# Prickly Rose (Rosa acicularis)

> The wild rose of the northern forests, a thicket of bristly stems with fragrant pink flowers in early summer and red hips that last the winter.

Also called bristly rose, acicular rose, needle-spine rose. Category: Native Shrubs. Grown from seed by Blue Whale Trees. Web version: https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/prickly-rose/

![Prickly rose (Rosa acicularis) two pink flowers with yellow stamens and a visiting bee](https://bluewhaletrees.com/img/plants/prickly-rose-h1610-800.jpg)
*Photo: Chelsea Monks, Public domain · [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARosa_acicularis_sayi.jpg)*

## Facts

- Type: Shrub
- Mature height: 3 to 8 ft
- USDA hardiness zones: 2 to 6
- Grows wild in: Stream banks, rocky ground, sandy barrens, old fields and edges
- Native range: [Alaska](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=AK) and 21 other states, north to [North Dakota](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=ND), south to [New Mexico](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=NM) and west to [Idaho](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=ID) ([Alaska](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=AK), [Colorado](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=CO), [Connecticut](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=CT), [Idaho](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=ID), [Illinois](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=IL), [Iowa](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=IA), [Kansas](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=KS), [Maine](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=ME), [Massachusetts](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=MA), [Michigan](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=MI), [Minnesota](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=MN), [Montana](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=MT), [New Hampshire](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=NH), [New Mexico](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=NM), [New York](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=NY), [North Dakota](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=ND), [Rhode Island](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=RI), [South Dakota](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=SD), [Vermont](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=VT), [West Virginia](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=WV), [Wisconsin](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=WI) and [Wyoming](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/native/index.html.md?state=WY))
- Sun: Full, Part
- Soil moisture: Average, Dry
- Growth rate: Fast
- Flowers: June to July
- Fruit: Hips, August to October
- First crop: 2 to 5 years
- Mature spread: 10 ft
- Traits: Showy flowers, Wildlife value, Edible, Honey tree, Rare
- Sold as: Saplings, Seed

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

## Availability

Saplings ship [bare-root](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/planting-bare-root-trees-on-arrival/index.html.md) or [in a pot](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/a-sapling-in-a-pot/index.html.md), [usually 12 to 18 inches tall](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/small-sapling-or-big-transplant/index.html.md), in the dormant season, and their height and age are stated with the price, once available. Live plants ship February to May and October to November. Not priced yet: leave an email on the web page for one email when it is priced, with a code for 10% off the plants in that order, not shipping or tax, or write to captain@bluewhaletrees.com.

## Notes

Prickly rose is the wild rose of the boreal forest, found around the top of the world, with stems densely covered in fine, straight prickles. The North American plants belong to its subspecies sayi. It is a rose of cold country, and farther south it survives only in cold pockets and on mountains. Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont list it as endangered, and Maine lists it as possibly extirpated. Let it form a fragrant, prickly thicket at a sunny wood edge or on a stream bank, where birds can take its hips.

## Size, growth and what to expect

It grows fast, nearly three feet a year in our growth estimator. It makes a bristly shrub usually 3 to 6 feet tall, sometimes 8, and spreads by underground stems into thickets. One clone can cover 100 to 200 square feet, and because it sprouts again after fire, a clone may live for hundreds of years.

Fragrant pink flowers about 1 to 2 inches across open singly or in twos in June and July. The hips turn orange-red to bright red in August and September, up to nearly an inch long, and they hang on through winter. They make jelly, syrup and tea, and grouse, songbirds, hares, rodents and bears eat them. Deer, elk and moose browse the stems.

It grows wild across the boreal North from Alaska to Quebec and northern New England, south in the Rockies to New Mexico and on the Plains to the Dakotas. Farther south it holds on in cold pockets, such as ice-cave slopes in Iowa and Wisconsin and Ice Mountain in West Virginia. Its home is forest edges, meadows, stream banks, rocky ridges and sandy shores.

## How to grow Prickly Rose

Prickly rose grows in full sun or part shade, and it flowers and fruits best in the open. It takes most well-drained soils, sandy, loamy or gravelly, and seasonal flooding along streams, but not peat or ground that stays waterlogged. It spreads by underground stems into a thicket, so give it room. Keep each plant 5 feet from a wall. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the canes. Seed needs a warm spell and then a cold one. Sow it outdoors in summer a quarter inch deep, and seedlings come up the next spring. Sown in fall, most of it waits until the second spring. Indoors, keep it damp and warm for four months, then in the refrigerator for three.

