Cabbage rose

Photo: Pierre-Joseph Redouté — Public domain · source

Survives zone 4 through 9

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Also called the Provence rose — a garden hybrid of uncertain origin with no wild populations, closely related to R. damascena and R. gallica. One of the classic perfume roses; petals are the historically important part here, flavouring tea, candied, or distilled for rosewater, more than the fruit itself. ⚠ Deseed the hips before eating: the ring of stiff hairs around the seeds is a gut and skin irritant, and is what old-fashioned itching powder was made from. Strain it out of any purée or syrup.

Hardiness

Zone 4–9

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit, Flower

Ripens

Aug–Nov

Mature size

To about 1.5 m

Light

Full sun to light shade

Soil pH

5.5–7.5 (mildly acid to mildly alkaline)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

None in the wild — a complex garden hybrid of ancient European cultivation ('the hundred-petalled rose'), grown for centuries in France and the Netherlands and still the basis of the rose-oil and rose-water trade.

Status

Cultivated only — a long-standing garden hybrid, not a wild species

Years to fruit

2–3 yrs (grown for petals, not hips)

Growth speed

30–60 cm/year — medium to fast.

Spacing

150 cm (59 in) apart — about 2.3 m² (24 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate and pinnate with 5–7 broad, rounded, coarsely toothed leaflets, greyish-green and slightly downy, on arching prickly stems.

Root system

Shallow to moderately deep and strongly suckering in the wild species — they spread by root shoots into thickets, which is exactly what makes them good hedging and awkward in a border.

Fruit description

Rounded red hips, rich in vitamins A, C and E — but sparse, since the very double flowers set little fruit. This rose is grown for its intensely fragrant petals (rose water, conserves, attar), not for a hip crop. ⚠ The hips are edible and very high in vitamin C, but the fine hairs packed around the seeds inside are a genuine irritant to mouth and gut and must be strained or sieved out before use.

Propagation

Seed (slow, sometimes 18 months to germinate), summer cuttings of half-ripe wood, autumn hardwood cuttings, layering, or division of suckers.

Pollination

Insect-pollinated and self-fertile in principle, but the fully double flowers bury or replace the reproductive parts, so fruit set is poor and seed is rarely the point — propagate it vegetatively instead.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.