The City of Allentown Parks Department is contending with a deadly plant virus infesting the Allentown Rose Garden along Cedar Creek Parkway.
The department has been forced to remove hundreds and hundreds of the park's rose plants due to the disease.
The rose garden maintenance staff realized something was wrong last August, toward the end of the growing season.
The diagnosis was finally confirmed earlier this year when root and shoot samples were taken from roses and sent to the Plant Disease and Insect Diagnostic Lab at Oklahoma State University.
On February 25 the city received the results, which showed the samples indeed tested positive for rose rosette disease. It's among the first known outbreaks of rose rosette in the area.