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Hi

Have got 9 David Austin roses along the back fence in our garden.

All heavily pruned and tied back against the fence this year (about 4-weeks ago) after a couple of years where they hadn't been pruned or properly cared for.

Have find a few of leaves on the new shoots this spring really dry and crackly and very sorry of deep purple on the underside - when picked off the stem, the leaves just crumble in the hand.

What is causing this? Pest damage / over feeding / lack of water / something else?

Where are you located? What have the weather been like? I need more input.
...Photos would help...

— my complete shot-in-the-dark guess would be that you had sudden frost or chill that killed new, tender growth.

— another wild guess, based on your description that they were tied against a fence — if fence borders neighbor or other property next to yours, maybe they went and sprayed something against that fence — herbicide, pesticide, power wash ....?

Hi applestar

Thanks for the reply.

We're based in Scotland, weather has been very dry, clear, calm and very sunny for the past 3 weeks.

We've also had sharp frosts down to -4 most of the last 7 days.

Roses are planted along or back fence, no neighbours on that side, it's just a wooded area.

Thanks for the follow up. Wow that looks very nearly done!

Others might have direct experience with similar events, but I tend to think the sharp frost IS the culprit. The tender new leaves could very well have experienced partial freeze on individual leaflets, and where the damage was severe enough to affect the leaf stem, the entire leaf have succumbed.

Only other possibility I can think of is if there was one of those blustery spring windy conditions that had whipped the branches around enough to beat them against the fence.

In other words, I tend to think these are mechanical damage rather than pest or disease. So parts of leaves that don’t look like they would recover should just be trimmed off so as not to invite fungal infection.

Brilliant, thanks Applestar, will trim off the dry leaves (expected lows below 0°c for the next few nights as well) and fingers crossed for milder evenings after that