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Gertrude Jekyll rose
Phylis Biden
Posts: 1
I have noticed some stems are very long with 7 leaves no flowers and some are branching from 5 leaved stems. They are not like suckers are quite thick and very thorny, look healthy. I want them to climb into a pergola which has a vine growing over it and I think the rose might not be getting enough sun being hidden by the vine even though it is south facing most of the day. What should I do!
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As a rule of thumb I was taught that rose stems should have leaves with only 5 leaflets and any more than that are usually suckers from the wild stock. These can be very strong growing and eventually will take over from the finer, grafted rose so I would go and take a closer look
I read Phyllis's question with great interest as I have a similar problem: 4 straight verticle stems that were 10 feet tall (the plant was newly planted in the spring) I also watched a video explaining that these were probably suckers and tried to follow the instructions to remove them. I have made a horrible mistake as the first one was firmly fixed into the bulbous part of the rose and would not 'pop out' as the video predicted. I have reduced the beight of the other 3 shoots and am worried I may have ruined the plant.....
As Ladybird says, those sound like suckers, and should be removed.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
look at the graft point. If a stem comes from below that it's a sucker, if it comes from above it isn't.
In the sticks near Peterborough
Gertrude Jekyll can take quite a bit of shade that's why I bought mine, it needs 4 hours sun a day.
It got to 7 foot this year after a couple of years of being short, one stem that I was sure was a sucker produced a mass of lovely blooms but it's a good idea to have a look to be sure.