Dog Rose
Rosa canina L.
Synonyms - Rosa ciliato-sepala, Rosa sosnovskyi, Rosa caucasica, Rosa lutetiana, Rosa taurica, Rosa arguta.
Family: - Rosaceae.
Names:
Rosa is Latin for rose.
Canina is
Dog Rose is the English equivalent of the Latin name and refers to Dog in derogatory sense it is useless or undesirable.
Other Names:
Brier Hip.
Wild Brier.
Summary:
A deciduous, variable, prickly, sprawling, rather open, perennial shrub to 3 m high with 5-petalled, pink or white flowers and leaves with 5-7 leaflets with toothed edges.
Description:
See the Weedy Blackberry and Rose key.
Cotyledons:
Two.
First leaves:
Leaves:
Alternate, deciduous. 70-130 mm long by 45-95 mm wide. 5 or 7 leaflets.
Stipules - Joined to the petiole. 15 mm long by 2 mm wide.
Petiole - Yes. Prickly.
Blade - Of leaflet, green, egg shaped to elliptic, 15-60 mm long by 10-30 mm wide, sharply toothed. Pointed tip. Base heart shaped to rounded. Hairless and glandless or with a few glandular hairs.
Stems:
Erect to arching to 3-5 m long, more or less hairless with thorns. Thorns are yellow, 5-6 mm long, flattened with a broad base, curved or rarely straight. On the main shoot the thorns are often in pairs or rings (whorled) and usually sparse. On branches they are usually smaller and more abundant. The bark is green or red-brown becoming grey with age. Hairless and glandless.
Flower head:
1-4 flowered clusters, at the ends of the stems. Flower stalks hairless and smooth, 10-15 mm long.
Flowers:
Pink or white or sometimes bright pink, 20-80 mm diameter. May have a bright pink spot at the base of the petals.
Ovary -
Sepals - 5, 10-25 mm long, (longer than the receptacle), lance shaped or pinnately lobed at the top of the floral tube. Some often bend back after flowering. Hairless and with no prickles.
Petals - 5, 15-21 mm long, attached to the edge of the floral tube.
Stamens - Many of varying lengths. Usually yellow. Attached to the edge of the floral tube.
Anthers -
Fruit:
Dark red to bright orange-red, egg-shaped to globular, 10-26 mm long by 9-12 mm diameter, fleshy when ripe to produce the "rose hip". Hairless and smooth. Contains about 16 seeds. Fruit weight 1.7-3.2 g. Sepals are deciduous but often remain attached to the fruit for some time.
Seeds:
Yellowish, many, small, 4.5-6 mm long and irregularly angled.
Roots:
Deep taproot and many strongly branching laterals often with many suckers. In Australia it tends to be relatively shallow rooted.
Key Characters:
Leaves with 5 leaflets, glabrous, not glandular or glandular only on the teeth.
Peduncles smooth and hairless without prickles.
Flowers pink or white with 5 relatively small petals.
Outer sepals pinnatifid.
Hypanthium and hip glabrous and without prickles.
Carpels becoming achenes within the hollow, succulent torus.
Adapted from Wheeler, Harden and Black.
Biology:
Life cycle:
Perennial. Seeds germinate at any time of the year that moisture is available with a flush in autumn and spring. Seedlings grow slowly to 200-300 mm in its first year and are prone to damage, so most recruitment is in protected places. It usually takes 2-3 years before the first flowering. Leaves are shed each winter. In adult plants new leaves emerge in spring and flowering starts around October and continues to December. The fruit matures in late summer and seeds are shed in Autumn to early winter. Some canes die each year and are replaced in spring. Canes in contact with the ground may take root to form new daughter plants and suckers emerge from the crown. This results in dense thickets. It grows to 2.5-3 m after 15-20 years. Once established it may survive for over a hundred years in Australia.
Physiology:
Optimum temperature for growth is 15-220 C.
Tolerates frost.
Hips are softened by frosts.
Reproduction:
By seed and suckers.
