Wall. ex. Royle
Description
Rosa webbiana is a wild rose of the dry inner Himalaya and the mountains of Central Asia, with a broad distribution reflected in its 1266 georeferenced records spanning India (IN), China (CN), Pakistan (PK), Afghanistan (AF) and the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan (KZ), Kyrgyzstan (KG), Tajikistan (TJ), Turkmenistan (TM) and Uzbekistan (UZ); many European and North American records represent cultivation. It is a plant of arid and semi-arid montane environments, favouring open stony slopes, dry valley scrub, riverbanks and forest margins, generally between about 1500 and 3500 m. The plant photographed at Nyor Gaad in West Nepal at 2800 m in June is typical of these sunny, well-drained inner-valley habitats where it flowers in early summer.
It is a deciduous, much-branched shrub with arching to erect stems armed with slender, straight or slightly curved, paired prickles. The leaves are pinnately compound with usually five to nine small, obovate to elliptic, simply serrate leaflets, often glaucous and somewhat glandular. The flowers are solitary or few, with a pink (rarely white) corolla of five broad, notched petals surrounding numerous stamens, and an entire, persistent calyx. The fruit is a smooth, globose to ovoid, bright red hip crowned by the persistent erect sepals, ripening in late summer.
Rosa (Rosaceae) is a large and taxonomically intricate genus with widespread hybridisation and polyploidy; R. webbiana belongs to the dry-zone section of true roses adapted to continental, low-rainfall mountain climates. Its hips are rich in vitamin C and are gathered locally for food, while the species is also of horticultural and breeding interest. Widespread and frequent across its range, it is of no conservation concern, though it is an important component of fragile, grazing-pressured inner-Himalayan scrub vegetation.
Author: Wall. ex. Royle · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Pakistan, Flora of China, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Boulenger and Ku monographic treatments of Asian Rosa