365 Urban Species. #330 Beach Rose

[urbpan]

Photos by urbpan. This supermarket parking lot traffic island in Cambridge serves as habitat for a group of beach roses with mature fruit.

Urban species #330: Beach rose Rosa rugosa

Rosa rugosa is a rose native to the dunes of Asia. It has been planted along beaches in North America as an ornamental and as a soil stabilizer. Its general hardiness and ability to resist drought and salt makes it a good choice for urban and roadside plantings. Cities and towns in North America and Europe, whether they are coastal or not, boast thick shrubby stands of beach roses around buildings and on traffic islands. Its flowers are open white or magenta roses, attractive to many insects and pleasing to human tastes as well. When the flower has been pollenated, the ovary swells into a huge rose hip. Urban wild food foragers are delighted to find plantings of beach roses in the fall, as they produce some of the meatiest and best tasting fruit. Ecologists and land stewards are currently debating the status of Rosa rugosa as it seems to be a moderately invasive species.


This rose hip at the perfection of ripeness was gone soon after this photo was taken.



Photos by cottonmanifesto. Beach roses are planted on Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor. These are the flowers in July.


Japanese beetles mating and feasting on Rosa rugosa petals.

Comments

[droserary.livejournal.com]

I don't have a very good guide with me that covers Rosa. I thought I had found multiflora rose growing near here, but these pictures make me doubt that identification. If you know, what's the major difference between the two? Besides habitat, of course.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Multiflora is sprawling/climbing in habit, long stems reaching out, with clusters of tiny rose hips. Rugosa is denser, shrubbier, with much larger fruit and shorter stems with very dense and tiny thorns. Does that help?

[hissilliness.livejournal.com]

I thought rose hips were too tart to be really edible by themselves. Was I misinformed?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

That's a matter of taste, I suppose. Rugosa hips are less tart than most crabapples. There isn't a lot of flesh to rose hips, so I just pick and nibble--a little treat more than a food.