Thirty years ago in 1994, I ordered some ‘Old Roses’ on their own root stock from  one of only two suppliers in Canada, Pickering Roses. They came bare root in small cardboard tubes all the way from Ontario to B.C. I planted them and they flourished, all but a couple, with which I was taking a risk, climate wise anyway. They have given us thirty years of fabulous blooms and fragrances.

Roses are more complicated in this climate and many of those we would love to grow simply will not thrive here. The roses which have been bred specifically for our hard winters in places like Morden Breeding Station , Manitoba are a godsend for rose lovers as they are tough. There are also many ‘Old Rose’ varieties which will survive our harsh winters, roses like the ones I planted thirty years ago, ‘Charles Albanel’, ‘Moje Hammerberg’, ‘Monte Rosa’  and ‘Blush Hip’. The subject of roses is enormous but the subject of this sad tale is the demise of some of my favourites although I hope they will rise again. There is no supplier of old roses in Canada anymore and that alone is a very sad thing. I have found a few sources in the States but that complicates things further in these difficult times.

Over the last couple of years, the health of several of my old roses declined. I blamed the deer who chew on them all season long but I thought something else was going on as the leaves became very chlorotic (lacking in dark green colour) . Despite treatments of Sulphur and fertilizer there were no improvements. We removed half of them last year, replanted runners in a new deer proof location. The oldest plants we saved for this year and I was not prepared for the massive undertaking it was. The original shrubs had sent out multiple runners providing many offspring but the original stock had roots the size of tree trunks. This was not a simple case of digging them out. Male muscle power, saws and a lot of grunt work was involved. In the process I discovered one stock had galls on it just below root level. Small holes were visible on some of the galls where some critters had emerged. Parasitic wasp? I have no idea. When I was trying to diagnose this additional rose sickness I looked at horrific diseases such as Crown Rot and started to panic. Did this parasitic invader bring in disease? Would I have to destroy all these roses?  Was the chlorosis on the leaves a Rose Mosaic virus spread by insects, also deadly? I still don’t know.

In examining the chlorotic leaves and comparing them with mosaic viruses, the pattern is different and definitely only affects the part of the leaf which contains chlorophyll and not the veins.

I have taken a risk and assumed the state of the roses is indeed due to constant deer damage and that the parasitic gall producing insects are gone.  I hope we have rescued pieces of each old rose. They have been replanted well away from any deer. My hope is that these ‘new plants’ will revive and provide many more years of joy.

If anyone has theories or dire predictions for the fate of my roses please share your knowledge so I can revaluate and remove them if necessary!

From their heyday ’til now :-

There are many Rose Mosaic viruses but the closest I could find was this picture below and if you look closely it is clear that my roses have lost chlorophyll in the mesophyll leaf tissue and not the veins making it quite different. This is what I am holding on to in the hopes it is not a virus that is killing my roses. Mosaic viruses are technically not transmitted by insects so this is another fact I am holding on to! I am keeping my fingers crossed the leaves will look healthy as they bud out in their new locations this spring, away from our urban ungulates.