group of species, with little affinity to each other, except in 
the circumstance of being almost universally deprived of 
prickles. It would therefore be better perhaps to refer the 
present plant to the neighbourhood of Rosa rubella, with 
which it has many points of resemblance, and from which it 
does not very materially differ. It would seem from PRallas’s 
account of his Rosa alpina that he has actually confounded 
two different things under that name;—one not perhaps 
differing from R. alpina of Europe, and the other nearly re- 
lated to R. rubella; at least, if the last be the same as what 
Marschall von Bieberstein has called Rosa pygmau, and 
which does not appear, as far as we can judge from the de- 
scription, essentially different from that plant. 
Shrub 2-8 feet high: branches spreading or upright, 
dark-green, generally with a glaucous hue, without thorns 
or prickles, or very rarely having prickles towards the root 
or on the branches, then being stipulary. Leaves thickset, 
spreading, opaque: stipules flat, narrow, a little widened at 
the end, unfurred (destitute of all hairy or villous substance), 
glandularly ciliate: petioles unfurred, with thickset glands 
and intermingling unequal bristles: Jeaflets 5-13, ovate, 
acuminate at both ends, simply or doubly serrate, quite 
bare, grey-blue underneath, midrib often roughened over 
with small prickles. Flowers upright, either very red or 
rose-coloured, usually solitary; peduncles without prickles, 
or bristly; tube of the calyx elongatedly ovate, bare or with 
bristles; /eaflets ovate, acuminate, undivided, sometimes 
foliaceous at the end, on the outside hairily furred, without 
prickles, or bristly. Petals obcordate, upright, concave: 
disk obliterated, staminodia (the part supporting the sta- 
mens) often. very conspicuous, flat: stigma-mass convex, 
protruding. Fruit scarlet, elongated or else obversely 
ovate, rostrate, cernuous. Lindley MSS. 
