Yes, they can do.

now I'd have said no. I havent seen them but you may well be correct Bamboo.

Well some climbing roses are grafted onto rugosa rootstock, Seaburngirl, just like other roses - if they're not grafted in this way, no suckers, if they are, they may occur.

Not just rugosa but several other rose stocks can be used too.

Millie, post a photo if you think you have suckers. Just remember that some varieties of rose produce coppery or reddish foliage on strong, vigorous shoots that looks quite different from older foliage and stems.

A customer once brought a bag of lovely coppery, vigorous new shoots from a climbing rose he had pruned off to me once. He plonked the bag on the desk in front of me and started to complain that the rose he bought a year ago was just suckers. I politely explained his error to him and told him not to do it again....

As someone that spent 35years on the "rose fields" and has grafted several thousand climbing roses i can assure you they do have suckers, usually a brighter green in colour..

Here in the States, about 99% of the roses sold, including climbers, are grafted on some kind of rootstock. Suckers are a common, and occasionally pernicious problem! I never had the heart to tell my father that his beloved 'Paul's Scarlet' rose was now a common 'Dr. Huey' rootstock!

my sucker is a coppery colour changing to green in places

Might not be a sucker - sucker growth usually has a different number of leaflets present in each leaf branch - count and see how many your rose has and how many this shoot has. Another way to tell is simply to move the soil away where you see the growth coming from - if its coming from below the lumpy graft at the base, it's a sucker, if its coming from the same place as all the other 'normal' topgrowth, its not a sucker.

now I read suckers as being 'adhesive' pads to help it climb. root stock suckers never even came into my head. and yes they do have that type

brilliant how a siple question can have 2 meanings.

thankyou