Identify... is this a rose?

[watermelonpunch]

My husband says he thinks this is a rose bush.
Because it has thorns, and it looks maybe something like another rose bush we have on the other side of the house.





It's under a lilac tree.

We moved here in the winter 2011 / 2012, so this is our 2nd spring here.
I can't imagine how it could be there when I cleared out under this lilac tree last year tons.

Could it grow that big (it's about 1ft tall) from nothing just this spring?
And if so where did it come from? The only other rose bush we have is on the other side of the house.

I'd put off weeding under this lilac tree because there was a robin nesting with eggs in the lilac tree.
But apparently she died - nest was abandoned - her mate is still in our front yard.\I found this yesterday after clearing out almost 2 weeks of creeping charlie...
And I mean MONDO creeping charlie, piled up so that just the top of this bush was peeking out, and my husband pointed it out and said "hey don't pull that it's a rose".

So is it a rose?

If a close-up of the leaves is needed, let me know & I'll get a macro shot.

[RamonaGS]

It totally looks like my roses, so I would say yes. The shape of the leaves, and their distribution on the stem looks right to me too. I would keep them. Also, really young roses don't always have prominent thorns at first either.

[tomc]

Time will tell, but, I might not rule out rasberry, blackberry...

I'm just sayin'.

[RamonaGS]

You know Watermelon, I have an itty bitty rose that has not bloomed yet. I have been rehabilitating neglected roses in my yard, and found one more hiding on the side of the house. I could take a picture of the little rose, and post it for you to compare it to your mystery plants. Would that help?

[applestar]

It looks like rose to me. But it's possible that it's just the rootstock of a *former* hybrid tea.

I have a couple of those that will NOT die. The hybrid tea portions were winter killed in the worst winter ever a few years back, so I've long since re-purposed the beds for other plants and the beds have evolved-- lilies, sedum, asparagus, potatoes, strawberries, blackberries....

I've cut back the rootstock canes to the ground time and time again. Lat year, I couldn't. This year, I have gorgeous maroon simple roses (they DON'T look gorgeous at first in the couple of years after the hybrid teas) blooming from those canes again. oh well....

[RamonaGS]

Ah, I see...I can't tell between a regular rose and a hybrid tea rose. The hybrids really don't look pretty when they bloom? There's some kind of rose planted here that's not too pretty either, I wonder if it's one of those hybrids you are talking about. I guess if you wait and see what that plant looks like if it blooms you'll know. Roses that are well established can be a pain to totally get rid of too. I hope you have a pretty rose growing there, I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

[applestar]

no, no. maybe I said it wrong....

Hybrid teas are always grafted to a rootstock, but my hybrid teas died, leaving only the rootstock, which have refused to die even though I've been cutting them down to the stump. Normally you don't see the rootstock bloom because you would cut off those waterspouts growing out of the rootstock portion below the graft.

Compared to when the complex multi layered delicatey colored and structured hybrid teas were blooming, these root stock simple roses look... well... Simple. But after a few years of not seeing the hybrid teas, seeing the dark maroon blooms made me think they looked pretty -- and gorgeous, even. I do think this year's blooms look larger and less stunted looking though -- maybe because they are not struggling on first year canes.

[RamonaGS]

Oh, ok. I think I must've misread or misunderstood, LOL!

[applestar]

It was like before 5AM when I wrote that first post, so....

Here's a photo -- looks kind of nice with the white blackberry blossoms even though this is the thorny wild blackberry that I'm trying to get rid of (in other words, another weed )

[RamonaGS]

I see what you mean, it does look nice together. The blackberries look different than my mother's do, her's have very ragged leaves and are shaped almost like it was crossed with a grape leaf. But she has some special type of thornless blackberry, so maybe it was. Maybe if you manage to get rid of the blackberries, you could plant some pretty jasmines there to go with the hybrid tea stragglers, lol Do they smell like roses?

[watermelonpunch]

Hmmmm.

Thanks for the input.

I guess this is a wait & see kind of thing then. ?

