(1939)  Page(s) 179.  
 
Key to the Species
Sepals, styles and upper part of the hypanthium persistent on the fruit; pistils numerous.
- Hypanthium normally smooth and glabrous.
-- Stems with stout prickles, rarely slender and weak in some segregates of R. californica; sepals often prolonged into foliaceous appendages; plats 2 to 10 feet high.
--- Prickles straight or nearly so, more or less flattened below, often ascending; stipules, rachis, and leaflets glandular....1. R. nutkana.
--- Prickles usually curved, or straight in some segragates of R. californica.
---- Pedicels glandular-hispid or bristly, the bristles often 1/8-inch long; sepals glandular-hispid, often pinnatifid....3. R. rubiginosa.
---- Pedicels usually not glandular-hispid-or bristly, sometimes glandular,; sepals often villous, not pinnatifid, but usually serrate....4. R. californica.

Key to the Species
Sepals, styles and upper part of the hypanthium persistent on the fruit; pistils numerous.
- Hypanthium normally smooth and glabrous.
-- Stems with slender straight (or nearly so) prickles.
--- Stipules, petioles, and rachises copiously glandular; leaflets with gland-tipped teeth....5. R. pinetorum.
--- Stipules, petioles, and rachises not conspiciously glandular.
---- Sepals usually without broad foliaceous tips.
----- Sepals decidely glandular....6. R. pisocarpa.
----- Sepals not glandular.
------ Flowers usually several in a cluster; leaflets pubescent beneath....7. R. ultramontana.
------ Flowers solitary or 2 or 3 in a cluster; leaflets glabrous on both surfaces, sometimes glaucous beneath....8. R. mohavensis.
---- Sepals normally with broad foliaceous tips....4. R. californica segregates.
 

(1939)  Page(s) 182-183.  Includes photo(s).
 
Rosa californica C. & S. California Wild Rose. Fig. 196.
Usually an erect stout diffusely branched shrub, 3 to 9 feet high, with straight or curved stout pricklesor somewhat unarmed. Leaflets 5 to 7 (rarely 3 or 9), ovate to oblong, ½-inch to 1½ inches long, glabrous or pubescent above, paler and finely pubescent or distinctly glandular or sometimes almost glabrous beneath, usually simply serrate and not glandular; stipules either with or without glands on the margins. Flowers rose-colored or light pink, few to 30 (rarely more) in amuch branched cluster; pedicels not glandular-hispid or bristly (rarely slightly so); sepals either glandular or without glands, often tipped with foliaceous appendages; persistent on the matured fruit; petals obcordate, ¾-inch to 1 inch long; hypanthium globose or ovoid, about ½- to ¾-inch long; glabrous or rarely pilose when young, never glandular, usually somewhat constricted below the calyx-lobes. Flowering period, May to November.
California Wild Rose is the most widely distributed, the most abundant, and the most variable of our native roses. It occurs most commonly along creek banks, near seepages, and in wet places along roadsides at the lower and middle eleations throughout California, in the Upper Sonoran and Transition Life Zones. Some of the numerous segregates or forms of this species extend northward to Oregon and Washington and eatward to the Rocky Mountain states.
In this species the characteristics of the spines, glands, glandular hairs, bristles, hypanthia, pedicels, sepals, petioles, stipules, rachises, ant the leaflets show much variation and intergradation, and consequently some of the numerous forms have been described by various authors as varieties and species. Until more is known about the genetic fixity of these characters under controlled conditions, this species must remain a heterogenous compklex of forms of uncertain taxonomic rank.
Rosa californica C. & S. Linnaea 2:35 (1827). Type locality: San Francisco, California. Collected by Chamisso.

(1939)  Page(s) 179, 181.  
 
Key to the Species
Sepals, styles and upper part of the hypanthium not persistent on the fruit; pistils few....9. R. gymnocarpa

(1939)  Page(s) 184-185.  Includes photo(s).
 
Rosa gymnocarpa Nutt. Wood Rose. Fig. 195.
A slender shrub, 1 to 3 feet high, armed with long straight slender prickles, and numerous bristles, or rarely nearly unarmed. Leaves 2 to 3½ inches long; the leaflets 5 or 7 (rarely 9), elliptic-ovate or roundish, ¾-inch to 1 inch long, ¼- to ½-inch wide, glabrous on both surfaces or rarely pubescent on one or both surfaces, dark green and shining above, green and a little paler beneath, doubly serrate with gland-tipped teeth; rachises and petioles more or less glandular-hispid; stipules glandular-ciliate and dentate on the margins. Flowers usually solitary or in clusters of 2 to 4; pedicels slender, ½-inch to 1½ inches long, glabrous or more or less glandular-hispid, commonly curving in fruit; sepals ovate, ¼- to 3/8-inch long , glabrous on the backor sometimes slightly puberulent, tomentose on the margins, deciduous with the styles and upper part of the hypanthium; petals obcordate, about ½-inch long. Hypanthium in fruit globose, ovoid, or ellipsoid, ¼- to 2/3-inch long. Flowering period, April to June.
Wood Rose occurs on moist wooded slopes and along shaded stream banks from Monterey County north in the Coast Ranges to Humboldt and Siskiyou counties, in the Sierra Nevada from Fresno County northward to Modoc County, and in the Palomar Mountainsof San Diego County, in the Transition and Candian Life Zones.
Considerable variation occurs in the pubescence, glandulosity, and size of the leaflets. Some of these variations have been described as distinct species but no constant character has been found to warrant such treatment.
Rosa gymnocarpa Nutt; T. & G. Fl. N. Am. 1:461 (1840). Type locality: "Oregon." Collected by Nuttall.
 

