Rosa canina

The dog rose, Rosa canina, is a variable, climbing wild rose native to Europe, northwest Africa and western Asia. It is a deciduous shrub that usually grows between one and five metres tall and can scramble higher into the crowns of taller trees, helped by small hooked prickles on its arching stems. Its pinnate leaves carry five to seven leaflets and smell pleasant when bruised. Sweet-scented flowers, usually pale pink but sometimes deep pink or white, open in June and July and have five petals; of the five sepals, two are whiskered on both sides, two are smooth and one is whiskered on one side only, a pattern recalled in an old riddle. The flowers ripen in September and October into oval red-orange hips that can stay on the plant for months. The hips are eaten fresh and made into syrup, tea, jam and wine, while the plant is also treated as an invasive weed in New Zealand, Australia and parts of the United States.