I immediately want to note that the age of individual species of such a plant reaches 400 years. It is the founder of all types of cultivated roses.
You can find out about this amazing, elegant, unpretentious plant, about the places of its growth, about the benefits and much more, by reading this article. Here you can also learn about how to propagate a decorative rosehip and how to care for it.
Shrub with bright numerous flowers represents a genus of wild-growing plants from the family Rosaceae. As a rule, it is grown in gardens as an ornamental bush and to produce fruits with excellent beneficial properties.
Decorative rosehip: photo, description
The flower has many cultural forms that are divorced with the name rose. He is appreciated for the beauty of the bush and the abundance of flowers and greenery. Among other things, rose hips are much more unpretentious than magnificent elegant park roses.
In natural conditions, they prefer the warm temperate climate of the Northern Earth's hemisphere.
For the most part, these are shrubs that are 2 meters high with slightly drooping branches. There are also species with fairly long branches clinging to neighboring plants, or with creeping shoots on the ground. Rose hips are also in the form of low, but dense bush-pillows, very attractive and decorative during their flowering.
The plant got its name in connection with the presence on it of sharp and strong spikes that can cause certain trouble to any living creature.
Rosehip blooms decorative from May to July, and its berries ripen in August-September, and the last fruits can remain on the bushes even until winter.
Large flowers, mostly solitary, are 5 centimeters in diameter. The corolla usually contains five white, pink or dark red petals. There are also a huge number of stamens and pistils.
Toward evening, the flowers on the bushes stack their petals, and by the morning they open again, and almost always at the same time. It should be noted that K. Linney (Swedish botanist) rose hip included in the list of plants by which you can recognize the time of day.
Rosehip branches humbled by original berries look good in autumn floral arrangements and in dry bouquets. No wonder it is called decorative rose hips.
Is it possible to eat it? The answer to this question is received below.
Fruits: use
Spherical or ovoid-shaped fruits are usually orange or red, fleshy, containing a large number of small seeds (fruit). The inner part of the walls of the fetus is covered with small hairs, and sepals are preserved on the upper surface.
Decorative rose hips begin to bear fruit from about 3 years of age (sometimes from 2 years old), and the most abundant crop of this plant happens at the age of about 10-12 years. The fruits are usually dried, and in the winter they are brewed and drunk 1-2 glasses a day as a good vitamin drink. Also, the fruits can be used to make jam, jam and compotes. Rosehip is also good in the form of mashed potatoes and syrups.
Legend
There is one curious legend that is known and widespread among the Cossacks of the Kuban.
One young Cossack woman, who lived in ancient times, fell in love with a brave, beautiful young man. Their love was mutual. And they swore allegiance to each other for the rest of their lives. But the chieftain of the village, who also had long liked the young Cossack, sent the young man to military service. When parting, the beloved gave the girl his faithful and reliable dagger. After his seeing off, the chieftain began to force the girl who was left without a marriage to marry him. Nevertheless, the wedding did not happen because the bride ran out into the courtyard right from the festive table and stabbed herself there with a dagger presented to her beloved. At the place where the red drops of blood fell, a surprisingly beautiful shrub with bright flowers grew. Ataman, who saw this beautiful plant, wanted to pick a flower he liked. But suddenly the whole bush bristled with very sharp thorns. He pricked all his hands so that he could not pick a single flower.
In the autumn, the bush was covered with bright beautiful fruits. Once an old sick woman stopped by his side and suddenly heard a barely audible voice, which said: "Pick my berries, grandmother, and make tea with them. Do not be afraid of spiky spikes, as they are intended for unkind people." Grandmother obeyed, picked up the fruits and, having prepared an infusion from them, drank it. Immediately, she felt as if immediately ten years younger. Since then, all people began to use the magical miraculous rose hips for medicinal purposes.
Places of growth
Only in Russia botanists identified more than 8 species of this plant. Thorny, surprisingly elegant bushes are found almost throughout the country. The only exception is the High North.
Rosehip is a rather photophilous plant, therefore, in nature it prefers open edges, roadsides of paths and forest roads, river and lake banks, bushes and mountain slopes. Often its thickets, forming huge curtains, penetrate into settlements. Often they are adjacent to elderberry.
Types of roses, often grown for decorative purposes - wrinkled dogrose (or Rugosa rose), Virgin rose . In Europe, musky has taken root and is widely distributed. All of them are decorative rose hips. Their varieties are discussed below.
The most common varieties
All roses are wild and wild rose, fruiting berries of different shades: bright red, orange, purple, brown and almost black berries. However, not all of them are equivalent in quality.
Below are the most valuable (in terms of nutrient content) berries of the following rosehip varieties:
• May, or cinnamon, which is the most common species growing in central Russia. Separate bushes of this dog rose are found in forest glades and clearings. When grown in the garden, it is very unpretentious to any soil conditions. Typically, these species have high winter hardiness and excellent resistance to various diseases.
• The prickly rose is also a decorative wild rose, which is often bred in urban gardens and front gardens. The bush is undersized; its branches are densely planted with thorns. During flowering, the plant is completely covered with fragrant snow-white flowers.
