I would like to note right away that the age of certain species of such a plant reaches 400 years. It is the ancestor of all types of cultivated roses.
You can learn about this amazing, elegant, unpretentious plant, its places of growth, its benefits and much more by reading this article. Here you can also learn about how to propagate decorative wild rose and how to care for it.
Shrub with bright numerous flowers represents a genus of wild plants from the Rosaceae family. As a rule, it is grown in gardens as an ornamental shrub and for producing fruits with excellent beneficial properties.
Decorative dog rose: photo, description
The flower has many cultural forms that are bred with the name rose. It is valued for the beauty of the bush and the abundance of flowers and greenery. Among other things, wild roses are much more unpretentious than magnificent exquisite park roses.
In natural conditions, they prefer the warm temperate climate of the Northern Hemisphere.
Most of these are shrubs with2 meters high with slightly drooping branches. There are also species with rather long branches clinging to neighboring plants, or with creeping shoots along the ground. There are rose hips in the form of low but dense pillow bushes, very attractive and decorative during their flowering.
The plant got its name due to the presence of sharp and strong thorns on it, capable of causing certain troubles to any living creature.
Decorative wild rose blooms from May to July, and its berries ripen in August-September, and the last fruits can remain on the bushes even until winter.
Large flowers, mostly solitary, have a size of 5 centimeters in diameter. The corolla usually contains five white, pink or dark red petals. There are also a huge number of stamens and pistils.
Toward evening, the flowers on the bushes fold their petals, and in the morning they open again, and almost always at the same time. It should be noted that K. Linnaeus (Swedish botanist) included rose hips in the list of plants by which you can find out the time of day.
Rosehip branches studded with original berries look good in autumn flower arrangements and dry bouquets. No wonder it is called a decorative wild rose.
Can I eat it? We will get the answer to this question below.
Fruits: use
Spherical or egg-shaped fruits are usually orange or red, fleshy, containing a large number of small seeds (fruitlets). Inner partthe walls of the fruit are covered with small hairs, and the sepals remain on the upper surface.
Decorative dogrose begins to bear fruit from about 3 years of age (sometimes from 2 years), and this plant has the most abundant harvest at the age of about 10-12 years. The fruits are usually dried, and in winter they brew and drink 1-2 glasses a day as a good vitamin drink. Also, the fruits can be used to make jam, marmalade and compotes. Rose hips are also good in the form of mashed potatoes and syrups.
Legend
There is one famous and widespread legend among the Cossacks of Kuban.
One young Cossack woman, who lived in ancient times, fell in love with a brave, beautiful young man. Their love was mutual. And they swore allegiance to each other for the rest of their lives. But the ataman of the village, who also liked the young Cossack woman for a long time, sent that young man to military service. At parting, the beloved gave the girl his faithful and reliable dagger. After seeing him off, the chieftain began to force the girl who was left without a betrothed to marry him. And yet the wedding did not take place due to the fact that the bride ran out into the courtyard right from the festive table and there stabbed herself with a dagger given to her by her beloved. At the place where the scarlet drops of blood fell, a surprisingly beautiful shrub with bright flowers grew. The chieftain, who saw this beautiful plant, wanted to pick the flower he liked. But suddenly the whole bush bristled with very sharp thorns. He pricked all his hands so that he could not pick a single flower.
In autumn, the bush was covered with bright beautiful fruits. Somehow, an ailing old woman stopped near him and suddenly heard a barely audible voice that said: "Pick my berries, grandmother, and make tea with them. Do not be afraid of sharp thorns, as they are intended for unkind people." Grandmother obeyed, picked up the fruits and, having prepared an infusion from them, drank it. Immediately, she felt as if she had looked ten years younger at once. Since then, all people began to use the magical miraculous rose hips for medicinal purposes.
Growing places
Only in Russia, botanists have identified more than 8 species of this plant. Prickly, surprisingly elegant bushes are found almost throughout the country. The only exception is the Far North.
Rosehip is a fairly photophilous plant, therefore, in nature it prefers open forest edges, edges of paths and forest roads, river and lake shores, thickets of shrubs and mountain slopes. Often its thickets, forming huge clumps, penetrate into settlements. Often they coexist with elderberry.
Kinds of roses often grown for decorative purposes - wrinkled dog rose (or rosa rugosa), rosa virginiana. In Europe, musky has taken root and is well distributed. All of them are decorative rose hips. Their varieties are discussed below.
The most common varieties
All wild roses and wild rose hips bear fruits of different shades: bright red, orange, purple, brown and almost black berries. However, not all of them arequality are equal.
The following are the most valuable (in terms of nutrient content) berries of the following rosehip varieties:
• May, or cinnamon, which is the most common species growing in central Russia. Individual bushes of this wild rose are found in forest glades and clearings. When grown in the garden, it is very unpretentious to any soil conditions. Typically, these species have high winter hardiness and excellent resistance to various diseases.
• The prickly rose is also a decorative rosehip, which is often bred in city squares and front gardens. The bush is undersized, its branches are densely covered with thorns. During the flowering period, the plant is completely covered with fragrant snow-white flowers.
