Canada · #10 shrub Provincial flower of Alberta (since 1930)
Prickly rose
Rosa acicularis · locally: prickly wild rose / rosier aciculaire
The wild rose of the north, with fragrant pink flowers – the symbol of Alberta, known as “Wild Rose Country”.
The prickly rose is a shrub growing to 1–2 m, its stems densely covered in thin, straight, needle-like prickles. In early summer it opens single, intensely fragrant flowers with five pink petals, and in autumn it sets red, pear-shaped hips rich in vitamin C. It is extremely frost-hardy, growing in boreal forests, along their edges, in clearings and by roadsides right up to the edge of the tundra. It occurs in cold regions across the whole Northern Hemisphere, from Scandinavia and Siberia to Alaska and Canada.
Significance in the country
The wild rose is Alberta’s official flower, and the slogan “Wild Rose Country” adorned the province’s licence plates for years. The hips were a valuable winter food and medicine for Indigenous peoples, and today they are made into jams and teas.
Where it grows
In the boreal forest and parkland belt from Yukon and British Columbia to Quebec and Labrador; especially common in Alberta, along the edges of aspen woods and in the parkland prairies.
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