Kingdom: Plantae

Phylum: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants

Class: Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons

Family: Rosaceae

Variety: The most common Palouse phase is var. ultramontana.

Common Name: Wood’s rose

Species Code: ROWO

Origin: Native to grasslands, open forests, moist draws and hillsides, mostly east of the Cascade Mountains in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, extending south into California and east to Saskatchewan and Texas.

Rare: no

Form: shrub, deciduous, rhizomatous, thicket forming; stems 0.5-2 m tall, erect to spreading, armed to nearly unarmed, infrastipular prickles usually well developed, straight or curved, other prickles often smaller, more slender, or absent; bark gray or reddish-brown.

Duration: perennial

Longevity: long-lived

Habitat Type: prairie, riparian, shrub thicket, forest

Wetland Indicator Status: FACU

Leaves: alternate, variably pubescent to glabrous or glandular underneath, odd-pinnately compound; leaflets 5-9, elliptic to ovate or obovate, 1.5-5 cm long and to 2.5 cm wide, margins mostly singly serrate, the teeth usually not gland tipped.

Mature height: 20-80 inches

Flowers: terminal on new wood, small, rarely solitary; sepals 5, generally eglandular, 1-2 cm long and 2-3.5 mm wide at the base but narrowed in the middle and only slightly expanded beyond, persistent on the ripening hypanthium; corolla rotate, 3-5 cm wide; petals 5, light to deep pink, 1.5-2.5 cm long, stamens and pistils numerous, hypanthium 3-5 mm wide in flower.

Flower color: pink

Bloom: May, June

Bloom starts on: May

Bloom ends on: June

Fruit: achene, numerous, 3-4 mm long, with stiff long hairs on one side, enclosed in the fleshy hypanthium (hip); hips dark red, globose to ellipsoid to pyriform, mostly 6-12 mm long and wide.

Characteristics:
Rosa is a complex and variable genus which hybridizes freely and sometimes exhibits polyploidy and/or apomixis (Hitchcock et al 1969).
R. woodsii has flowers in clusters, while R. nutkana generally has one or rarely two flowers at the end of the branches. 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. St. John (1963) considered what is now R. woodsii to be two separate species.
Reproduces both sexually by seed and vegetatively by rhizomes. Often forms dense thickets.
35,000-65,000 seeds/lb (Meyer undated).
35,000-65,000 seeds/lb (Hassell et al 1996).
50,967 seeds/lb (USDA NRCS PLANTS Database 2009).
2n=14.
Flowers are perfect.
Pollinated by insects (Meyer undated). Fruit is an achene. Achenes are enclosed in the fleshy hypanthium and the mature hypanthium is commonly called a hip.
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 and bears also eat the hips. Thickets provide cover and nesting sites. Foliage and young stems are browsed by deer and elk.
Rosa spp. are important browse for Rocky Mountain elk in summer. Use is lower in fall and winter (Kufeld 1973).
Livestock will eat the plants but thorns can cause soft tissue injury (Stubbendieck et al 1997).
Seeds are dispersed by birds and mammals which eat the fruit.
Rosa woodsii is a host for the larva of the coral hairstreak, Satyrium titus, in Washington (Pyle 2002).

Sun requirement: full sun to partial shade

Soil moisture: mesic

Precipitation: 12-40 inches (USDA NRCS PLANTS Database 2009).

Fire: Resistant to low intensity fires which do not kill the root crown. Regenerates mostly from the root crown. Sprouting from the roots and regeneration by seed are uncommon (Hauser 2006).

Sowing time: summer

Transplant time: spring

Stratification: warm moist followed by cold moist

Seed yield: high

Seed harvest: medium difficulty, must be hand picked

Seed first harvest: 2 to 5 years (Hauser 2006).

Seed cleaning: difficult

Planting duration: long

Seed shatter: low

Seed size: large

Seed harvest date: late fall

Seed comments: Birds and mammals eat the fruit.

Propagation:
3 protocols in the Native Plant Network
Los Lunas, New Mexico Plant Materials Center
Bridger, Montana Plant Materials Center
Glacier National Park, Montana

Other Propagation Information:
Seeds need 120 days cold moist stratification at 3^oC or 60 days warm moist stratification at 20^oC followed by 90 days cold moist stratification at 3^oC (Meyer undated).
Seeds need 60 days warm moist stratification at 20^oC followed by 90 days cold moist stratification at 3^oC (McTavish 1986).
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: Two types of galls on R. woodsii are caused by insects. Leaf gall is a swelling of the leaf caused by an unknown insect larva. Hairy gall has hair-like growths on the leaves caused by a Hymenoptera larva of the genus Eurytoma (Krishnan & Franceschi 1988).

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

Francis, John K (editor). 2004. Wildland Shrubs of the United States and Its Territories: Thamnic Descriptions: Volume 1. Gen. Tech. Report IITF-GTR-26. San Juan, Puerto Rico: USDA, Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry, and Fort Collins, CO: USDA, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 839 p.

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

Hauser, A. Scott. 2006. Rosa woodsii. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/ [accessed 2009, January 17].

Hitchcock, C. Leo, Arthur Cronquist, Marion Ownbey, and J.W. Thompson. 1969. Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Part 3, Saxifragaceae to Ericaceae.

Krishnan, Hari B., and Vincent R. Franceschi. 1988. Anatomy of Some Leaf Galls on Rosa woodsii (Rosaceae). American Journal of Botany 75:369-376.

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

McTavish, Bruce. 1986. Seed Propagation of Some Native Plants is Surprisingly Successful. American Nurseryman 164(4):55-56, 60,62-63.

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. Vancouver, BC, Canada: Lone Pine Publishing.

Pyle, Robert M. 2002. The Butterflies of Cascadia. Seattle, WA: The Seattle Audubon Society. 420 p.

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

Stubbendieck, James, Stephan L. Hatch, and Charles H. Butterfield. 1997. North American Range Plants. 5th edition. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. 501 p.

USDA, NRCS. 2009. The PLANTS Database. Baton Rouge LA: National Plant Data Center. http://plants.usda.gov, 13 July, 2009.

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