Hi, good to see you again.

Are the gallicas making any kind of attempt at making a bud, but the bud only gets less than a half inch long before it dies as it turns black?

Hi Ann! No, they are all blind shoots - and short in height, about 1 to 1-1/2 ft. Not that Alain Blanchard was ever a tall rose, but these suckering canes seem abnormally low and have no indication of forming any buds. I just went outside in the rain and double checked to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

Could the crown of the plant be too deep? I don't know if it would be that common for the suckers to grow up to the depth they require but often when a plant grows backwards and refuses to flower, it's planted too deeply. My first thought was, "someone else whose climate doesn't support cold requiring roses" but your Zone 5 should, so either the soil is improper for the rose's requirements, it's planted too deeply or perhaps the drainage is incorrect so there is too much or too little water. Could it be a case of insufficient light?

Okay, I'm going to theorize. Were these roses grafted? Nearly all my purchased roses are. What I find happens is that the rose, supported by the rootstock, puts out strong canes and bloom well. The years pass, the original canes age and die, and the plant starts to sucker from the scion, running far and wide. I have plants of 'Ohl' and 'Alain Blanchard' that are acting like this. I think they need to build up strength before flowering. I think they will bloom. On an optimistic note, most of my Gallicas, bought grafted, have suckered out and are flowering handsomely. I'm happy to hear from gardeners who may have other ideas, as I'm not sure that this is what is going on, but I think it is.

The only time I've seen Gallicas behave this way was when they were planted in very hard clay, and suckers ran very shallow and had difficulty making good roots.

That's a fair description of my ground, Paul.

I've had the same experience as Melissa, even if the roses didn't originally start out as grafted plants. They are well behaved, blooming roses for a while, then they get delusions of grandeur, and want to take over the planet. This year, for reasons I don't understand, they have decided to bloom.

This is all Jenny Duval. It produced about 3 flowers last year. Tuscany is doing the same thing. Oelleit Flammand hasn't bloomed in a couple of years, but is putting on a decent show this year. From a garden management standpoint, I have no idea what to do with them.

Even among the Gallicas, too, some varieties may be more vigorous than others. 'Alain Blanchard' has never struck me as strong. I'm willing to wait to see whether it will bloom in time.

DH once mowed down 'Elisa Rovella': she came back as a suckering plant, and grew for years before she finally made up her mind to flower. All my soil is heavy clay, and not going that far down before it starts phasing into sedimentary rock. It's not soil for roses that require pampering.

Wild Rosa gallica is pretty common around here. It's generally found growing along ditches at the side of the road. Moist conditions, with drainage.

Fluctuations in bloom may depend on whether the rose has gotten itself good and dug in--that's my hopeful theory. But weather may play a role, too. After all, we had over a year and a half of drought before it finally started to rain this spring (and may it continue!). I imagine that rather discouraged the roses' flowering last year, for instance.

Mad_gallica: "garden management"? What's that? Actually, yes, I certainly have this problem. I have found out the hard way not to plant roses together that 1) sucker and 2) look very similar out of bloom (this is not to say I would never do this again). But the major suckerers so far don't seem able to do each other in. I could go in and dig out bits that got too invasive, I suppose, but so far, it hasn't looked desperately necessary. Your 'Jenny Duval' looks great.

Some of my roses sucker far and wide and bloom well from the start, not all of them Gallicas, either. Others are slower to begin suckering, or they sucker but are slow to flower. I don't know whether this depends on the variety, or owes something to variations in soil in different parts of the garden.

Thank you all for your thoughts. I should have provided more detail: I believe the gardener with the Tuscany Superb has a similar garden to mine: own root roses in sandy soil, full sun and zone 5. In those conditions I have many other roses (including various other OGR's) happily in bloom right now. Perhaps these suckers - given enough time - will bloom as Melissa is giving me hope. I am thinking I am going to work at curtailing Alain Blanchard's traveling because as Mad Gallica puts it, he wants to take over the planet. Never had such a busy rose! We'll see if the concentration of short canes I leave alone make any blooms next year.

AnneCecila, another thought about the run-about gallicas: I've noticed that here in lower Michigan, the rose survivors at old farmhouses tend to get razed down by rabbits or the lawnmower at least once a year. One found gallica/damask in particular I tend to find in the drainage ditches near the road. There it blooms heavily every spring -- and the road crews mow the ditches down every summer. However, when I moved it to my enriched garden soil, it just ran merrily about and did not bloom.

So, I cut each stalk down in early June and voila -- the next year the plants bloomed. I now cut back this clump by at least 75%; I like the compact clump it produces and the heavy flower display. Raspberries, fyi, are in the rose family, and they do best when cut back too. Maybe some of the older roses still share that need to be cut back / the adaption to predators (rabbits) shearing them down before spending the energy on blooming?