Would a bush that small actually bloom at all?
Well, maybe that's a silly question since the other rose bush had several blooms and it seems quite small to me, and I was surprised that it bloomed that much.

I was also confused about how the blooms looked. Some were peculiar looking to me, for roses.
Is that indicative of anything?

I didn't think they were as impressive as my neighbor's spectacular pink roses last year.
But her son has her yard professionally maintained (she's up there in age). Just to give you a picture here, I heard him a few weeks ago loudly proclaiming to some other neighbors how much he pays for lawn service for his mother to keep her lawn looking like wall-to-wall carpeting (his words)... And it seems like it's a lot that some truck comes & they're over there spraying stuff that stinks on the lawn, on all the bushes... so I assumed her roses were so spectacular because they're on some kind of plant steroid sort of fertilizer. LOL

Whereas I've done nothing with mine. At all.

Well, except my mother felt compelled to give it coffee when she was visiting last year, and at the time I thought she was nuts. But since then I've learned that we likely have alkaline-leaning soil in our yard, so the coffee probably made sense. And I've also learned that alkaline soil is common in Florida where my mother lives, and that would probably explain why all her friends, avid gardeners, her friend the retired horticulturist, all swear by coffee in the garden.

Anyway... The other rose bush (not the one I'm asking about)... interesting for the conversation... I just noticed it has a "fresh" branch on it.
It rather reminded me of the "1st year branches" of the blackberry that grows here along the field, and some in our yard. You know rather white or whatnot.. the branches that start growing after the older branches put out the blackberries.
This surprised me.
But then I know nothing about roses.
And only a little more about blackberries.

The bush (that I have pictured) looks nothing like our blackberry bushes around here though... That possibility had never occurred to me... even though it's also a thorny plant. It just didn't look like any blackberry bushes I'd ever seen.

The blackberry bushes are not so much bushes as they are limited arching vines.
Whereas this suspect rose bush is sort of growing like an interesting miniature tree... Well, you know with branches at zig zag angle. That zig zag angle seems to be present in our confirmed rose bush.


Oh and btw applestar... that sedum looks very nice. I was thinking maybe the colour looked especially vibrant... but perhaps it's the lighting and white balance in the picture. Mine is a little more almost blueish... but it looks the same as that... you know with the kind of serrated edges.

[watermelonpunch]

More pics

The original unidentified "new bush" I started this thread in reference to:









And here is the known rose bush, specifically, the newer branch... (though it looks older than it did a couple of days ago!)






What you can't see here, because I didn't get a decent picture of the leaves on the older branches... is that there's some kind of white on the leaves that doesn't look right.
Is this some kind of mildew sort of thing?
It's been really rainy the past week.

And if so, I would appreciate any tips if something should be done about that.
Thanks!~

[RamonaGS]

My brother has an issue with this stuff in the link, but he has a high moisture in his growing environment because he is trying to grow hydroponically. Do your white spots look anything like this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdery_mildew

[watermelonpunch]

That's not what it looks like.
I went out to closely inspect it.
Can't take a detail picture right now because a) it's very windy, and b) the bush is in strong angled late day dappled sunlight. I'll try and get one later or tomorrow.

To describe it... It's almost as if... Well, it looks like the leaves are ... painted green, and in some parts, it has chipped away leaving geometric white modeling.
I know that sounds odd.
I'm going to try & find close-ups online that look like it. (My search terms are going to be weird! lol)

[applestar]

Try "rose sawfly"

[watermelonpunch]

Applestar brilliant! Did I describe it well?

Yes, that's exactly what it looks like is happening to the leaves...

https://www.entomology.wisc.edu/diaglab/ ... 05_24.html
the sawfly picture (2nd down)

Minus the wormy kind of things. See nothing from the animal kingdom designation on the leaves right now. And I looked pretty closely at most of the leaves.

So what to do about that?
Does it stop on its own & they've done their worst already, or will these things keep going?

[RamonaGS]

Try "rose sawfly"

WOW...that sounds bad,