Rose rosette disease.
Planted six rose bushes (bought from a good garden centre) last summer. The stems are now covered in an overabundance of thorns. Some are thick and red , mixed
with thinner spikier brown ones. Can hardly see the stems! ! Also red witches broom type growth sprouting all down stems. Some very thick malformed stems .
Web research indicates that this is rose rosette disease ....seems to be quite prevalent across America ...recently. ..having made the leap from fairly wild multiflora type roses iin parks and on roadsides to cultivated roses in gardens.
There is loads of information on USA websites. ( sorry can't do links) but no UK references. The photos on US sites look exactly like mine..(sorry can't post photos)
Neighbours garden has a very old briar type rose which looks to have the same
problem. We live about 70 metres from the sea in NW England ...could this disease have travelled on the wind across the Atlantic! !
Posts
I'd dig them up and burn then straight away. Inform defra
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-environment-food-rural-affairs
Get them to investigate. The disease is more likely to come from an imported source. A virus can only spread via a living organism (aphids etc) so it would not be airborne, but if it rose rosette virus it will probably be a notifiable infection.
The U.S. sites say a very small .(microscopic. ) Mite is involved a and may " hitchhike on dust e.g. or a bird etc but think they are talking 100 metres rather than trans Atlantic.
Thanks foryour reply will contact defra tomorrow.
Sorry but did you mean I should get the garden centre ./supplier involved. ?
What I find really puzzling is the lack of mention of rose rosette virus in any U.K. media .After 6 hours of searching the web yesterday all I could find was a letter to the daily mail from someone in Devon who thought his roses were infected.(can't find that now)
I live in Lincolnshire, England and have just lost all 20 shrub roses in a bed to rose rosette virus.
The virus can only have come to my rose bed from two replacement roses over the last two years, purchased from garden centres.
I am sure I am not the only person in Lincolnshire to have encountered this awful viral disease. What appals me is the total lack of information about this problem and the fact that it is disseminated by infected plants in garden centres and the like.
MID SUSSEX
I live in mid sussex and have lost a number of roses this spring to similar symtoms to 'Coastal 1' above. A second rose bed only e few yards away was not affected. ! do not know where the RRD has come from. It mainly affected established roses and there were no recently purchased roses involved. Can anyone help me to understand this. There seems to be no remedy!
I would contact the RHS asap https://www.rhs.org.uk/about-the-rhs/contact-us
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
It seems from your corrrespondents that the only instances notified of RRD in the UK are very widespread - one each in the NW, NE, SE, &SW. THese infections cannot have come from airbourne mites which only spread locally (among roses in the same garden). The infection must have come from roses obtained from commercial suppliers. For commercial reasons these suppliers are keen to cover up the problem. No doubt some of these roses have been imported from infected countries. I suggest that you do not buy roses on mail order since you cannot inspect before purchase. I think that my infection came from a mail order bare root rose from a well known UK supplier!
Does this disease dry up roses? I have not heard of it before and have small bush rose that always seems to bear shrivelled blooms, although the one next to it is fine... puzzled, will pop out to take pics when the rain stops in the hope of getting some advice too...