Woody Plants of Ohio

multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora)
Rosaceae, the rose family

How to recognize multiflora rose. Look for pinnately compound leaves, alternately arranged, with prominent feathery stipules at their bases.

Also watch your language…you’re probably going to be cursing out loud as you walk through a patch of this plant…not only because of the ecological harm it’s doing, but because of the #$@^^%$* (is that how you type cursing?) prickles.

Flowers and fruit. Like many members of the rose family, Rosa flowers have many stamens, spirally arranged. The pollen-receptive stigmas are packed together into a swollen bundle as the top of each flower. Multiflora rose flowers are smaller than our native roses–only about an inch across–and white (not the usual pink). The fruits are small hips displayed in panicles.

The fruits of roses, while they look like berries or maybe drupes, are actually an odd aggregate type of fruit called a “hip” consisting of numerous one-seeded fruits (achenes) surrounded by a cup-like structure (the hypanthium).

In the winter. Roses have prickles (%&$#(*$%#!!).

Where to find multiflora rose. E. Lucy Braun, in The Woody Plants of Ohio (1961, 1989; The Ohio State University Press) tells us that this species is “rapidly spreading.” That’s an understatement!

Scanned Drawing from an Old Book
Flora of West Virginia, by P.D. Strausbaugh and E.L. Core

Ooh ooh I have a question.

Multiflora rose is an invasive shrub. What are two other especially bad shrubs here in Ohio?

Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) and autumn-olive (Eleagnus umbellata).