Water weekly through the first summer. Deer, hares and rabbits browse wild roses, so guard young plants with wire. Wear heavy gloves, since the stems bristle with fine prickles. Cut out old canes and stray suckers at the ground while it is dormant, since it needs careful pruning to look its best.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, so there are no male and female plants to pair. Most wild roses first flower and set seed at 2 to 5 years old, with good crops every year or two. Bumble bees and honey bees work the flowers, and in Alaska beekeepers count it a major nectar source. It is prone to fungal leaf diseases. As in other wild roses, tiny chalcid wasps grow inside many of the seeds, often spoiling half of them or more.

## Sources

- [USDA Forest Service, Fire Effects Information System: Rosa acicularis, Crane 1990](https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/shrub/rosaci/all.html)
- [USDA Forest Service, Woody Plant Seed Manual (2008), Rosa chapter, Meyer](https://www.fs.usda.gov/nsl/Wpsm/Rosa.pdf)
- [Flora of North America, vol. 9: Rosa acicularis](http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=200011211)
- [Flora of North America, vol. 9: Rosa acicularis subsp. sayi](http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=250100502)
- [Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center: Rosa acicularis](https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=ROAC)
- [Native Plant Trust, Go Botany: Rosa acicularis](https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/rosa/acicularis/)
- [NatureServe Explorer: Rosa acicularis](https://explorer.natureserve.org/Taxon/ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.153144/Rosa_acicularis)
- [USDA Forest Service, Fire Effects Information System: Rosa arkansana, Hauser 2006](https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/shrub/rosark/all.html)

## Read before planting

- [Ten planting mistakes that quietly kill trees](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/ten-planting-mistakes/index.html.md)
- [Transplanting young trees: timing, water and protection](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/transplanting-young-trees/index.html.md)
- [Protecting young trees from voles, rabbits, deer and squirrels](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/protecting-trees-from-animals/index.html.md)
- [How fast every tree and shrub we grow gets tall: growth rate, A to Z](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/growth-rates/index.html.md)
- [The habitat around a tree is part of the tree](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/habitat-around-a-tree/index.html.md)
- [Invasive vines and shrubs are what is killing your woods](https://bluewhaletrees.com/articles/invasive-vines-and-shrubs/index.html.md)

## Related

- Other roses (Rosa) we grow: [Climbing Prairie Rose](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/climbing-prairie-rose/index.html.md), [Prairie Rose](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/prairie-rose/index.html.md)
- Trees to plant it under: [Common Hackberry](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/common-hackberry/index.html.md), [Western Soapberry](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/western-soapberry/index.html.md) and [Winged Elm](https://bluewhaletrees.com/plants/winged-elm/index.html.md)
- [Planting-site check](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/site-check/index.html.md): for a thrive, struggle or fail verdict on Prickly Rose, add ?species=prickly-rose with zone (2 to 10), sun (full, part, shade) and moisture (dry, average, wet) to that address; for example, the verdict for zone 2, part sun and average soil as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/site-check/index.html.md?species=prickly-rose&zone=2&sun=part&moisture=average
- [Companion species for Prickly Rose](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/companions/index.html.md?species=prickly-rose): the natives that share its ground and the plants that pair with it in a yard.
- [Growth estimator](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/growth/index.html.md): how the height and trunk projections are made; the estimate for Prickly Rose as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/growth/index.html.md?species=prickly-rose (add height=, years= and site= poor, average or good)
- [Seed sowing planner](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/sowing/index.html.md): how Prickly Rose is sown, in the chart for every species (treatment, cold days, depth, timing); the dated plan for it as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/sowing/index.html.md?species=prickly-rose (add state= and zone= for your own frost dates, method=fridge for the refrigerator route)
- [Pollination planner](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/pollination/index.html.md): what Prickly Rose needs for a crop and how many to plant, in the table for every species; the verdict for 1 of them as Markdown is at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/pollination/index.html.md?plants=prickly-rose:1
- [Planting-window tool](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/planting-window/index.html.md): when to plant Prickly Rose where you live, as a fall and a spring window from the local frost dates; the windows as Markdown are at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/planting-window/index.html.md?species=prickly-rose&state=MO&zone=6 with your own state and zone in place of those
- [Planting-distance tool](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/distance/index.html.md): how far Prickly Rose goes from a house, a septic field, a walk, wires, a property line and the next tree; the distances as Markdown are at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/distance/index.html.md?species=prickly-rose&near=house,septic,pavement,wires,boundary,tree
- [Bloom and fruit calendar](https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/calendar/index.html.md): the months Prickly Rose flowers and fruits, in the grid for every species; its own row and the gaps of a planting with it as Markdown at https://bluewhaletrees.com/tools/calendar/index.html.md?plants=prickly-rose