''Rosa lucieae'' ( syn. ''Rosa wichurana''), the memorial rose, is a species of

rose A rose is either a woody perennial plant, perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred Rose species, species and Garden roses, tens of thousands of cultivar ...

native to eastern Asia.

Description

It is a woody, semi-

evergreen In botany, an evergreen is a plant which has Leaf, foliage that remains green and functional throughout the year. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which lose their foliage completely during the winter or dry season. Consisting of many diffe ...

shrub A shrub or bush is a small to medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple ...

, with long trailing thorny branches of glossy green leaves, and single five-petalled white flowers with prominent yellow

stamen The stamen (: stamina or stamens) is a part consisting of the male reproductive organs of a flower. Collectively, the stamens form the androecium., p. 10 Morphology and terminology A stamen typically consists of a stalk called the filament ...

s in Summer; followed by small dark red

hips In vertebrate anatomy, the hip, or coxaLatin ''coxa'' was used by Celsus in the sense "hip", but by Pliny the Elder in the sense "hip bone" (Diab, p 77) (: ''coxae'') in medical terminology, refers to either an anatomical region or a joint ...

. It can grow to . It is named after the German botanist

Max Ernst Wichura Max Ernst Wichura (27 January 1817 in Neisse – February 1866 in Berlin) was a German lawyer and botanist. A lawyer by vocation, he studied jurisprudence in Breslau and Bonn. In 1859 he was appointed as a government councillor (''Regierungsrath' ...

(1817–1866), with the suffix -iana.

Uses

While it is valued as a garden plant in its own right, ''R. lucieae'' is also a parent of several rose hybrids, notably 'Dorothy Perkins', 'Albéric Barbier', 'New Dawn' and 'Albertine'. Its vigorous, rambling habit makes it particularly suitable for forming an impenetrable barrier at ground level, or for scrambling up large trees. It has been introduced to the United States.

Gallery

File:Rosa wichuraiana seeds USDA-ARS.jpg, Seeds File:Rosa wichuraiana fruit USDA-ARS.jpg, Fruit File:RosaLuciae11.jpg, Sepals

References

lucieae Flora of Southeast China Flora of Eastern Asia Flora of the Philippines Plants described in 1886 Taxa named by François Crépin {{Rosa-stub