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Rosa spinosissima L. (= R. pimpinellifolia L.), Burnet Rose

Account Summary

Native, occasional. Eurasian temperate, very disjunct in E Europe and Asia and widely naturalised, including in N America.

1884; Barrington, R.M.; Inish Dacharne peninsula, Lower Lough Erne.

May to November.

More commonly, this is a plant of coastal dunes, sandy heaths and sea cliffs around most of B & I. It is an often low-growing, erect, densely prickled deciduous shrub and in land-locked Fermanagh it occurs only locally, occasional and thinly scattered in rocky limestone terrain. Typical habitats are rocky limestone hills, cliffs, screes and quarries, and in scrub on calcareous lakeshores, including around turloughs (vanishing lakes that are occasional or rare in limestone terrain that have no fixed inflow and outflow streams, but fill with rainwater and drain through their base).

Apart from the Carrickreagh area on the lowland shore of Lower Lough Erne, Burnet Rose is never plentiful in Fermanagh. As the distribution map indicates it has been recorded in 22 widely scattered tetrads (4.2%), mainly lying to the west of Lower Lough Erne.

The plant has a long rhizome and it frequently suckers from this, forming clonal clumps of slender aerial stems. In more sheltered sites, including hedgerows and amongst other taller shrubs, it can grow tall and densely bushy, sometimes helping to form impenetrable thickets (Roses Handbook). Elsewhere, and more typically in open, exposed, rocky or stony ground, usually with shallower, drier soils, the shrub is invariably low-growing, little more than knee-high (50 cm) and it may then be only sparsely branched. In the latter situation, it is easily overlooked except when in flower. The solitary flowers, up to 4-5 cm in diameter, are produced from late-May to June. They are a beautiful creamy-white, sometimes more or less flushed with pink. Larger flowered double forms of R. spinosissima are sometimes horticulturally planted, but none of the Fermanagh plants display any trace of garden origin.

R. spinosissima suffered major losses at inland sites throughout B & I prior to 1930. Unfortunately the reasons for this were not documented at the time, and observations made during subsequent years have cast no additional light on the matter. The main inland sites surviving in Ireland are on outcrops of Carboniferous limestone in the Burren, Co Clare (H9), in Connemara (H16), along the River Shannon and in the wider range of Ben Bulbin limestones from Cos Sligo (H28) to Leitrim (H29) and Fermanagh (H33) (New Atlas).

R. spinosissima is distinctive but variable and six varieties of it are listed and keyed out by Sell & Murrell (2014). Burnet Rose also regularly forms hybrids with six, or possibly seven other B & I wild roses whenever they meet (Sell & Murrell 2014; Stace et al. 2015). Three of these crosses have been rarely recorded in Fermanagh.

Growth form and preferred habitats

A small, much branched, usually pale greyish-green, summer annual therophyte up to 10 cm tall, with digitately or palmately lobed leaves, this sexually reproducing form of Aphanes is very much more local than the apomictic A. arvensis (Parsley-piert). It is greener and more slender than the latter, flowers from April to October and has even smaller fruits than A. arvensis s.s., showing no constriction between the upper and lower parts, and the sepals are convergent (New Flora of the BI 2019, p. 277, Figs 1, 2). It is less common than A. arvensis s.s. and appears to be confined to short turf, mossy areas on acidic sandy or gravelly soils, or dry rocky ground, eg on roadsides, along tracks and in quarries and sand-pits. It is not as confined to well-drained soils as A. arvensis, but is more definitely a plant of acidic conditions (Garrard & Streeter 1983). In Fermanagh, these conditions are also found locally on or near lakeshores and on river banks.

Fermanagh occurrence

The limited number of records that have accumulated in the Fermanagh Flora Database (18 finds in 14 tetrads) are mainly the work of RHN, facts that strongly suggest this rather insignificant-looking little species is under-recorded. Otherwise, as the tetrad map shows, it appears to be very local around the Tempo area, with very few (six or seven) records elsewhere in the county.

Additional to the first record are the following: Poll Beg District, NW of Boho, 11 June 1978, M.J.P. Scannell, DBN; all the remaining records involve RHN – Knockennis, 3 km NE of Brougher Mountain, 7 July 1988; Pubble Bridge, Tempo River, 1 October 1988; fen at Feddan Bog, 8 June 1992; fields at Largy Lough, 13 August 1992; sand pit at Pubble Bridge, 11 September 1994 & 20 August 1999, with RSF; Drumcreen, Ballinamallard River, 16 April 1995; roadside Ballyreagh, 5 km NW of Tempo, 31 December 1995, with HJN; roadside at Tempo, 13 April 1996; Tully, W of Edenmore, 21 June 1997, with RSF; N of Many Burns Bridge, Many Burns River, 3 May 1999; Pubble Forest, 1 December 2001; sandpit at Pubble Bridge, 28 August 2004, with RSF; Agnaglack, 20 April 2009, with HJN; Gublusk Bay, Lower Lough Erne, 28 February 2010; Killyreagh House near Tamlagh, 10 June 2010.

British and Irish occurrence

The New Atlas map shows the species widespread throughout both islands, but much more thinly scattered in Ireland, yet with a slightly greater presence in the south and the sunny south-east corner, both areas which attract more visitors and where the local recorders are more energetic than the norm (Preston et al. 2002). Thus the mapped distribution of A. australis across the whole of Ireland suggests probable under-recording in comparison with the situation in Britain.

European and world occurrence

It stretches northwards from a scattered presence in Spain and Portugal through W Europe to S Sweden and eastwards to NE Poland, the Carpathians and the Adriatic. Very local in the Balkans and present only on the W Mediterranean Isles (Minorca, Mallorca, Sardinia and Sicily), but also recorded on Madeira (Press & Short 1994; Sell & Murrell 2014). Beyond Europe, it occurs in Morocco and Algeria and is introduced in E & S parts of N America (Hultén & Fries 1986, Map 1156).

Threats

None.