Hi Suzy: I love your web-sites suggestions - I always can count on you for a good laugh to start the day. Thank you Krista for info. about safety and the Prince. Thanks Sherry, Steve, Tammy, and Grandmothers_rose for your help. I had my tetanus shot few weeks ago, I get mine every 5 years. Like Tammy, I don't care less if it lives or die. My hubby has an emotional attachment to it, since it's next to his gas grill. Guys don't like change - but I do, we have a garden so I can move my plants around. My bush is nothing compared to the Rugosa Climbers that my neighbor wants to get rid of. Its trunk is the size of a tree - needs a chain-saw here. She chopped it down short, doused the roots with gasoline and covered it tight with a bucket. It didn't die completely, so she finished it off with Round-Up. I wish I had bought more evergreens, and less deciduous trees. One lady paid a few hundreds to have a large tree chopped down, and got stuck with a sprouting tree stump. Evergreens' roots are easier to destroy. One more reason to buy mail-ordered roses: Stores sell Knock-outs since they are indestructible and people can't demand refunds. I like Flower-Carpet roses better: more drought-resistant, less Japanese Beetles, and it has tiny widely spaced prickles. My neighbor tried to find salmon Flower-Carpet like mine from local stores - but all she could find was Knock-outs.

I've seen an Ypsilanti growing on the other side of Clinch Mountain and it's a Gallica, but there's enough 'other' in it that the late cane growth may come from the 'other' (along with its tendency to bloom quite a bit later than almost all other Gallicas that I've seen. One thing that I've seen on rose canes that I think I see on yours is a possibility of sunburn to the canes. Ideally, roses have such dense leaves (as if Black Spot didn't exist) that sunlight doesn't touch the canes, at least for the first couple of years. Anyway, I think you may have a touch of sunburn on the upper surface of these canes; way to test? Look on the underside, or on the northern side of more vertical canes. Those sure do look like Ypsilanti leaves, but they should be starting to change color now. My gallicas have always shut down for winter not by temperature, but by daylight limits.

It sounds very much like the hybrid tea Snowfire. So thorny that the mature canes cannot be touched without sticking your finger and no scent to speak of. Snowfire does not have long canes like most ht's in my experience, it is shaped more like a floribunda because of its width compared to height.

The old GardenWeb FAQs about everything were written over fifteen years ago. Back then, most state departments of agriculture as well as Federal Money supported the idea that RRD didn't affect cultivated roses. It was only when I raised the question and with the assistance of photographs from Gardenweb, that a few scientists re-looked at what was happening. Even then the guys who spread it were saying that it was a good control of R. multiflora because it didn't bother cultivated roses. For details, read the chapters in my E-book about the early history of RRD and its intentional spread. Rose Rosette E-book Ann