Mr. Woods on the British Species of Rosa. 227 



Desvaux, Journal deBota?iique,u. 1 14,has noless than twenty-one 

 varieties which he attributes to this species; but in respect to some 

 of them he is certainly mistaken : his /S is the « of this essay, and y is 

 the/S; while hisa seems to beintermediate, or ratherto apply equally 

 to either when the first appearance of the young leaves is passed 

 off; $ seems to be my R.collina y, and i n.collinacc; ^ perhaps is to 

 be referred to R. canina e ; n must be placed with my R. canina y\ 

 a the author has borrowed from Lcjeune, and, as he says himself, 

 without understanding it : ;, », x, I suppose all to belong to R. ca- 

 nina y of this paper ; ^ is R. tomentosa, adopted from the botanists 

 of this country. The description of the aculei might indeed mis- 

 lead Desvaux ; but he must be totally ignorant of our plant, as 

 in the essential character of the species he describes the serra- 

 tures simple: ►, ?, are to be attributed to R. dumetorum ; o proba- 

 bly to R. collina : and here also I should put T,§,a;r: v is R. ca- 

 nifia (3; <p may be R. canina y: but all these references must be 

 considerably uncertain, as the descriptions are very short; and it is 

 not at all improbable that one or two of them ought to be quoted 

 -as R. surculosa. I have detailed them chiefly to show the ex- 

 treme uncertainty which exists as to this species. Of the twenty- 

 one varieties, there are at the most only ten which appear to me 

 to belong to R. canina, and some even of these are very doubtful. 



A conserve is made from the hips of this Rose, and probably 

 of all those which have been hitherto confounded with it, which, 

 as Sir J. E. Smith justly observes, would be brought to table as a 

 sweetmeat if it were not in such frequent use as a vehicle for medi- 

 cines. It is sometimes met with on the tables of the Continent. The 

 Tartars, according to Pallas in the Flora Rossica, drink instead of 

 tea a decoction of the shoots and especially of the roots of this 

 plant: this beverage has been adopted by some of the Russians, 

 particularly in Siberia, who highly praise the agreeable and exhi- 



2 G 2 larating 



