Trees and Shrubs Online logo

Rosa multibracteata Hemsl. & Wils.

TSO logo

Sponsor this page

For information about how you could sponsor this page, see How You Can Help

Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Rosa multibracteata' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/rosa/rosa-multibracteata/). Accessed 2025-04-20.

Family

  • Rosaceae

Genus

Synonyms

  • R. reducta Baker

Glossary

receptacle
Enlarged end of a flower stalk that bears floral parts; (in some Podocarpaceae) fleshy structure bearing a seed formed by fusion of lowermost seed scales and peduncle.
exserted
Protruding; pushed out.
glabrous
Lacking hairs smooth. glabrescent Becoming hairless.
glandular
Bearing glands.
globose
globularSpherical or globe-shaped.
inflorescence
Flower-bearing part of a plant; arrangement of flowers on the floral axis.
midrib
midveinCentral and principal vein in a leaf.
ovate
Egg-shaped; broadest towards the stem.
rachis
Central axis of an inflorescence cone or pinnate leaf.

References

There are no active references in this article.

Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Rosa multibracteata' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/rosa/rosa-multibracteata/). Accessed 2025-04-20.

Rosa multibracteata

Rosa multibracteata SICH 96 (Howick Hall, Northumberland, UK, October 2024). Image John Grimshaw.

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.

R forrestiana Boulenger

This species resembles R. multibracteata in its foliage and in having flowers with exserted styles, but the flowers are borne in lateral clusters of up to five, on very short pedicels, and the bracts are almost orbicular, shortly acuminate. Fruits ovoid, with a distinct neck, bristly, up to {1/2} in. long. An uncommon species in gardens, with pink flowers about 1{1/2} in. wide, opening in late June or July, of laxer habit than R. multibracteata. A native of N.W. Yunnan, discovered and introduced by Forrest.The closely related R. latibracteata Boulenger has the same unusually shaped bracts, but the leaflets are larger, to 1 in. long, and the styles are not exserted. The flowering type-specimens of these two species were collected in the same locality, and both were originally identified as R. multibracteata.

Contact the editors at