I am so sorry. Could it be some wilt? We had a chitalpa do that sudden death thing here.

Trish in Australia had something awful hit her roses too. I wish she would see this. Kim is sure right about the rose hazards we have run into here. The sun scald, flat head apple borers, rose girdlers, and gophers and voles are among the worst.

Thanks, Sheila. My problem is just related to the roses, and it's rampant die-back.

But "Dieback", Trish, what causes that? I really don't like the sound of that. The thought of the relatively baby Tea roses getting sun scalded to death doesn't appeal to me here either. It is a miracle some of the older roses made it in cemeteries in California. I'm really hoping those troubles disappear, Trish. I hope I don't sound like someone in the news in saying that.

Titian1 have you had your water tested? Could you have salt penetrating into your ground water? SOMETHING is wrong and it seems it should be either ground water or soil related if it's attacking many other plantings. Unless you are seeing increasing sun scald due to increased UV and heat.

Trish said it is just roses for her. Having the water tested still sounds like a great idea.

Thanks, Kim, but as Sheila says, it is just the roses. It began 5-6 years ago, on a new G Nabonnand. It had purple spotting on the canes. It was never that healthy, and I noticed quite a bit of die-back. A year or so later, I noticed purple spotting on other roses, and they also suffered extensive die-back. A 6' large Anna Olivier died to the graft in a fortnight, though it had suffered a lot of die-back before that, and resprouted. I've recently removed half of a Ms Tillier, almost to the graft, and the 3" thick canes were almost totally dead.

As for the water, we had a drought recently for over 18 months, and were not allowed to water except with a watering can at certain hours, so the roses got none. We had 4 months of smoke over this Summer, and the previous Summer had many days of sea-mist (for the first time ever in my over 50 years here). The drought ended early this year, since when we've had an abundance of rain.

That sounds like Downy Mildew.

OK, thanks, Kim. I just looked it up, and it is a disease we now have here. My Tea roses never lose their leaves here. Should I just go ahead and spray with Lime Sulphur anyway?

I lost one rose here to what must have been Downy Mildew and it acted just like Trish described. Others know more, but Aliette seemed to be the only thing that worked I've read. I think Kim is right.

In my case, I tried horse manure, but I ended up removing the rose (Lamarque) since it did not recover but just limped along after that.

Sheila, I appreciate your help over this. I did try fresh horse manure some years back. I think Jeri recommended it. Unfortunately, I suspect it had a herbicide in it, as a little while later the roses looked like they had RRD, which we don't have here. The roses recovered though. In my experience they're remarkably tolerant of glysophate.

I don't know that lime sulfur will help with downy mildew. Usually, it requires copper such as in Bordeaux Mix. Titian, that's really odd about the horse manure. I wonder how an herbicide could have gotten in there? My experience has been the roses most often push tremendous new growth that's rather chlorotic due to the big dose on nitrogen from the urine, but they recover and begin greening up rather rapidly.

Kim, I think the herbicide must have been in the feed. The new growth was not chlorotic, and looked like the new growth I've seen when I tried to kill a well established Mme Isaac Pereire with glysophate.

I have used a copper spray a few times, probably about 4 years ago. I imported Phyton, at Diane's (nanadoll in those days) recommendation. I've also tried painting it immediately on the cut canes of very sick roses that I've pruned down to the graft. They regrew, but still had canker.

I haven't liked to use the Phyton as a spray in the last couple of years, as I had built up quite a butterfly collection - there were previously none. And the year after I sprayed with Phyton there were no butterflies again. Diane is sure the Phyton is not the culprit, but there was nothing else I did differently, so I have been loathe to use it again as a spray.