• Dog rose, or wild rose, is almost universally used as a hedge. Light pink fragrant flowers bloom in June, and in autumn, the branches are decorated with beautiful orange-red fruits. This species has rather tall and sprawling bushes up to 2.5-3 meters and a powerful root system. This rosehip is decorative unpretentious, winter-hardy and resistant to disease.
• French rosehip - the founder of ancient garden roses, including the medieval pharmacy rose, famous in Europe. This species grows in southern Europe, in the Crimea and in the European part of Russia. Small-branched undersized bushes have a height of less than one meter and often form dense thickets. Large flowers of this species have a magnificent bright red color.
Yellow rose hips
This unusual decorative rosehip with yellow flowers (photo below) grows in the Tien Shan, Pamir-Alai and in Asia Minor. It grows, as a rule, in the mountains.
This plant is a very tall shrub (about 3 meters), with thin, long, often with arched curved, shiny, wicker brown-red shoots. All of them are densely covered with sharp straight spikes, which alternate with small setae.
Unpaired leaves of 5-9 ovate leaflets are up to 4 cm long. In color, they are bluish-green above and pubescent bluish-colored. Terry flowers are usually solitary, rarely found in 2-3 pieces, up to 7 centimeters in diameter. Their color is yellow, reddish-red inside. Red fruits have a spherical shape.
This rosehip has a not very good characteristic feature: its flowers emit an unpleasant odor, as well as leaves.
Rosehip decorative: planting and care
What is important in caring for this plant?
The main work on growing this bush is as follows: loosening the soil, applying fertilizers, weed control, watering and pruning. Being unpretentious, the plant nevertheless has good fruiting on soils saturated with nutrients and well-cultivated. Timely removal of old shoots contributes to a good restoration of the bush and longer preservation of a beautiful decorative look.
Trimming decorative rose hips is done before the start of growth only once a year (in early spring). It should be noted that the bush is considered more productive if it has shoots of different ages.
How do plants reproduce?
How is decorative rosehip grown? Reproduction for the most part is carried out using root shoots, as well as layering, seeds and green or root cuttings.
The most common and easiest way is to reproduce by offspring. To do this, they should be harvested in the fall, choosing them from the most productive bushes. Moreover, the length of the part of the rhizome on the offspring should be about 15 centimeters, and on the aboveground part there should be a stump no larger than 5 cm in size. These offspring can be planted immediately in a permanent place, without any growth.
There is another way to grow decorative rose hips - propagation by seeds. To do this, it is necessary to collect the ripened rose hips, which have already begun to wrinkle, and put them in pots filled with moist soil. After closing them, leave them on the street for the winter period to ensure that the fruits are exposed to low temperatures to ensure successful seed germination. After frosts, you should remove the berries from the pots, separate the seeds and use the water in the vessel to check their germination. Instances that drowned can be sown in boxes and grown in a cold greenhouse.
More on propagation by cuttings
What other way can be offered to propagate a decorative rosehip? Propagation by cuttings is convenient precisely during the autumn planting of this crop (in October-November). The landing pit should be about 0.2 meters deep. Rosehip does not respond very well to acidic soil, and therefore liming of the soil is necessary. You can add compost and rotted manure to the pit.
More experienced gardeners recommend cutting the rosehip seedlings short enough before planting (the length of thick branches should not exceed 0.1 meters). And the roots can be shortened to 0.2 meters, as the cuts on the roots contribute to a good survival of the plant.
After all these manipulations, the root system should be dipped in clay mass, and then gently straightened. It should be planted so that the root neck is deepened by about 5 cm. Be sure to water the seedling and mulch it with sawdust and peat.
You should pay attention to the gaps between adjacent seedlings. A live hedge can be obtained with a distance between plants of 0.5 meters. Increasing the distance to 1 meter contributes to increased productivity.
How is rosehip useful?
Not only decoration in gardens is decorative rose hips. Its useful properties are known to many. Rosehip is valuable for its fruits, which are an excellent natural medicine and tasty, healthy food supplement.
Rosehip berries contain many vitamins and minerals necessary for the human body: rutin, carotene, iron, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, organic acids and antioxidants.
The use of wild rose in food helps to strengthen the immune system, increases the body's resistance to harmful bacteria and slows down the aging process.
Conclusion
Beautiful non-whimsical dogrose gave rise to a huge number of species (over 200) of amazingly beautiful roses that have been growing on Earth since ancient times (about 40 million years). These plants are almost as good as cultivars in their aroma and beauty. They are widely used in landscape design.
Among the huge variety of ornamental plants, it is wild roses and their hybrids that are widely popular and especially loved by gardeners-florists: stem and bush - for flower beds, especially in the foreground in planting in groups with other flowers; climbing species - for original vertical landscaping.
Different periods of flowering plants and a variety of colors allow you to create fantastic decorative compositions from rose hips and roses.
You can talk about these amazing colors for a long time. It should be remembered that the most ancient legends were not invented about the rose, but about the rosehip bush. Yes, and the English royal coat of arms, preserved from medieval times of White and Scarlet roses, does not depict a garden rose, but a flower of an ordinary rosehip.