(CNN) — Other than being a symbol for love and romance, roses are commonly known for their sharp spikes — prickles that protrude from the stems to ward off animals looking to munch on the buds.

Roses do not have thorns; they have prickles. But there ARE “thorns” in the rose garden. Their names are botrytis, black spot, rust, downy mildew, anthracnose and cerospora leaf spot. They are all ...

Did you know roses have prickles and not thorns? A thorn is a sharp modified stem that grows out of the woody stems of many kinds of trees and shrubs such as honey locust and hawthorn with a short ...

“I saw some strange-looking growth on my Knockout roses this past weekend. A few stems on three different roses were reddish and had many more thorns than normal. The branches were also distorted in ...

A rose at the New York Botanical Garden; some varieties grow naturally “thornless.” Jack Satterlee, a postdoc in CSHL’s Lippman lab, turned to the Botanical Garden for help procuring rare plant ...