Prickly wild rose is one of the most widespread wild roses of the far north, found across northern North America, Europe, and Asia, including Alaska and the northern Great Plains in the US. Its stems bristle with dense, needle-like prickles, and in early summer it opens saucer-shaped pink flowers. It is Alberta's provincial flower and is also called Arctic rose.
Appearance
- Growth form
- A deciduous shrub usually 4–8 ft (1.2–2.5 m) tall. The reddish-brown stems are covered with stiff bristles of mixed lengths, and even new shoots are prickly.
- Leaves
- Compound leaves with usually 5–7 finely toothed leaflets, each about ¾–2⅜ in (2–6 cm) long.
- Flowers
- Pink to deep rose flowers about 1½–2⅜ in (3.5–6 cm) across, with five broad petals and many yellow stamens. They usually grow one at a time, sometimes two or three, at the tips of new side branches.
- Flowering time
- June to July in Minnesota.
- Fruit
- Bright red hips about ½–1 in (1.2–2.5 cm) long, often oval and nearly twice as long as wide. They ripen in late summer and can hang on the shrub through winter.
Look-alikes
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- Boreal forest
- Woodland edges
- Thickets
- Rocky openings
- Lakeshores
- Range
- Found all around the Northern Hemisphere's cold regions. In the US it is native to Alaska, the northern Great Plains and Upper Midwest, the northern Rocky Mountains south to Colorado, and northern New England and New York. Within a state its range can be narrow; in Minnesota, for example, it is mostly limited to the northeastern third, where it is the most common rose.
- Preferred conditions
- Grows in sun to part shade, in dry to moist soils, in boreal forest, woodland edges, rocky openings, lakeshores, and thickets.
- Flowering
Flowers Jun–Jul
Flowers Jun–Jul
Name and classification
- About the name
- North American plants are treated as subspecies sayi, while plants in Europe and Asia are subspecies acicularis. The two also differ in their number of chromosome sets.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- LCLeast ConcernLow risk of extinction
Culture and stories
- Culture and stories
- In British Columbia, the St'át'imc (Stl'atl'mx) people of the Fraser River have used the rose's blooming as a sign that the first sockeye salmon run is starting.
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