ROSA EGLANTERIA 
Fruit subglobose or broadly ovoid, ^ in. diameter, dark red, not ripening till 
October ; sepals subpersistent. 
The Sweet Briar is wild throughout Europe ; it extends to 
Teneriffe and Persia, and is naturalized in the eastern United States. 
It is the Eglantyne of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare ; but though 
Linnaeus undoubtedly meant the name Rosa Eglanteria of the first 
edition of his Species Plantarum to apply to our common wild Sweet 
Briar, in the Mantissa he calls it Rosa rubiginosa , saying that the name 
Rosa Eglanteria applies to a yellow-flowered rose. His herbarium 
corroborates this, the plant labelled Eglanteria being Rosa foetida 
Herrm. ( Rosa lutea Mill.). Woods, in his paper on the British 
Species of Rosa read before the Linnean Society in 1 8 1 8, thus refers 
to this confusion : 
“This Rose has been very unfortunate in its name; it is called eglantina , 
eglentina , and esglantina by Bauhin and the early botanists. Linnaeus in his first 
edition of the Species Plantarum called it Rosa Eglanteria ; but in the second he 
transferred that name to the single yellow Rose, still however quoting the same 
synonyms, all of which clearly belong to this plant. And this species is not given, 
nor does the name of Rosa rubiginosa occur, until the publication of the Mantissa 
Plantarum altera ; indeed it seems as if Linnaeus at one time confounded the 
two species, misled merely by the circumstance of the glandular and fragrant leaf, 
which is almost the only character not common to the whole genus, in which these 
two Roses agree. Notwithstanding Rosa rubiginosa has been adopted by most 
of the modern botanists, I have ventured to restore the name originally given by 
Linnaeus, in which I am supported by the authority of Hudson and of Poiret, 
Encycl. Natl' 
Lindley, on the other hand, preferred to retain the name of 
rubiginosa , and in his monograph he gives his reasons for not 
agreeing with Woods. The synonymy of Woods was not adopted, 
and it is only of late years that students of the genus appear to be in 
accord on this and many other disputed points. The conclusion 
arrived at is certainly one which will be welcomed in England. In 
the revision of nomenclature we are more often called upon to sacrifice 
some cherished popular name to the exigencies of modern scientific 
research. In reinstating Eglanteria as the accepted name for the 
Sweet Briar we are, as it were, authorized to use the name under 
which it has been known in our gardens certainly since the fourteenth 
century and possibly even earlier. 
According to Fraas, Rosa Eglanteria is one of the eight Roses 
known to the classical authors. It is the “ Cynorhos ; Sweet Brere 
and Eglantyne” of Turner’s Libellus (1538) ; the “ Rosa sylvestris 
odorata ” of Lobel’s leones (1581) ; and the “ Rosa Canina or common 
Sweet Briar ” of Gerard’s Garden Catalogue of 1596. Milton and 
several other of our poets have confused the woodbine with the 
Eglantine. 
450 
