Rosa foliolosa (Species)

Garden and Forest. February 26, 1890 p. 100-101

Rosa foliolosa

THE Prairie Rose of the south-west is one of the more distinctly marked species of the genus as represented in America. In habit it is low, rarely more than a foot in height, spreading by running root-stocks and forming clumps. The stems are slender and leafy, often unarmed; the spines, when present, mostly slender and straight, or nearly so. The leaves are nearly or quite glabrous, pale green and shining above, of seven to eleven small, narrow leaflets, which are acute at both ends, or only acutish at the apex, and simply toothed. The narrow stipules are usually glandular-ciliate, and the stalk of the leaf prickly. The rather large flowers are bright pink and very fragrant, almost always solitary and on quite short pedicels. The depressed-globose hip and the sepals are glandular-hispid, and the outer sepals narrowly lobed.

This little Rose was first collected by Thomas Nuttall during his early visit to Arkansas in 1818-20, but was not published until twenty years afterward, when it was described in Torrey and Gray's "Flora of North America" (vol. i., p. 460). Meantime it had been found by Berlandier and Drummond in Texas, and by other collectors. It appears to be confined to the prairie region of Arkansas, the Indian Territory, and northern and central Texas. A nearly allied species (R. Mexicana), found by Dr. Palmer in the mountains of Coahuila, Mexico, is the only species known to be native in Mexico proper.

The accompanying figure, on page 101, was drawn by Mr. Faxon from a specimen cultivated at the Arnold Arboretum. — S. W.

Vilmorin (1906) and Wright (1971)

Wright (1978)