Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Rosa gigantea

Rosa gigantea
Photo: Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) und William Botting Helmsley (1843-1924), Public domain

Rosa gigantea is the largest rose species, a huge climbing rose that scrambles 20 m or more into the crowns of other trees using stout hooked thorns. It is grown mainly as a specimen or climbing plant in large spaces, and it needs a sturdy support or host tree to climb.

Family
Rosaceae (Rose family)
Grows as
Tree, Climber
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Water deeply during dry spells while established, and avoid waterlogging.
Soil
Well-drained, fertile loam with added organic matter.
Temperature
Best in mild temperate to subtropical conditions; tolerates light frost but protect young plants below about -5 °C.
How easy
Moderate
Native range
Sikkim to China (Yunnan) and N. Indo-China
Climate
temperate

About

Rosa gigantea is a species of rose native to northeast India, northern Myanmar and southwest China (Yunnan) in the foothills of the Himalaya at 1000–1500 m altitude. It is sometimes considered to be a variety of Rosa odorata, as R. odorata var. gigantea.

As its name suggests, it is the largest species of rose, climbing 20 m or more into the crowns of other trees by means of its stout, hooked thorns, and with a trunk up to 50 cm diameter. The leaves are semi-evergreen, 15–25 cm long, pinnate, with usually 7 leaflets, each leaflet 4–8 cm long. The flowers are white, creamy or yellow, the largest of any wild rose, 10–14 cm diameter. The hips are yellow or orange, 2.5–3.5 cm diameter, hard, and often lasting through the winter into the following spring, often still present at the same time as the next years' flowers.

Other Rosa plants

Chabertia elegans · Needle Rose · Rosa abrica · Abutalybov's Brier · Abyssinian Rose · Dog Rose · Prickly rose · Rosa adenophylla · Fieldbriar · Rosa alabukensis · White rose of York · Rosa alberti

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Rosa gigantea by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…