(1939)  Page(s) 183.  
 
Rosa pisocarpa.....In general habit of growth this species is easily confused with R. gymnocarpa from which it can be distinguished by the persistent calyx on the fruit.

(1939)  Page(s) 184.  
 
Rosa mohavensis Paris. Desert Rose.
Herbage nearly glabrous and without glands. Flowers solitary or 2 or 3 in a cluster. Otherwise very much like R. ultramontana.
Desert Rose occurs in moist places of teh desert slopes of the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains and probably north to the mountains of Inyo County.
Rosa mohavensis Parish, Bull. S. Calif. Acad. 1:87 (1902). Type locality: North side of San Bernardino Mountains at Cushenbury Springs. Collected by S. B. Parish.

(1939)  Page(s) 179, 181.  
 
Key to the Species
Sepals, styles and upper part of the hypanthium persistent on the fruit; pistils numerous.
- Hypanthium normally smooth and glabrous.
-- Stems with slender straight (or nearly so) prickles.
--- Stipules, petioles, and rachises copiously glandular; leaflets with gland-tipped teeth....5. R. pinetorum.
--- Stipules, petioles, and rachises not conspiciously glandular.
---- Sepals usually without broad foliaceous tips.
----- Sepals decidely glandular....6. R. pisocarpa.
----- Sepals not glandular.
------ Flowers usually several in a cluster; leaflets pubescent beneath....7. R. ultramontana.
------ Flowers solitary or 2 or 3 in a cluster; leaflets glabrous on both surfaces, sometimes glaucous beneath....8. R. mohavensis.
---- Sepals normally with broad foliaceous tips....4. R. californica segregates.
 

(1939)  Page(s) 179.  
 
Key to the Species
Sepals, styles and upper part of the hypanthium persistent on the fruit; pistils numerous.
- Hypanthium normally smooth and glabrous.
-- Stems with stout prickles, rarely slender and weak in some segregates of R. californica; sepals often prolonged into foliaceous appendages; plats 2 to 10 feet high.
--- Prickles straight or nearly so, more or less flattened below, often ascending; stipules, rachis, and leaflets glandular....1. R. nutkana.
--- Prickles usually curved, or straight in some segragates of R. californica.
---- Pedicels glandular-hispid or bristly, the bristles often 1/8-inch long; sepals glandular-hispid, often pinnatifid....3. R. rubiginosa.
---- Pedicels usually not glandular-hispid-or bristly, sometimes glandular,; sepals often villous, not pinnatifid, but usually serrate....4. R. californica.
 

(1939)  Page(s) 181.  Includes photo(s).
 
Rosa nutkana Presl. Nootka Rose. Fig. 190.
Key to the species and variety
Hypanthium glabrous, without glandular prickles....R. nutkana
Hypanthium densely hairy or glandular-prickly.....var. hispida.
Stout shrub, 1 to 6 feet high, usually armed with stiff straight and ascending or recurved prickles, the flowering branches sometimes unarmed. Leaflets 5 to 9, usually 7, broadly oval or elliptical, ½-inch to 2 inches long, dark green and glabrous above, paler and somewhat glandular-pubescent beneath, doubly serrate with glandular points; petioles and rachises glandular, and usually pubescent; stipules strongly glandular on the margins. Flowers rose-pink, usually solitary or rarely 2 to 4 together; pedicels glabrous or somewhat glandular-hairy or with gland-tipped bristles; sepals ½-inch to 1½ inches long, commonly prolonged into foliaceous appendages, glandular-margined, persistent on fruit; petals broadly obovate, ¾-inch to 1½ inches long; hypanthium in fruit globose, about ½-inch in diameter, glabrous. Flowering period Ma yto July.
Nootka Rose inhabits moist flats and mountain slopes in the Transition Life Zone of northern Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte, Siskiyou, and Trinity counties. It extends northward to Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska and eastward to Idaho, Utah, and Montana....
Rosa nutkana Presl. Epim. Bot. 203 (1849). Type locality: Nootka Sound, British Columbia. Collected by Haenke. R. fraxinifolia Hook., not Borkh.

(1939)  Page(s) 179.  
 
Key to the Species
Sepals, styles and upper part of the hypanthium persistent on the fruit; pistils numerous.
- Hypanthium densely glandular or glandular-hispid or bristly.
-- Stems with stout (rarely slender) prickles ¼- to ½-inch long, usually straight, more or less flattened below, often ascending; petals ¾-inch to 1½ inches long......1a. R. nutkana var. hispida.
-- Stems with few slender usually straight prickles, sometimes with many additional bristles; sepals without foliaceous tips; petals ½- to ¾-inch long.....2. R. spithamea.