Rosa setipoda Hemsl. & Wils.

An arching shrub to 8 or 10 ft high and as much wide; prickles sparse, short and straight, much thickened at the base and sometimes laterally compressed. Leaves 5 to 8 in. long; rachis usually glandular and prickly, slender. Leaflets seven or nine, elliptic or elliptic-ovate, acute to obtuse at the apex, usually not more than 11⁄4 in. long on the flowering laterals, but to twice that length on strong shoots (which may bear an inflorescence at the apex), medium green above, underside greyish, glabrous except for the hairy midrib and main veins, sometimes glandular on the blade. Flowers in June, up to twenty or even more in a lax cluster, deep purplish pink passing to white at the centre, about 2 in. wide; bracts large and leafy. Pedicels 1⁄2 to 2 in. long, more or less densely clad with glandular bristles, which may extend onto the rather narrowly ellipsoid receptacle. Sepals about as long as the petals, glandular at the margin, expanded at the apex and with a few lateral appendages. Petals downy on the back in the type but only very slightly so in authentic cultivated plants. Fruits flagon-shaped, 1 to 2 in. long, dark red, crowned by the sepals.

A species of limited distribution in China; discovered by Wilson in N.W. Hupeh in 1901 and introduced by him at the same time to Messrs Veitch’s Coombe Wood nursery, where it first flowered in 1909. It is one of the most handsome of the Chinese roses, recalling R. moyesii and R. davidii in its fruits and perhaps most nearly allied to the latter.

From the Supplement (Vol. V)

The rose portrayed in the Botanical Magazine, new series, tt. 814–15 (1981) is near to R. setipoda, though not agreeing with it at every point. It grows in the Royal National Rose Society’s Display Garden in Hertfordshire and was raised at the John Innes Institute from seeds received from the University of Washington Arboretum, Seattle, in 1954. It is evidently a very ornamental rose, with flowers of a deep bright pink, borne in July, mostly four or five together in a corymbose cluster, and bright red, flask-shaped fruits up to about 17⁄8 in. long.

In the accompanying article Nigel Taylor of the Kew Herbarium discusses the vexed problem of the typification of Baker’s R. caudata (the rose portrayed was grown under this name). There is no type-specimen of this species, which was described from one of many plants growing in Miss Willmott’s garden, raised from various seed-collections by Wilson during his 1907–8 expedition for the Arnold Arboretum. There are, however, three specimens from the garden, evidently all from different plants and all annotated R. caudata by Baker, and the lectotype has to be selected from these. The one that best qualifies is identical to R. hemsleyana Täckholm (see page 141), which thus becomes a synonym of R. caudata. It would therefore be this species that is figured in Bot Mag., t.8569, as R. setipoda.

Whether R. caudata is really distinct from R. setipoda is open to doubt. If indeed it is a good species, many plants grown as R. setipoda would belong to it.