• Dog rose, or wild rose, is almost universally used as a hedge. Light pink fragrant flowers bloom in June, and in autumn the branches are decorated with beautiful orange-red fruits. This species has rather tall and sprawling bushes up to 2.5-3 meters and a powerful root system. This wild rose is decorative, unpretentious, winter-hardy and disease-resistant.
• French rosehip is the ancestor of ancient garden roses, including the famous medieval pharmacy rose in Europe. This species grows in Southern Europe, in the Crimea and in the European part of Russia. Small-branched, low-growing shrubs are less than one meter high and often form dense thickets. The large flowers of this species have a magnificent bright red color.
Yellow rose hips
This unusual decorative dog rose with yellow flowers (photo below) grows in the Tien Shan, Pamir-Alai and Asia Minor. It grows, as a rule, in the mountains.
This plant is a very tall shrub (about 3 meters), with thin, long, often arcuate, shiny, climbing brown-red shoots. All of them are densely covered with sharp, straight spines that alternate with small bristles.
Unpaired leaves of 5-9 ovate leaflets are up to 4 cm long. They are bluish-green on top and pubescent bluish below. Terry flowers are usually solitary, rarely found in 2-3 pieces, up to 7 centimeters in diameter. Their color is yellow, inside it is reddish-red. Red fruits are spherical in shape.
This rosehip has a not-so-good characteristic: its flowers emit an unpleasant odor, just like the leaves.
Rosehip decorative: planting and care
What is important in caring for this plant?
The main work of growing this bush is as follows: loosening the soil, fertilizing, weed control, watering and pruning. Although unpretentious, the plant still bears fruit well on nutrient-rich and well-cultivated soils. Timely removal of old shoots contributes to a good restoration of the bush and a longer preservation of a beautiful decorative appearance.
Pruning decorative rose hips is done before the start of growth only once a year (in early spring). It should be noted that a bush is considered more productive if it has shoots of different ages.
How do plants reproduce?
How is decorative wild rose grown? Propagation is mostly carried out by root shoots, as well as layering, seeds and green or root cuttings.
The most common and easiest way is to reproduce by offspring. To do this, they should be harvested in the fall, choosing them from the most productive bushes. Moreover, the length of the rhizome part on the offspring should be approximately 15 centimeters, and on the aerial part there should be a stump no larger than 5 cm in size. These offspring can be planted immediately in a permanent place, without any growing.
There is another way to grow ornamental wild rose - propagation by seeds. To do this, it is necessary to collect ripe rose hips, which have already begun to wrinkle, and put them in pots filled with moistened soil. After closing them, leave them outside for the winter period to ensure that the fruits are exposed to low temperatures in order to ensure successful seed germination. After frosts, you should pull the berries out of the pots, separate the seeds and use the water in the vessel to check them for germination. Instances that have drowned can be sown in boxes and grown in a cold greenhouse.
More about propagation by cuttings
What other way can you suggest to propagate decorative wild rose?Propagation by cuttings is convenient precisely during the autumn planting of this crop (in October-November). The landing pit should be about 0.2 meters deep. Rose hips do not respond well to acidic soil, and therefore liming the soil is necessary. You can add both compost and rotted manure to the pit.
More experienced gardeners recommend cutting rosehip seedlings short enough before planting (the length of thick branches should not exceed 0.1 meters). And the roots can be shortened to 0.2 meters, as the cuts on the roots contribute to the good survival of the plant.
After all these manipulations, the root system should be dipped in clay mass, and then gently straightened. It should be planted so that the root collar is about 5 cm deep. Be sure to water the seedling and mulch it with sawdust and peat.
You should pay attention to the gaps between adjacent seedlings. A living decorative hedge can be obtained with a distance between plants of 0.5 meters. Increasing the distance to 1 meter increases the yield.
What is the use of rose hips?
Decorative wild rose is not only decoration in gardens. Its beneficial properties are known to many. Rose hips are valued for their fruits, which are an excellent natural medicine and a tasty, he althy food supplement.
Rose hips contain many vitamins and minerals necessary for the human body: rutin, carotene, iron, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, organic acids and antioxidants.
The use of rose hips in food helps to strengthen the immune system, increases the body's resistance to harmful bacteria and slows down the aging process.
Conclusion
Beautiful non-capricious wild roses gave rise to a huge number of species (more than 200) of amazingly beautiful roses that have been growing on Earth since ancient times (about 40 million years). These plants in their aroma and beauty are almost not inferior to cultivated varieties. They are widely used in landscape design.
Among the huge variety of ornamental plants, it is wild roses and their hybrids that are widely popular and especially loved by flower growers: standard and bush roses - for flower beds, especially in the foreground in planting groups with other flowers; climbing species - for original vertical gardening.
Different periods of flowering of the plant and a variety of colors allow you to create fantastic decorative compositions from wild roses and roses.
We can talk about these amazing flowers for a long time. It should be remembered that the oldest legends were invented not about a rose, but about a wild rose bush. And the English royal coat of arms, preserved from the medieval times of the White and Scarlet Roses, depicts not a garden rose, but a flower of an ordinary wild rose.
