Kingdom: Plantae

Phylum: Magnoliophyta -- flowering plants

Class: Magnoliopsida -- dicotyledons

Order: Rosales

Family: Rosaceae -- rose

Variety: Most of the Palouse plants belong to var. hispida.

Common Name: Nootka rose

Species Code: RONU

Origin: Native to mesic grasslands and open forests of western North America from Alaska to California and east to Montana and New Mexico.

Rare: no

Form: shrub, deciduous, rhizomatous and thicket-forming, 0.5-2 m tall, stems armed with a pair of large infrastipular prickles, otherwise unarmed or with scattered, smaller prickles between the nodes, mature stems nearly black.

Mature height: 2-6 feet

Duration: perennial

Longevity: long-lived

Habitat Type: prairie, shrub thickets, forest

Wetland Indicator Status: FAC

Leaves: alternate, petiolate; blades odd-pinnately compound; leaflets mostly 5-7 (9), elliptic or ovate, 1-7 cm long and 0.7-4.5 cm wide, stipitate-glandular underneath, margins serrate or double serrate.

Flowers: large, usually solitary at the ends of branches; hypanthium 5-7 mm wide in flower, glabrous or occasionally with gland-tipped bristles; sepals 5, often glandular, 1.5-4 cm long, wide at the base then narrowed near the middle and widening again at the tip, persisting on the maturing hip; corolla large, rotate; petals 5, light to deep pink, 2.5-4 cm long; pistils and stamens numerous.

Flower color: pink

Bloom: May, June, July

Bloom starts on: late May

Bloom ends on: early July

Fruit: achenes numerous, 4-6 mm long, stiffly hairy, enclosed in the fleshy hypanthium (hip); hips globose to pyriform, 12-20 mm long and wide, reddish-purple, the calyx remaining attached to hip.

Characteristics:
Rosa is a complex and variable genus which hybridizes freely and sometimes exhibits polyploidy and/or apomixis.
St. John (1963) recognized 6 separate species and 2 varieties in what is now Rosa nutkana. He considered the inclusion of all those former taxa in R. nutkana "a massive lumping with which the writer does not agree."
30,000-60,000 seeds/lb (Meyer undated).
30,000-60,000 seeds/lb (Hassell et al 1996).
45,000 seeds/lb (USDA NRCS PLANTS Database 2010).
Fruit is an achene. Achenes are enclosed in the fleshy hypanthium. The mature hypanthium is commonly called a hip.
n=21 (Baldwin et al 2004).
x=7 (University of British Columbia 2003).
2n=42, perhaps also 28 (Hitchcock et al 1969).
Fruit 10-15 mm wide.
Flowers are perfect.
Hips are high in vitamin C and can be eaten raw or cooked, or made into jelly or tea. Native peoples had many uses for the plant and plant parts.
Hips remain on the plant well into winter and are a valuable food source for birds and small mammals. Coyotes also eat the hips. Thickets provide cover and nesting sites. Foliage and young stems are browsed by deer and elk.
According to Kufeld (1973), Rosa spp. are important browse for Rocky Mountain elk in summer. Use is lower in fall and winter (ibid).
Seeds are dispersed by the birds and mammals which eat the fruit.

Comments: R. nutkana generally has one or rarely two flowers at the end of the branches, while R. woodsii has flowers in clusters. On the Palouse, both species may occur on the same site and there is some intergradation. Daubenmire (1970) considered them ecological equivalents and lumped them together in his coverage and frequency data.

Sun requirement: full sun to partial shade

Soil moisture: mesic

Precipitation: The USDA NRCS PLANTS Database (2010) gives a range of 55-125 inches. It is, of course, common in areas such as the Palouse with much less precipitation. The lower end of the range is probably much closer to 18 than 55 inches.

Sowing time: fall

Transplant time: spring or fall

Stratification: cold moist

Seed yield: high

Seed harvest: difficult, hips must be picked by hand

Seed cleaning: medium difficulty

Planting duration: long

Seed insect problem: uncommon

Seed shatter: low

Seed size: large

Seed harvest date: October

Seed comments: Fruits are eaten by bird and other animals.

Herbaria: Specimen data and digital resources from The Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria

Keywords: native upland perennial shrub

Propagation:
Seeds need 365 days cold moist stratification at 4.5^oC (Meyer undated).
Roses can be propagated from seeds removed from dried hips and sown in autumn or from root suckers (Parish et al 1996).
Reproduces both sexually by seed and vegetatively by rhizomes. Often forms dense thickets.

Notes: Tends to form thickets from rhizomes and may not be a good landscape species for this reason, but is excellent in a wilder setting where the spreading habit is not objectionable.

References:
Baldwin, B.G., S. Boyd, B.J. Ertter, D.J. Keil, R.W. Patterson, T.J. Rosatti, and D.H. Wilken (eds). 2004. Jepson Online Interchange for California Floristics. University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Accessed 2/9/10 online at http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/interchange.html

Daubenmire, R.F. 1970. Steppe Vegetation of Washington. Washington State Univ. Coop. Ext. Service EB 1446. Pullman, WA.

Hassell, Wendell, W. Rocky Beavers, Steve Ouellette, and Thomas Mitchell. 1996. Seeding Rate Statistics for Native and Introduced Species. US Department of Interior and US Department of Agriculture, NRCS. Denver, CO.

Hitchcock, C. Leo, and Arthur Cronquist. 1973. Flora of the Pacific Northwest. Univ. of Washington Press. Seattle, WA.

Hitchcock, C. Leo, Arthur Cronquist, Marion Ownbey, and J.W. Thompson. 1969. Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest. University of Washington Press. Seattle, WA. 5 vol.

Kufeld, Roland. 1973. Foods Eaten by the Rocky Mountain Elk. Journal of Range Management 26:106-113.

Meyer, Susan E. undated. Rosa L. rose, briar. In: Bonner, Franklin T., and Rebecca G. Nisley (eds.). Woody Plant Seed Manual. USDA Forest Service. Available online at http://www.nsl.fs.fed.us/wpsm/

Parish, Roberta, Ray Coupe, and Dennis Lloyd. 1996. Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia. Lone Pine Publishing. Vancouver, BC, Canada.

St. John, Harold. 1963. Flora of Southeastern Washington and of Adjacent Idaho. 3rd edition. Outdoor Pictures. Escondido, CA.

University of British Columbia. 2003. British Columbia Flora. University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research. Accessed 9/1/09 online at http://www.bcflora.org/

USDA NRCS. 2010. The PLANTS Database (http://plants.usda.gov, 9 February 2010). National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA.

Links:
Plant Profile from the USDA PLANTS Database
Species account from the Fire Effects Information System
Species information from the University of Washington Herbarium