When Dee at Red Dirt Ramblings posted about Rose Rosette disease a couple of times it caught my attention and made me wonder. I started looking closer and did some more reading. It didn't look good for the roses at the posh estate.
The wild multiflora rose is a dominant species in the forests of NC. The woods around the posh estate are choke full of them. I started looking closely at them and wasn't finding any symptoms. Then the lawn mower dude told me he read about a rose disease in the paper and had seen some weird looking wild roses on the property. He pointed them out. Oh crap! Rose Rosette was definitely present in the wild roses.
A large number of the cultivated roses at the posh estate are infected with Rose Rosette. There was no longer any doubt.
I had been watching a hillside of shrub roses looking like crap and slowly dying in a neighborhood on the opposite side of Waynesville all season.. Today I was next door and stopped to have a closer look. All the pictures here are from that one planting. They are in the advanced stages of Rose Rosette and are being decimated by the disease.
Rose Rosette disease is in Haywood County, NC big time. I doubt most people even know what it is at this point. This planting is well on its way to being dead. On another slope on this same property all the roses were already completely dead.
I have five clients in this neighborhood with roses in their gardens. I have very bad news for them. I have worse news for the posh estate. They are already infected.
I'd say landscape roses are soon to be toast in these parts.
The sweet pea Cupani was enjoyable. Let's have another look at that. It survived a pretty intense aphid attack. I kept ignoring it. One day I saw a lady bug there. Two days later all the aphids were gone. A couple torrential downpours may have helped too.
The hemlocks are gone. Roses may soon follow. It's a bit scary, but gardeners will adapt. The gardening must go on.
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10 comments:
How sad. I've never heard of that. Is there any help for them?
You are right about us Gardeners carrying on. I am so happy to report that we got 3" of rain last night. A first nice rain for the YEAR. Yay... I hate to hear that the rose disease is in your part of the country. It will probably be popping up around here some time what with the drought making them susceptible to disease.
I haven't seen signs yet, but I am afraid it won't be long. If it appears in my yard, it will be devastating to my husband because my father-in-law rooted a piece of the roses he grew in his yard for us. That was 35 years ago. That same rose is still here.
Auwe, Chris, RRD sounds so nasty -but the vector, Phyllocoptes fructiphylus is a wingless mite, and possibly could be managed with a biological control. On the other hand, R multifora has been described as a noxious weed, so perhaps it will go the way of hemlocks, as you said. At least the pathogen is not soil-borne. How strange that it has been known to exist since 1941, but just now comes to our attention. Hmmm, anyone test it on kudzu?? No, don't go there. As you wisely state, gardeners will have to adapt.
We have lost several roses to Rose Rosette, beginning in 2008. Both in my garden and in daughter Semi's. I still have a few roses living here, but at least half are gone. The entire root system needs to be dug out and wrapped in plastic, not composted. Very sad.
I have always grown roses before, but have had trouble growing them here in the mountains. I just thought I was not taking care of them like I should, although I never had before. I am going to check out what I have left, and probably will not attempt to grow anymore. This year I did purchase the knockout roses.
Dianne
Lost a rose to rosette this summer here in We Asheville. So far only one....
I have heard that even the all too prolific Knock Outs are not immune.
Oh Chris, I'm just now seeing this post. I'm sorry for the roses in your state. I suspect many more roses have fallen. At my garden, they definitely have. I still keep shovel pruning them, and as of this moment, the remaining ones look healthy. However, we don't have the wild roses in our state like you do. Maybe it will wipe out Rosa multiflora though. That's the only bright spot.~~Dee
Dee the rose rosette spreads really fast. Half the roses at the Posh Estate are gone. She keeps trying. They keep dying. I introduced her to dahlias this year. I hope that solves the problem.
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