Wild Roses

The wild roses, the species and the rugosas, are what comes to mind when you think rose hips. Their fruits are large, in bright hues of red and bright orange, and their thorny shrubs provide them in abundance.

The best known species variety is the dog rose, an ancestor of the old garden roses, still used today as understock for grafting modern varieties because of its vigor and disease resistance.

Another, more poetic variety is the Eglantine, with pink flowers and apple scented foliage.

Species roses are once blooming, with simple five petaled blossoms reminiscent of their lineage (roses are related to apples, raspberries, strawberries, and, strangely enough, rowan trees).

They are lightly scented, if at all, and make great privacy hedges.

You wouldn’t know the rugosas were wild if they didn’t naturalize freely all along the northeaste
sea coast.

They are the hardiest of roses, fearing no freeze, nor disease, nor wrath of wind, and blooming abundantly in June, with occasional repeats in September, usually the mauve-pink flowers which are their trademark.

They look like cabbage roses, smell like Damasks, and need no care at all. They like to spread and sprawl and are covered in a blanket of pin-sharp thorns that grace not only their canes, but their flower sepals and the underside of their leaves. Rugosas are the ultimate survival machine, with beauty and fragrance to boot.

They are called beach roses, because they like sandy soils and salty air, and their perfect blooms have earned them a place among the noble roses, of which they boast many varieties - Roseraie de l’Hay, Hansa, Grootendorst and Blanc Double de Coubert,