Insect pollinated but capable of self pollination and cross pollination.
Flowering times:
Spring in SW Western Australia.
October to December in SA.
Spring to early summer in western NSW.
Seed Biology and Germination:
Seeds germinate at any time of year with a flush in spring and autumn.
Seed contain an allelopathic, alpha pyrone compound.
Vegetative Propagules:
Layering, stem fragments and rootstock fragments.
Hybrids:
Allelopathy:
The seeds contain alpha pyrone which inhibits the germination of other species.
Population Dynamics and Dispersal:
Spread mainly by intentional plantings. Local spread is by layering of the canes, seedling establishment under the protective covering of the mother plant and suckering from the rootstock. Seeds may be moved in mud transported by animals or earthmoving operations. Birds eating the hips may spread seed.
Origin and History:
Native to Europe and Western Asia.
Cultivated in the 12th and 13th centuries in Russia as an ornamental and medicinal plant.
Naturalised in near Adelaide, South Australia before 1840.
Distribution:
NSW, SA, TAS, VIC, WA.
In the South West of WA and the Porongurups.
Habitats:
Forest edges, scrublands, hedgerows, river flats, irrigation channels, roadsides and disturbed areas. Occasionally in pasture.
Climate:
Temperate.
Soil:
Occurs on a wide range of soils.
Prefers, light, fertile, well drained acid soils with a pH of 5.5-6.5. It is not tolerant of salty or heavy soils.
Plant Associations:
Significance:
Beneficial:
Ornamental. Often used as a rootstock for ornamental roses in Europe. Most tree roses are still grown on this rootstock.
Honey plant.
Herbal medicine used to promote discharge of bile from the system.
Fruit is rich in Vitamin C, carotene and organic acids.
Hips are used in cooking and confectionary. After softening by frosts they are used in wine.
Detrimental:
Minor environmental weed of roadsides, forest edges and creeklines.
Little fodder value.
Dense thickets harbour vermin and may restrict stock access to water and pasture.
Toxicity:
Not recorded as toxic.
Symptoms:
Treatment:
Legislation:
Noxious weed of SA.
Management and Control:
In bushland situations, plant or encourage species that reduce light levels.
Slashing and deep ploughing or ripping in winter to bring the roots to the surface and summer cultivation to expose them to the sun usually gives good levels of control in agricultural situations. Replant to vigorous pasture species to prevent seedling establishing.
It is often difficult to control manually due to the production of suckers, coppicing and layering. All material needs to be burnt on site.
Grazing with goats can provide control.
Slashing alone is generally ineffective.
Mechanical removal, or slashing and burning followed by cultivation, can provide control if repeated regularly and then followed by planting of competitive, preferably perennial, pastures species that are grazed by cattle or goats.
Seedlings rarely establish in dense pasture or undisturbed native vegetation.
Control with herbicides is usually the most cost effective. Metsulfuron and Triclopyr plus picloram have provided the best results. Glyphosate can be used in home garden or other sensitive areas. Dead canes may be burnt or slashed in the following season to allow access and rehabilitation of the site.
Fire provides little control alone but assists access for herbicide application or other controls.
Triclopyr (Garlon®), triclopyr + picloram (Grazon®) generally provides good control any time the plant is actively growing with good leaf area.
Basal bark spraying the lower 50 cm of the stems with triclopyr or Access at flowering to early fruiting provides good control.
In Pine plantations hexazinone can be used.
Hexazinone as a spot treatment on the soil is also effective.
Imazapyr as an overall sprays when the plant is in full leaf to fruiting provides good control also and has a soil residual to help control suckers.
Follow up treatments are essential for high levels of control and to control suckering at the periphery of the bush in the season following spraying.
Low volume spraying is usually effective providing the amount of active ingredient applied per bush is kept constant.
For high volume spraying use 1 litre of mix for each 2.5 cubic metres of Rose bush (or 2.5 square metres of low lying Blackberry). This is equivalent to about 4000 L/ha of spray mix being applied.
