ROSACEAE (ROSE FAMILY) 



215 



Time of bloom: June to July. 



Seed-time : Hips ripe in September but remain on the bushes until 

 winter. 



Range: Nova Scotia to Ontario and Michigan, southward to Vir- 

 ginia and Tennessee. 

 . Habitat : Rocky pastures, along roadsides, and in fields. 



Every pure pink blossom and fragrant leaf of this plant seem a 

 protest against its being called a weed. It came to us from Europe, 

 and the pages of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, are full of its 

 sweetness. But, 



"With brambles and bushes in pasture too full, 

 Poore sheepe be in danger and loseth their wull," 



and cattle will not touch it nor even graze very near it, fearing the 

 hooked prickers and apparently not liking its fragrance. (Fig. 

 155.) 



Canes slender, four to eight feet high, brown when old, armed 

 with strong, flattened, hooked, brown 

 prickles ; between them the stem may be 

 smooth, or, when young, may be set with 

 fine bristly hairs. Leaves alternate, pin- 

 nately compound, with five to seven 

 roundish oval leaflets, rather thick, finely 

 double-toothed, dark green and smooth 

 above, but covered underneath with fine, 

 soft hair and resinous, rust-colored glands 

 that show very plainly under a lens ; the 

 broad stipules are also glandular. Flowers 

 pink, not fragrant, usually about two 

 inches broad, the five petals notched into 

 a heart-shape at the outer edge, with a 

 tuft of many yellow stamens in the 

 center ; calyx-lobes spreading and much 

 divided, glandular-hairy, as are also the 

 pedicels. Within the calyx-tube is a 

 hollow disk on which the many pistils 

 are set; ovaries hairy, becoming bony 

 achenes. Hips about a half-inch long, FIG. 

 ovoid, smooth, orange-red; under the 



155. Sweet Brier 

 (Rosa rubiginosa). X 1- 



