If you leave it, don’t hesitate to remove it, if it shows up again. Weigh the risks of keeping it against the risks of leaving it if you don’t want to remove it now.

Can People confirm it is RRD? ...:(

It just breaks my heart. It's huge and blooms its heart off. I simply can't seem to keep roses in this area. Im so upset.😡.

 I will certainly wait for the first flush of blooms... but after that it's going to be summer and the last thing I want to do is to engage in cutting this huge Bush off in Ga heat. I wonder how much damage it can do if I can wait until fall.

From Windham, Windham and Henn (at the ARS site):

“If the plant cannot be removed quickly, pruning of rosette(s) will reduce

vector populations temporarily since mite populations are forty

fold or greater on rosettes than on asymptomatic tissues. However,

removal of rosettes will not ‘cure’ the plant and the plant will still

need to be removed”.

This may or may not be reassuring.

You have my deepest sympathy. Your Double Pink Knock Out is a beauty...huge....4 times bigger than mine. Yours and the Double Red are the best of the Knock Outs, IMHO. The rest...not so hot, no matter the hype on the newer ones. I just took out two Orange Glow Knock Outs....not much glow, blooms too small 2.5-2.75", and too few per flush.....you see lots of leaves and few blooms among them.

I had to remove a venerable, RRD infected Lady Ashe, one of the best climbers around. She repeats all summer long because Lady Ashe is a climbing hybrid tea, not a climbing floribunda as most climbers are. She grew long, straight, upward facing laterials from her horizontally trained canes, suitable for the vase, and her blooms were almost cast iron for durability. The petals felt like plastic, they were so thick. Her fragrance is well documented. The trunk at ground level on my old girl was nearly 4" in diameter, and even with my sawsall, I could not remove the entire crown! Weed killer was applied to the crown until early summer when no new growth emerged at soil level, and Lady Ashe was finally dead. She contracted signs of RRD at summers end of year one, and year two's spring growth confirmed the presence of RRD. She was removed before much spring growth got under way in year two. It was a Herculean task removing her. She was over 12' across growing on a 4' fence. This was 4 years ago.

My advice to you is to bite the bullet and do the deed. The dangers of RRD spreading are too great.

At the same time a venerable, very mature and vigorous Quietness became RRD infected. Quietness was a close neighbor to Lady Ashe but not immediately next to her. The Quietness bush was removed at summers end. No other bushes have shown any signs of RRD and it's been 4 years ago since the initial outbreak.

Lady Ashe and the single Quietness were the only bushes that were originally infected.

I have no clue how the disease entered my garden. No one in my immediate, tightly grouped, old city, townhouse neighborhood, each with postage stamp sized gardens at best, even grows roses. No one.

Moses.

It's just depressing. If all are going to get it at this rate, why even bother with roses...

I look forward to them getting established and gaining some size and just when they do, they get hit.

😢 😭 😿 😢

OP asked if someone could confirm RRD. No one has yet directly confirmed, here, that it is.

I can’t. Having said that: witch’s broom-like rrd growth now, after ”vague sign” (OP’s words) last year, on different (excised) branch, indicates (to me) systemic rrd.

@rifis

Do the pictures look like rrd to you?

Just by chance, any herbicide been used, close or a drift? Hoping Ann will comment. Are you close enough to a County Extension that they could look at what you cut off?

Unless the lawn service people have used something for weeds, I can't think of anything else.

I am not close to a County Extension plus I bagged the branch already.

I am not sure if that is the look of RRD though ... No big thorns at all.

Looks like RRD to me. I am sorry, I have lost 27 mature plants to RRD in the past 6 or 7 years and It is not a good experience. I would remove it and start over. Unless you uave a way getting testing done to rule out RRD the risk isnt worth it.

Dianela, I'm sorry to read about all the roses you have lost to RRD. You must love roses very much to persist in the face of this awful disease. I don't know if I could do it. I hope the RRD risk has lessened for you now. What do things look like in your area? I hope for the best in roses for you. Diane

There's absolutely no other sign on the bush...and in the absence of any thorns I wonder if it can just be new red growth. The thought of removing this perfect large bush in the summer heat (it's already summer here) makes me downright sick. I also have no idea what plants I could put at the mailbox instead. Nothing could compare to this beauty and I don't have a drip system . I can't be watering all the way there in heat and mosquitos, which I'm very allergic too. I step outside and they devastate me in seconds flat. I just wanna cry 😩. Clearly I cannot have any rose that is not a small thing to pull out as soon as this scourge shows up; plus I run out of spaces to replace them in since no new rose can be added for a while.

