Rose Family

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 
• 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

See General References

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