ROSA CINNAMOMEA 
usually five, oblong, middle-sized, simply serrated, acute or obtuse, softly pubescent 
on both surfaces ; petioles pubescent, not glandular ; stipules adnate, with small 
free tips. Flowers i or 2 ; peduncles short, naked, hidden by the large oblong bracts. 
Calyx-tube globose, naked ; lobes simple, leaf-pointed, pubescent, not glandular on 
the back. Petals middle-sized, usually red. Styles free, included. Fruit small, 
globose, red, naked, pulpy, crowned by the connivent persistent sepals . 
Next to the Scotch Rose, the Cinnamon Rose occupies a wider 
geographical area than any other species of the genus ; it extends from 
western Europe to Siberia and Japan, but does not reach Britain or 
the Himalaya. The names cited above cover a considerable range 
of variation, but they probably all belong to a single species. Salisbury 
found a plant in the wood at the Aketon pasture near Pontefract; this 
station is referred to in Smith’s English Botany and admitted by 
Woods, 1 but Babington in a note says “probably not native.” 2 
Although the cinnamon-scented Rose is mentioned by Dodoens, 3 
Clusius, 4 Lobel, 5 C. Bauhin, 6 J. Bauhin, 7 none of the references can be 
intended for the plant now known as Rosa cmnamomea . As Haller 
(1708-1777) did not mention the Rose, it is probable that the single 
form had not in his time been introduced into cultivation. The double 
variety was common enough in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
and, varying somewhat, seems to have been grown in most of the old 
gardens. Clusius was the first to publish a description. Gerard 8 and 
Parkinson 9 refer at more or less length to this Rose. Gerard gives 
figures of both double and single Rosa cinnamomea , with the following 
account : 
“The Canell or Cinnamon rose, or the rose smelling like Cinnamon, hath shoots 
of a brown colour, foure cubits high, beset with thorny prickles, and leaues like vnto 
those of Eglantine, but smaller and greener, of the sauour or smell of Cinnamon. 
Whereof it took his name, and not of the smell of his floures (as some haue deemed) 
which haue little or no sauour at all : the floures be exceeding double, and yellow 
in the middle, of a pale red colour, and sometimes of a carnation : the root is of a 
wooddie substance. 
“We haue in our London gardens another Cinnamon or Canell rose, not 
differing from the last described in any respect, but onely in the floures ; for as the 
other hath very double floures, contrariwise these of this plant are verie single, 
wherein is the difference. 
“ Rosa Cinnamomea pleno flore. 
“ The double Cinnamon Rose. 
1 Trans. Linn. Soc. vol. xii. p. 175 (1816). 
2 British Botany , ed. 4, p. no (1836). 
3 Histona , p. 187 (1583). 
4 Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Pannoniam . . . observatarum historia, pp. 109, no, 112 (1583); Rariorum 
plantarum historia, pp. 115, 116 (1601). 
5 Kruydtboeck, pt. 2, p. 241 (1581). 
6 Pinax , p. 483 (1623). 
7 Historia , vol. ii. p. 39 (1651). 
8 Herball, bk. 3, p. 1086 (1597). 
9 Paradisus , pp. 416, 419 (1629) ; Theatrum , p. 1020 (1640). 
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