
Rosaceae (ro-ZAY-see-ee)
Iconic Features
- Leaves generally serrate and alternate
- Usually 5 separate petals and sepals
- Flower with numerous stamens and pistils
- Sepals, petals, and stamens fused at base into a cup-like structure (hypanthium)
Description (Jepson)
- Eudicotyledons (eudicots) – a major lineage of flowering plants including most plants traditionally described as dicots and generally characterized by
- 2 seed leaves (dicotyledon)
- Netted (reticulate) leaf venation
- Flower parts in fours and fives
- Pollen grains with 3 pores (tricolpate)
- Vascular bundles in stem arranged in a ring
- Taproot system
- Herbaceous annuals and perennials, shrubs and small trees
- Leaves
- Simple (not divided into leaflets) or compound (divided into leaflets)
- Often with serrated edges
- Generally alternate (1 leaf at each junction with stem)
- Often with stipules (pair of leaf-like structures at the base of the leaf stalk)
- Flowers
- Usually bisexual and radially symmetric, e.g. blackberry flower
- Usually with 5 sepals (usually green, outer flower parts) and 5 petals, freely attached to a shallow cup (hypanthium)
- Numerous stamens (male flower parts)
- Ovary superior (above the attachment of other flower parts) to inferior (below the attachment of other flower parts)
- Fruit in many kinds, including an achene (a single-seeded, dry fruit that does not split open), an aggregate of achenes, or a drupe (a fleshy fruit with usually 1 seed in a hard inner shell — a stone fruit)

Notes
- Approximately 3,000 species worldwide
- Includes roses, chamise, holly-leaved cherry, ocean spray, toyon, and many commonly-eaten fruits, such as plums, apples, and raspberries
- Many of the fruits eaten by Native people were members of the Rose family, e.g. blackberries, strawberries, cherries, and toyon
- Bushes and tress were actively managed by pruning and burning, stimulating many positive effects (Anderson 2005)
- Vigorous and straighter shoots
- Larger and more numerous fruits
- Less congested canopies
- Reduced insect infestations
- Bushes and tress were actively managed by pruning and burning, stimulating many positive effects (Anderson 2005)
- Robert Frost wrote a poem titled “The Rose Family” (Frost 1928)
- Scientific name from the included genus Rosa, from the Latin for the plant
- Represented by 22 species at Edgewood
Specific References
Anderson, M.K. 2005. Tending the Wild. University of California, Berkeley. Pp. 274-280.
Frost, R. 1928. “The Rose Family.” West-Running Brook. American Poems.
Browse Some Edgewood Plants in this Family







