Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
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'Rosa multibracteata' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
A deciduous bush up to 6 ft high; young shoots slender, glabrous, armed with slender, straight, pale spines usually in pairs, 1⁄3 to 1⁄2 in. long. Leaves 11⁄2 to 21⁄2 in. long, composed of five to nine leaflets; rachis slightly prickly and glandular. Leaflets obovate or oval to almost quite round, simply or doubly toothed, dark green and glabrous above, greyish beneath and downy on the midrib, 1⁄4 to 5⁄8 in. long, from two-thirds to quite as much wide. Flowers sometimes numerous in terminal clusters, sometimes few or even solitary, subtended by a group of leaf-like bracts, each flower being 1 to 11⁄2 in. wide, bright pink. Individual flower-stalks 1⁄4 to 3⁄4 in. long, downy and glandular. Receptacle 1⁄4 in. long, slender, covered with gland-tipped bristles. Sepals 1⁄3 in. long, ovate, drawn out into slender tips, downy inside, glandular outside. Styles exserted, very downy. Fruits globose, 1⁄3 in. wide, orange-red with the sepals at the top and a few glandular bristles persisting.
Native of W. China; discovered by Wilson in the valley of the Min River, N.W. Szechwan and introduced by him in 1908. It is a very attractive and useful rose, flowering after most of the species are over and making in time a dense bush 12 ft or more wide. It is allied to R. webbiana, differing in its many-flowered inflorescence and exserted styles.
R. multibracteata is a parent of ‘Cerise Bouquet’, see p. 176.