Around here, western Missouri, there are lots of them. They are very healthy, and vigorous. Their vigor is the reason they are used, like the poster said above, as the root stock for the other varieties of rose, like the lovely tea roses, floribunda, climbers, etc. They're just not as pretty as the fancy roses.
My rose that died was a beautiful tea rose about 5 feet tall, with lavender colored blossoms the size of a teacup. In the morning sun, from my kitchen window, it looked like the roses were silver. Gorgeous! And while I have many friends who have lost their roses to sprouts from the rootstock, in my case, the sprout from below ground level did not kill my rose.
The above ground part of the tree died in 1993, when we went through an entire summer, something like 80 days, of torrential rain every day. The flooding in the area was just terrible. By the end of the summer, my rose had drowned. In the spring, a shoot came up from way below the ground, and I let it grow. A few years later, it bloomed, and it was the common, red shrub rose, that had been used for the rootstock of my beautiful, lavender, hybrid tea rose. I have been trying to get those deep, stubborn roots out of there ever since. The problem was, it is in one of my best sight-lines from inside the house, so I want something really pretty there.
Last year, my husband and I may have finally gotten rid of it. I just went out and checked, and I don't see any above ground growth in the area. Fingers crossed, because I have my eye on a tiger eye sumac at my local garden center.
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