Rosa roxburghii Seeds | Roxburgh Rose

Flat, pale brown Roxburgh Rose seeds with a hard, smooth coat, on a plain background — Roxburgh Rose (*Rosa roxburghii*): Rosaceae, native to the warm hills of western and south-western China and grown for its fruit in Guizhou.

LATIN NAME: Rosa roxburghii

COMMON NAME: Roxburgh Rose

Plant Profile

Roxburgh Rose is a deciduous shrub of the rose family, two to three metres tall, with arching, reddish stems armed with flattened prickles and small, pinnate leaves of nine to fifteen leaflets. Its single, pale pink flowers open in late spring, and its hips are the reason it is grown: large, flattened, yellow-green and covered in stiff prickles, they ripen in autumn and smell faintly of apple.

It comes from the warm hills of western and south-western China, and it is cultivated on a commercial scale in Guizhou, where the fruit is processed into juice, wine and dried slices. In Chinese it is ci li, the thorny pear, and the crop has become one of the region’s signature products.

Science & Biotechnology

The hips are among the richest natural sources of vitamin C known in a fruit: fresh samples have been measured at two thousand to three thousand milligrams per hundred grams, roughly ten times the concentration in kiwi. They also contain superoxide dismutase, flavonoids and ellagitannins, and the juice is marketed for those compounds rather than for its flavour, which is sharp and astringent.

The species is unusual in the genus for its flattened, prickly hips and for the way the sepals persist on the fruit. Breeding work in Guizhou has concentrated on yield, fruit size, prickleness and vitamin C content, and named cultivars are now grown in orchards rather than collected from the wild.

Uses & Benefits

The fruit is processed rather than eaten fresh: it is pressed for juice, fermented into wine, dried for tea and used in preserves and in traditional Chinese medicine. The sharp, astringent flavour needs sugar, which is why most commercial products are sweetened blends.

In the garden it is a useful fruiting shrub for a wild corner or a hedgerow, where its prickly stems make it stock-proof and its hips feed birds in winter. The flowers are modest but the autumn fruit is striking, and the plant tolerates poor, stony ground better than most roses. The hips are picked by hand, since the prickles make mechanised harvest impractical.

Growing from Seed

Sow the seed in autumn, either in pots left outside or directly in a prepared bed, since the hard coat and the embryo both need a cold, moist period. Germination is slow and uneven, often spread over two springs, and only a proportion of the seed will come up.

Plant out in full sun in any well-drained soil, and water through the first two summers. The shrub fruits on two-year-old wood, so prune only the oldest stems and the crossing branches, and leave the young growth to carry next year’s crop. It is hardy to about -15 °C and tolerates drought once established.

Our Take

A Chinese fruit rose with extraordinary vitamin C and a prickly, awkward habit. It is grown for juice and preserves rather than for the table, and it makes a stock-proof hedge in a poor corner.

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