Not not normal new red growth for sure.

I do not think that is normal growth. You can always cut that cane down to the ground and see if the plant doesn’t show any more signs. It is your garden and you alone can decide what’s worth the risk or not. I hope removing the cane fixes it.

Thank you Diane! I hate it every time I have to dig one up but I also have dug up many due to blackspot so I just move on. I had most of my loses at the original garden where I swear someone must have had infected plants nearby. The lake property only had 2 loses and the new garden fingers crossed 🤞 has not had any. Posting a nee post to show you my possible Abbaye since it changed colors.

Sorry to revive this thread but I am still wondering about this rose bush, Double Pink KO. It is a workhorse giant and looks perfect after I cut down the branch shown above, earlier in the spring. No new symptoms have appeared after this but that doesn't necessarily say much.

Then I realized...the bush is right at the mailbox bordering the lawn, for which we have a service. They treat the lawn with herbicide, I am sure, and was wondering if maybe this could be herbicide injury. There were no thorns, just this weird growth. I really don't want to take it out. Right now, a couple of months after this symptom - it looks perfect.

Could this be herbicide damage?

Rain pushed down some branches heavy with bloom, especially the lower right which I will cut all the way down. Overall it's a bloom machine that fends for itself all summer long at the mailbox, without any fuss on my part. So I am praying it was just herbicide damage.

I plan to give it a very hard prune next season, close to the groubd, which is something I should have done this Spring, but I wanted to see how big it gets. It's almost 7 ft here, I think.

Still, with the RRD scare it should have been aggressively pruned down. I will keep it for now and will prune down hard next January - unless people can swear the photos above are unequivocally RRD.

Thank you, kentucky_rose. I will sure do that since now I feel like it's plagued or something, but in the absence of thorns, I just want to keep up the hope since it's too big and effective, and I can't think of anything better to place at the mailbox than a KO rose. It's too out of the way for that spot to get ample water and an established KO is quite drought resistant.

“Could this be …?”

Yes. It’s not just glyphosate (which they wouldn’t be spraying on your lawn, anyway, unless they were trying to nuke it) which could do it.

Have them pay you whatever $ amount would compensate you fully for the agita you experienced from their mis-application, AFTER further observation confirms what your report seems to indicate. How much longer to observe - I don’t know. But mention your suspicion to them now; don’t wait.

IF you confirm, by observation (RT-PCR is out, as you no longer have suspicious tissue) that it’s NOT viral, AND they then do not comply with your request for compensation: dismiss them from your employ, and warn your neighbors. Presumably they charge you a fee to spray herbicide on your lawn, so they must legally hold a pesticide contractor’s license and commercial applicator certification through your GDA (if I’m remembering your state right). A formal complaint to the State would be called for. Either way - whether they hold ’em or not.

@rifis,

Waow, that sounds ominous. All I know is they maintain the lawn but I am not sure what they spray. I am sure they spray something to control weeds but I assume it is certified and legal.

I will certainly keep an eye on the rose, but so far so good. No new signs of weird growth for the past couple of months. I do know there were never any thorns, neither last year when I first noticed something, not this spring when I noticed it the second time.

Agree - no reason to suspect that what they spray is ”illegal”.

I thought what I proposed (resulting from spray drift) as a possibility (however small the chance) would be better characterized as ”hopeful”, rather than ”ominous”.

That latter term is better applied to what I suspected (systemic rrd) as stated in my earlier comment from last month, no?

@rifis (zone 6b-7a NJ),

By ominous I meant that it sounds like I should take what these lawn guys are doing very seriously. They are as good of a lawn service as I am aware of, but I will check with them about application.

Otherwise, I agree I would much rather have herbicide damage on this bush than RRD. No doubt!

RRD is the ominous factor here, for sure.

The lack of thorns so far gives me hope.