Thresholds:
Eradication strategies:
Mechanical control is difficult and most of the root system must be removed for effective control.
3 annual, summer applications of 1 L of Grazon® plus 250 mL of Pulse Penetrant® in 100 L of water will eradicate most infestations. Replant native or agricultural species after control has been achieved.
On large infestations, 10 g metsulfuron(600g/kg) plus 250 mL Pulse Penetrant in 100 L water, applied in summer when the Rose is actively growing, provides a cheaper option to reduce the size of the infestation before Grazon® is used.
In urban and sensitive areas repeated applications of 1 L glposate450 in 100 L water will eventually provide high levels of control.
Herbicide resistance:
None reported.
Biological Control:
Pests include Aphids, Heliothis, Spider Mite and Thrips.
Diseases include Black Spot, Botrytis Blight, Dieback, Mosaic Virus and Powdery Mildew.
Related plants:
Cherokee Rose (Rosa laevigata) has white flowers and bristly fruit.
Chestnut Rose (Rosa roxburghii)
China Rose (Rosa chinensis)
Dog Rose (Rosa canina) is scrambling with pink and white flowers, 5 leaflet leaves and was a rootstock of ornamental roses.
French Rose (Rosa gallica)
Japanese Rose (Rosa multiflora) is invasive in the USA.
Macartney Rose (Rosa bracteata) has white, 5 petal flowers.
Manetti or Noisette Rose (Rosa chinensis x moschata) has pink many petal flowers and 3-5 leaflet leaves.
Musk Rose (Rosa moschata)
Sweet Briar (Rosa rubiginosa) has pink, 5 petal flowers and 5-7 leaflet leaves.
Rambler Rose (Rosa chinensis x multiflora) has pink to red flowers, the pedicels don't have prickles and it has 5-7 leaflets leaves.
Tea Rose (Rosa odorata)
Plants of similar appearance:
Very similar to Sweet Briar (Rosa rubiginosa) but doesn't have scented glands on the leaves.
See the Weedy Blackberry and Rose key.
Blackberry (Rubus species) usually have palmate rather than pinnate leaves and a berry-like fruit rather than a “rose hip”.
References:
Black, J.M. (1965). Flora of South Australia. (Government Printer, Adelaide, South Australia). P397. Diagram.
Bodkin, F. (1986). Encyclopaedia Botanica. (Angus and Robertson, Australia).
Cunningham, G.M., Mulham, W.E., Milthorpe, P.L. and Leigh, J.H. (1992). Plants of Western New South Wales. (Inkata Press, Melbourne). P345.
Harden, Gwen J. (1991). Flora of NSW. (Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney). Volume 1. P541. Diagram.
Hussey, B.M.J., Keighery, G.J., Cousens, R.D., Dodd, J. and Lloyd, S.G. (2007). Western Weeds. A guide to the weeds of Western Australia. (Second Edition). Plant Protection Society of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia. P226. Photo.
Lazarides, M. and Cowley, K. and Hohnen, P. (1997). CSIRO handbook of Australian Weeds. (CSIRO, Melbourne). #863.2.
Parsons, W.T. and Cuthbertson, E.G. (1992) Noxious weeds of Australia. (Inkata Press, Melbourne). P570-572.
Paczkowska, G. and Chapman, A. (2000). The Western Australia flora: a descriptive catalogue. (Wildflower Society of Western Australia (Inc), the Western Australian Herbarium, CALM and the Botanic Gardens & Parks Authority). P512.
Randall, J.M. and Marinelli, J. (1996) Invasive Plants. (Brooklyn Botanic Gardens Inc. Brooklyn). P. Photo.
Wheeler, Judy, Marchant, Neville and Lewington, Margaret. (2002). Flora of the South West: Bunbury - Augusta - Denmark. (Western Australian Herbarium, Bentley, Western Australia). P860. Diagram.
http://www.agroatlas.ru/en/content/cultural/Rosa_canina_K
Acknowledgments:
Collated by HerbiGuide. Phone 08 98444064 or www.herbiguide.com.au
for more information.