The open plant encyclopedia
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.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Rosa nutkana
Also called Nutka Rose
Nootka rose is a native North American shrub of the rose family, up to about 3 m tall, that forms thickets and is valued for its fragrant early-summer flowers and edible hips. It is an easy, hardy native that grows in sun or part shade in most soils.
Rosa nutkana, the Nootka rose, bristly rose, or wild rose is a 0.6–3.0-metre-tall (2–10-foot) perennial shrub in the rose family (Rosaceae).
The species name nootka comes from the Nootka Sound of Vancouver Island, where the plant was first described. This plant is native to Western North America. There are 2 varieties: hispida grows in the Intermountain West from east of the Cascades to the Rocky Mountains, and nutkana grows in coastal areas from Alaska to California west to the Cascades. The Jepson Interchange (Flora of California) considers other varieties to be part of the nutkana variety.
Nootka rose grows in a wide variety of habitats, from sea level to mid elevations. It needs sun but will tolerate some shade, often growing along forest edges. It grows in moist riparian soils and in dry glacial till soils. It grows in fencerows, hedgerows, pastures, shrubby wetlands, woodlands, prairies, and meadows.
Rosa nutkana is used medicinally by a great number of indigenous peoples to treat a wide variety of ailments, and also ceremonially, in handcrafts, and as a food source. The branches or leaves were used to make a tea or poultice to treat sores and eye problems. As with all wild rose species, the hips are edible and sometimes used to make jams and jellies.
Prickly rose · White rose of York · Prairie rose · Field-rose · Banksian Rose · Smooth rose · Macartney rose · California wildrose · Dog rose · Carolina rose · Chinese rose · Amur rose
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Rosa nutkana 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.
