Gallic rose

Photo: Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 4 through 8

Harvest calendar

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

Unlike its own descendants R. centifolia and R. damascena, this one is a true wild species, and one of the very first roses ever brought into cultivation. Most modern rose cultivars carry at least some of its genes. ⚠ 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 4–8

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit, Flower

Ripens

Sept–Oct

Mature size

2 m tall by 1 m wide

Light

Full sun

Soil pH

6.0–7.5 (neutral to mildly alkaline)

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Southern, central and eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Iraq — dry, sandy or gravelly ground, slopes and around springs.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

2–3 yrs

Growth speed

Moderate

Spacing

120 cm (47 in) apart — about 1.4 m² (16 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Compound, elliptic to ovate leaflets to 12 cm, doubly toothed margins

Root system

Suckering freely from spreading roots — R. gallica builds a low thicket on its own roots, which is exactly why it persists for centuries on old sites and why grafted plants behave differently from own-root ones.

Fruit description

Globose to ovoid hips, 10–13 mm, orange to brownish

Propagation

Seed (1–2 years to germinate, needs stratification), half-ripe cuttings in July, hardwood cuttings in early autumn, division of suckers, or layering (about 12 months).

Pollination

Bee-pollinated and self-fertile.

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.