13-June Shakespeare’s Wild Roses

The field or musk rose is usually identified by its purple stems and flowers with fused styles with a knob at the end. Its leaves also have five leaflets. Colour unfortunately is not a useful character to separate wild roses. The field rose is always white, but occasionally so are dog roses, as well as others e.g. R. obtusifolia and R. agrestis. Most roses encountered are some shade of pink and often they have pale centres. The dog rose is seen far and away the most often. It usually has long, arching green stems, some occasionally up to nine metres in length, with fearsome thorns and leaves with seven leaflets.

In this case, the epithet ‘dog’ does not mean useless as it normally does, but refers to the old practice of using it to treat dog bites. The sweetbriar is renowned for its apple scent which it emits from its leaves when they are bruised.

This scent can remain on the fingers for some time. On a warm day after rain the scent can pervade the air without the plant even being touched. It would have been familiar to Shakespeare as this rose was used as hedging in his day.

Scent is also not a good character to identify wild roses. Dog roses have a light, sweet scent, which they quickly lose once their flowers are fertilised. Field roses have a light musk scent for some people and no scent at all for others. Eglantine flowers also have no scent but the Burnet rose R. pimpinellifolia has perhaps the best of scent all, with hints of jasmine.

The Tudors liked this rose for its smell and also the double form of the field rose, which was then common in London’s gardens. The burnet rose has existed on Barnes Common for the last three hundred years. It is now more likely to be seen in gardens, where its extremely spiny stems and black hips are more appreciated.

Generally when it comes to identifying wild roses in the field it is not easy as a number of them hybridise. It is best to ignore the colour of their flowers and examine the shape of their thorns, length of their styles and the shape, colour and hairiness of their leaves.

These characters might point you towards some of the rarer roses to be found along the North Downs e.g. Rosa micrantha – the small-flowered sweet briar, R. agrestis – the small-leaved sweet briar, R.tomentosa – the harsh downy rose and R. obtusifolia – the round-leaved dog rose.

Two garden escapes, both with dense foliage that may also be seen are the ubiquitous Japanese rose R. rugosa which usually has purple-pink flowers and the far less common many-flowered rose R. multiflora which has white flowers and long arching stems that can even climb into trees.