Huey grafted rose will not have roots much below 15 inches deep. Ownroot English roses and most Old Garden Roses will have roots as far down as 2 feet. These are the roots which cause the rose to comeback after you think you have removed it, sometimes they come back over a year after the rose was removed.

Lance

How true that is Lance! I have a mary rose sprouting up through a sonia rykiel and I thought I got every bit of it out too! I keep cutting the canes short but they keep growing back. I don't want to risk killing sonia by digging her up again. Lucky thing that mary rose's thorns look so different- I can tell which rose is which.

Belle Portugaise's deep roots had to be removed with an axe.