@lovemyhouse, (with apologies to Paul for the sad hijack) that does indeed look like RRD. Just a few weeks ago, I was in the Dallas area touring rose gardens. An "expert" from Texas A & M took us on a personal tour and told us that RRD is still rare in that area. Unfortunately, our touring group is very very familiar with RRD, and we saw it right away in the first display garden he took us to.
The ARS convention had a few seminars on RRD and other problems. Experts from several fields discussed the disease, and I trust their conclusions. (Mainly because they are the same as my conclusions
) Don't worry about your pruners or clothing. Take the afflicted rose out. No need to remove the dirt, but if you want to be overly cautious, you might wait a season before you plant another rose in that exact spot. Keep a close watch on the roses next to that one.
I have had great success by taking out the first branch I see with symptoms and watching that rose closely. If it reappears, the whole rose needs to come out. This requires enough experience to recognize what is RRD growth and what is normal reddish growth. Overspray from 2, 4-D does create some distortion on the plant, but if you compare chemically damaged plants side by side to RRD, you will see the difference.
One RRD researcher is asking for cuttings from plants with the disease. I will try to find his business card to give you the info. He is studying cuttings from all over the country to see if we are dealing with 1 virus or more. He asked me to also send him cuttings from roses that had the disease but survived it because I noticed it soon enough, and removed the first bad cane. Researchers are also looking for info on which roses are most or least susceptible. I have removed 30 or so roses so far, but this year only had 1, and it was a rose that had it before and I thought I had cut the whole roses out, but it regrew. That was Carefree Marvel, and it had sent out 12-15' runners that rooted all over that bed, so that's how I missed some of it.
