A deciduous bush up to 6 ft high; young shoots slender, glabrous, armed with slender, straight, pale spines usually in pairs, 1⁄3 to 1⁄2 in. long. Leaves 11⁄2 to 21⁄2 in. long, composed of five to nine leaflets; rachis slightly prickly and glandular. Leaflets obovate or oval to almost quite round, simply or doubly toothed, dark green and glabrous above, greyish beneath and downy on the midrib, 1⁄4 to 5⁄8 in. long, from two-thirds to quite as much wide. Flowers sometimes numerous in terminal clusters, sometimes few or even solitary, subtended by a group of leaf-like bracts, each flower being 1 to 11⁄2 in. wide, bright pink. Individual flower-stalks 1⁄4 to 3⁄4 in. long, downy and glandular. Receptacle 1⁄4 in. long, slender, covered with gland-tipped bristles. Sepals 1⁄3 in. long, ovate, drawn out into slender tips, downy inside, glandular outside. Styles exserted, very downy. Fruits globose, 1⁄3 in. wide, orange-red with the sepals at the top and a few glandular bristles persisting.
Native of W. China; discovered by Wilson in the valley of the Min River, N.W. Szechwan and introduced by him in 1908. It is a very attractive and useful rose, flowering after most of the species are over and making in time a dense bush 12 ft or more wide. It is allied to R. webbiana, differing in its many-flowered inflorescence and exserted styles.
R. multibracteata is a parent of ‘Cerise Bouquet’, see p. 176.
R. forrestiana Boulenger – This species resembles R. multibracteata in its foliage and in having flowers with exserted styles, but the flowers are borne in lateral clusters of up to five, on very short pedicels, and the bracts are almost orbicular, shortly acuminate. Fruits ovoid, with a distinct neck, bristly, up to 1⁄2 in. long. An uncommon species in gardens, with pink flowers about 11⁄2 in. wide, opening in late June or July, of laxer habit than R. multibracteata. A native of N.W. Yunnan, discovered and introduced by Forrest.
The closely related R. latibracteata Boulenger has the same unusually shaped bracts, but the leaflets are larger, to 1 in. long, and the styles are not exserted. The flowering type-specimens of these two species were collected in the same locality, and both were originally identified as R. multibracteata.