I concur with Patty's diagnosis.

That is not typical midge damage. Midge maggots do not eat leaves. Midge fly maggots are as tiny as an exclamation point, minus the dot, seen in the printed words on an average magazine/newspaper page. They are too small to do such extensive damage even if they ate leaves. Midge fly maggots eat the tenderest stem parts of the very growing tip of a rose stem. As tiny as their bodies are just think how tiny their mouth parts must be!

Early midge fly evidence is halted tip growth with burned looking tip foliage. If the midges (they attack in packs, like wolves), attack a tip starting to form buds, the buds are usually grossly deformed, greatly undersized, and burned up looking. Touch them and they fall off.

Older forming rose buds growing on the tips of more mature growth, buds about the size of a pea or larger, can survive a midge attack since the midge maggots arrived late on the scene (slow poke mommy midge laid her eggs late during the rose shoots development). The more mature plant growth is tougher to chew. These late arrival midge maggots are still able to eat the bud to the point that it is deformed with big chunks gone and with crooked necks, at 90 degree angles to the shoot. The bud continues growing but the flower is grossly deformed, small, crooked...just plain miserable.

I believe some sort of caterpillar(s), have been busy. It is possible that the damage done so far is as far as it goes. The guilty party(s) may have progressed to their nymph stage at this time, cocooned up somewhere now.

The flower buds are badly deformed. Poor to no flowering is likely from them. I don't believe much can be done at this point other than cut back the damaged growth down the stem to a nice five leaflet leaf.

Regular spraying of new growth with Bayer Complete Insect Control is my recommended option. This kind of caterpillar/larval damage could be prevented.

Moses.

I agree also its not midge...Its probably a caterpillar or rose slug or similar as Patty says......

Least toxic effective spray would be safer insect killing soap or spinosad...

Thank you all so much for this info! I guess it's good news it's not midge?

l just hatched and released baby praying mantises so I'm afraid to spray anything. Should I just ride this out? When I went to look again I saw little green worm things. The cut the tips off that looked like that and squished the worms.

I would ride it out. I well explain tomorrow how to find them. My little mantis are out there every where also. They are so tiny I'm having a hard time deadheading the roses. I don't want to squish them. I was cutting spent blooms that I wanted to get rid of because of midge. when I looked in the bucket I saw the little ladies jumping around. So much for doing that I had to spread the flowers back out around the plants rose midge or not.

Aw I hope your baby mantises are doing well! Did you get one of those hatching kits, or where did yours come from?

It was so exciting seeing ours hatch and go out into the garden! I hope they gobble up all of our pests.

Ashley, I have something similar and everytime I go outside to see what is eating my roses, I find nothing! I too think it is some sort of worm and am going to try some BT as I garden organically.

The first picture is on my Lady of Shalott. Second picture is on my Vick's Caprice. Other roses are not affected that are near those roses.

Mustbnuts,

Ouch! Please don't be alarmed, but I suspect Rose Rosette Disease. The leaves look to me like they did not form properly, rather than having been eaten. See the very short inter-node distances on Vick's Caprice? That's characteristic of the virus. Keep an eye on things! Sorry to cause apprehension. I hope I'm wrong.

Moses

I just looked at this and when I saw the photos rrd was my first thought. I thought I had clicked on the wrong post until I read what Mosses said. Keep a really close eye on it. Scary when 2 people thought the same thing and no one was asking.

Just my opinion, but unless you remember the leaves being on the cane of Vick's Caprice. Were it my rose I would cut and bag that cane. So unless this is a normal look for VC better safe than sorry. The rose will do fine without that cane anyway.

Leaves were there a couple of weeks ago. This is just something recent that is eating the leaves. Can't figure out what it is. I can't find any droppings, nothing on the underside of the leaves, etc.

Thats very good to hear. My damage that was somewhat the same came from a family of cutworms. I did not see droppings. Found them on the plant on a cloudy drippy day. Otherwise they hide in the soil or under ground cover. Yours looks like something larger like a baby bunny.