Newsletter  (Nov 2018)  Page(s) 7-8.  Includes photo(s).
 
[From "The Unknown Erlanson", by Don Gers, pp. 7-9]
Erlansoniae is the epithet of an obscure wild rose growing in the remote Guadalupe Mountains of west Texas. It is a local variety of R. mirifica, itself a subspecies of R. stellata....From time to time, other botanists have tried to wrangle North America's unruly mustang herd of wild roses, culminating with the Lewis, Ertter, Bruneau treatment in the 2014 volume of Flora of North America. But they and previous botanists all acknowledge the pioneering work of a young woman connected with the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her name is Eileen Whitehead Grimes Erlanson MacFarlane, which reflects her long life and multiple marriages. She was born in 1899 and died in 2003. Botanist first, but primarily a cytologist focused on cancer research later in life, she published over 70 articles, 24 between the years 1925 and 1966 on Rosa. She revolutionized the study of Rosa. ...
I am growing several plants of variety Erlansoniae, but none have yet bloomed. The stems are smooth with fewer prickles than either mirifica or stellata. Lewis described a peculiar zigzag growth to blooming canes which I have not yet seen.

Website/Catalog  (2018)  
 
Rosa stellata....Within subsp. mirifica is var. erlansoniae W. H. Lewis (Erlanson rose) having floral branches flexuous at stem nodes, devoid of internodal prickles or nearly so, sepals entire rather than pinnatifid as in var. mirifica, leaflets and stems glabrous, and pedicels eglandular and glabrous; var. erlansoniae is known only from the Guadalupe Mountains of western Texas (W. H. Lewis 1965).