Sweetbriar rose (Rosa rubiginosa)
Synonyms: Rosa eglanteriaDescription: Introduced to North America as an ornamental or hedge plant.
Habit: Medium to tall shrub, 1-3 m tall, usually thicket-forming, stems erect, armed with scattered, flattened, unequal, curved or hooked spines, sometimes also with short straight prickles; mature stems olive-green.
Leaves: Alternate, deciduous, odd-pinnately compound, the axis fine-prickly and densely glandular; leaflets 5-7, broadly elliptic to nearly circular, 1-2.5 cm long, hairy and stalked-glandular beneath, coarsely double-saw-toothed, the teeth gland-tipped; aromatic.
Stems: Usually many (up to several hundred) stems rising from rootstock; erect or scrambling; up to 3 m high; green to brown; smooth and somewhat roughened; woody; branched; spreading and sometimes trailing; heavily covered with down-curved prickles up to 1.5 cm long.
Flowers: Small clusters or solitary; on short, stout, glandular-bristly pedicels; 5 sepals; 1-2 cm long; stalked glands and some slender lateral lobes; spreading; deciduous at maturity; 5 petals, 1.5-2 cm long; bright pink; stamens numerous; pistils many; densely short-hairy.
Fruit and seeds: Achenes bright red, enclosed by the fleshy hypanthium, ripens into a scarlet, globe- to egg-shaped hip 1-1.5 cm long, seeds are yellow, 4 to 7 mm long and irregularly shaped.
Habitat: Native to Eurasia. Found in lowland and steppe zones.
Reproduction: By seed, roots and suckers.
Similar species: Dog Rose (Rosa canina), though the flower stalks are without prickles and the apex of each leaflet is acutely pointed.
Monitoring and rapid response: Hand-pulling, tractor pulling, bulldozing or ripping; Herbicides. Credits: The information provided in this factsheet was gathered from the Robert W. Freckmann Herbarium, the State Government of Victoria, AU and the USDA PLANTS Database.
Individual species images that appear with a number in a black box are courtesy of the Bugwood.org network (http://www.invasive.org).Individual photo author credits may not be included due to the small display size of the images and subsequent difficulty of reading the provided text. All other images appear courtesy of Google (http://images.google.com).