Any rose lovers about?
Good morning.
Could anyone give me a bit of advice re whether this is a "sucker" on my climbing rose (Alberic Barbier) please?
The rose was planted this Spring & is doing really well but in the last month or so an incredibly long stem has started to grow.
I've done a bit of reading up on it & it seems to fit most of the criteria for suckers (different colour stem, long whippy shoot) but I'd appreciate a second opinion.
If it is a sucker, do I just snap it off?
Also, do I get rid of it now or wait until Spring?
As always, any help received is very much appreciated.
See below for pictures.
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You can relax! That's not a sucker!
That's a lovely healthy new shoot on a really healthy-looking climbing rose - while it's still young and fairly flexible train it as near to the horizontal as you can. That way it'll grow lots of side shoots which are the ones which will produce flowers. It'll be a picture 
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Looks to me like a sucker coming from the graft union where the rose you wanted is joined to a more vigorous rootstock. Best wait for some more expert opinions before removing it.
Ideally, the graft union should be planted one or two inches below soil level to help discourage suckering. Having said that, I rescued a Geoff Hamilton from the border where it was struggling last year and planted it in a big pot at the recommended depth and it is now suckering like mad. None of my other roses does this.
Suckers are best pulled off before they provide too much competition for nutrients and thus weaken the real plant.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
Thanks for the input, both of you!!!
That's 1 for and 1 against....anymore for anymore?
Does not look like a sucker to me, same leaves as main plant, although that is not definitive.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
Punkdoc, that was one of the things I thought that didn't quite fit hence me saying "most of the criteria" - the leaves!!
And there was me thinking gardening was supposed to be relaxing?
Who said that?
Gardening is very stressful! I've just found a slug all snuggled up amongst the pellets on what used to be a tray of seedlings of something I didn't label so I don't know what his last meal was.
I'm covered in cuts, scratches and bruises from tackling yet another bank of brambles and now I don't know what to put in my Winter containers!
I'm in tatters me.
I'm on the rose side of the fence with doc. Not enough to label it as a sucker but it mght be sneaky!
Tell me about it!!!
The cyber side of gardening is just as traumatic.
I've not been able to do any work today due to this whole sucker / non sucker conundrum and that's without ploughing through my multitude of emails informing me of all the Spring bulbs that I'll probably buy, despite having hardly any room in my borders anymore...
I dream of having scratches on my arms & dirt under my fingernails
Ps - Thanks for the opinion as well.
OK - I've had a look with my sewing reading glasses (stronger) and I agree it's a proper shoot. Tie it in as horizontally as possible and it should throw up lots of shorter flowering shoots next year.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
Thanks Obelixx - will do when I get home.
To think I was (pinches fingers) *that* far off snapping it off this morning as well!