Rosa acicularis

Family: Rosaceae
Common Name: prickly rose
Symbol: ROAC
Description: Colony-forming shrub to 2 m tall Stem: densely covered with slender, straight unequal prickles and bristles, even on some flowering branches. Leaves: pinnately compound, stalked, main axis (rachis) usually hairy and glandular, with five to seven leaflets (sometimes three). Leaflets are 1.5 - 5 cm long, elliptic to egg-shaped with a blunt to pointed tip and rounded to nearly heart-shaped base, toothed, usually glandular, dull and hairless above, and downy to minutely hairy beneath. Flowers: usually borne solitary on lateral branches of previous year's stems, sometimes in small clusters, 4 - 6 cm across, with a hairless (rarely stalked-glandular) stalk, hairless floral tube (hypanthium), persistent sepals becoming erect and coming together in fruit, and fragrant pink to deep rose petals 1.5 - 3 cm long. Fruit: bony achenes surrounded by the mature floral tube (hip). The smooth hip is dark blue to purplish, 1 - 2 cm across, and elliptic to slender pear-shaped with the neck below a beak of sepals. Achenes pale brown and 4 - 5.5 mm long. Stipules: subtending leaves, enlarged, glandular-hairy along margins, densely covered with short-stalked glands when young.