I need to first apologize... The info I have is limited, and unconfirmed...
We have an unidentified heirloom rose on my farm, I'm not good with roses, not my thing, but it's the old fashion spray roses, with numerous small ball-like pink blooms in a cluster... I assume it's a floribunda...
the story Ive always been told is that they traveled here with the original members of my family from Europe...there's proof in the family bible it has at least in the family since the mid 1700's, roughly 80 years after "we" arrived in the states, and it's made the journey from the easy coast to Kentucky!
For my entire childhood they there was 2 massive bushes at the entrance to the farm, they were inundating a stretch of fence about 20' long, they were quite the sight!
So... Several years something happened to them, we couldn't figure it out...within a few years they ALL were affected, it's very clear they are sick!
This illness was expressed in the form of, the plant becoming chlorotic, and slowly defoliating some, by midsummer, growth and bloom would be halted entirely by then, shortly thereafter new growth would appear, NOT from the tip tho, usually a new shoot would emerge anywhere from 4 inches down from the tip, to somewhere deep within the dense crown.
There would generally only be a few of these shoots, one every 3-4 feet at first, more as the years go on...
These shoots emerge BRIGHT red, with many very small twisted distorted leaves, as they grow they remain red but darken some and the leaves twist and distort even more, they don't size up much at all, the stem store thes out a bit.
The over look of a plant will be sad and yellowish with sparse leaves, and then storage red "buds" randomly spaced on it...not a good look...
Well after sometime I started noticing more of it doting the country side, in people's landscaping, it was clear to me these plants were infected, all of them, with this same unfamiliar illness!
I ran into someone that I thought might know something about it, and they did!
I described the symptoms, he didn't let me get far, the little smirk on his face told me he knew just what I was talkin about...
He clearly wasn't at liberty to say much, but he says it's a lab created virus that has been intentional released to attempt to manage the
"wild" floribunda roses that are quite rampant around here...white single petals small flowers and insanely thorny...
Of course there's clumps of these "wild" floribundas practically touching my heirlooms, showing no signs of any problem!
I'm not sure if I should be telling you to watch out for your roses or not, it may not spread much, and it certainly attacks the spray roses worse, maybe only them, again I'm not sure...
I doubt any treatment will help... It's a virus...and I've given up on our old roses...😢
