ROSA LUCIDA. 



DWARF WILD ROSE. 



NATURAL ORDER, ROSACEA. 



Rosa lucida, Ehrhart. — Stems one to two feet high, armed with unequal bristly prickles, 

 which are mostly deciduous, the stouter persistent ones nearly straight, slender; leaflets 

 five to nine, elliptical or oblong-lanceolate; shining above, sharply serrate; stipules broad; 

 peduncles one to three-flowered, and with the appendaged calyx-lobes glandular-bristly; 

 fruit depressed-globular, smooth when ripe. (Gray's Manual of I he Botany of the A'orthern 

 United States. See also Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States, and Wood's Class- 

 Book of Botany.) 



T is impossible to tell how long the Rose has been known 

 and admired. We meet with it for the first time in the 

 opening lines of the so-called Homeric hymn in honor of De- 

 meter (Ceres), in which Persephone (Proserpina) is represented 

 as oratherins: " roses and beautiful violets," besides other wild 

 flowers; and thenceforward all the poets have vied with each 

 other in extolling the charms of the acknowledged queen of the 

 floral world. Some of the most delightful of the ancient legends 

 connected with the Rose relate to its origin, which they account 

 for in a variety of ways. Thus one of these legends informs us 

 that Flora, beinsf crrieved at the loss of one of her favorite 

 nymphs, implored Jupiter to change the dead body of her 

 former companion to a living flower of surpassing beauty; and, 

 her prayer having been granted, Apollo, Bacchus, Vertumnus, 

 and Pomona gave to the new-born flower various attributes 

 of their own perfection, while another account says that the 

 Rose sprang from the tears of Venus, as she wandered about 

 in search of her beloved Adonis. All the older nations have 



