Note 275 — {41} Fifthly, Of Plants.

Brier-rose, or hep-tree (Gerard, p. 1270); “also called Rosa canina, which is a plant so common and well knowne, that it were to small purpose to use many words in the description thereof: for even children with great delight eat the berries thereof, when they be ripe,—make chaines and other prettie gewgawes of the fruit; cookes and gentlewomen make tarts, and such like dishes, for pleasure thereof,” &c. (Gerard, l. c.). Rosa canina, L., was once the collective name of what are now understood as many distinct species; but that which still retains the name of dog-rose is reckoned the finest of native English roses. This familiar plant may well have been reared with tender interest in some New-England gardens of Josselyn’s day; but it did not make a new home here, like the eglantine. Cutler gives the name of dog-rose to the Carolina rose,—R. Carolina, L.,—which it has not kept; and he also makes it equivalent to the officinal R. canina. Our Flora will possibly one day include one or two other garden-roses. A damask rose is well established and spreading rapidly in mowing-land of the writer’s, and elsewhere on roadsides of this country; and that general favorite, the cinnamon-rose, which is now naturalized in England, may yet become wild with us.