Description:

• Erect, stoloniferous or climbing shrubs, deciduous or evergreen; stems and branches usually with hooked prickles and/or thorns
• Leaves alternate, imparipinnate; leaflets serrate; stipules usually adnate to petiole for most of their length, sheathing with free auricles, persistent
• Inflorescence corymbose, paniculate, umbellate clusters or flowers solitary
• Flowers bisexual, large, terminal, rarely bracteate
• Calyx: tube globose, ovoid, urceolate or ventricose, constricted at throat by a glandular ring, persistent; lobes (4)5(6), caducous or persistent, foliaceous, spreading or reflexed, entire or pinnatifid, imbricate in bud
• Petals (4)5(6), usually obovate, tip often notched, spreading, white, red, pink or yellow
• Stamens 30-200, in several whorls, inserted at throat of calyx tube; filaments free, thread-like
• Disc lining calyx tube with thickened margin all but closing the mouth, silky
• Gynoecium of many free carpels, sunk in calyx tube, often pubescent; ovules 1 or 2 per carpel, pendulous; styles subterminal, persistent, free or connate in a column protruding through opening of receptacle; stigma thickened
• Fruit composed of many coriaceous or bony, often hairy, 1-seeded achenes, included in persistent, fleshy and coloured calyx tube
• x = 7 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Rosa L.
  • Linnaeus: 491 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 217 (1754)
  • Jussieu: 335 (1789)
  • Kunth: 222 (1823)
  • Candolle: 592 (1825)
  • Endlicher: 1240 (1840)
  • Hooker: 625 (1865)
  • Zohary: 15 (1972)
  • Bailey & Bailey: 947 (1977)
  • Nilsson: 34 (1989)
  • Thulin: 339 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 100, mainly in temperate but also in subtropical areas of the northern hemisphere
  • Some species and many cultivars are grown as ornamentals
• Southern Africa: Species 2, occur widely as escapes, North-West, Mpumalanga, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho and Eastern Cape