A vigorous scrambling shrubby vine to 6 m. Unlike most roses practically thornless, with only an occasional 5 mm prickle on stout shoots. Evergreen leaves 4–6 cm with three to five (rarely seven) serrate leaflets 2–5 cm long. Small flowers 1.5–2.5 cm across, white or pale yellow, fragrant, packed into umbels that pour over a trellis like a waterfall; the double yellow is commonest. Among the earliest roses to flower, in May in the northern hemisphere (April in central China); all forms are said to smell of violets. Named after Lady Banks.
Habitat
Hillside scrub, streamsides and roadsides at 500–2,200 m; in gardens it covers trellises, wall tops and fences, very drought-tolerant and long-lived.
Distribution
Native to central and western China: Gansu, Guizhou, Henan, Hubei, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Yunnan; widely grown everywhere, grown in Japan (mokkō-bara, introduced in the Edo period); a plant in Tombstone, Arizona, covering 800 square metres is called the world's largest rose. Absent from Singapore.
Season and behaviour
April and May, mid-April in central China, about two weeks, once a year.
Photography tips
These are the FilmAnalysis editors' notes, not content from the sources.
A trellis of small flowers wants the whole waterfall, wide and low or compressed with a long lens; half a stop under for white, and the yellow truest under cloud. Single flowers are too small, so macro a layered cluster. From under the trellis, the strings hanging before the sky, is its best angle. The smooth thornless stems are the identification detail.
Photographic styles
A cascade of white or yellow over a trellis; flower strings seen from below.
Similar species
Multiflora rose (thorny, slightly larger flowers, fringed stipules); seven sisters rose (double pink, thorny); the yellow Banksian is this species' double yellow form.
Related badge
The album badge "a rose" unlocks when the vision model explicitly names a a rose in your photo and you rate the analysis. The badge stops at "a rose": it does not tell species apart, and this page existing unlocks nothing.
The illustration is original FilmAnalysis artwork. The photograph is from Wikimedia Commons; its licence and author are under it.
Why it is listed: this species comes from the Flower checklist (GBIF backbone and Wikidata verified). Names follow the GBIF backbone and Wikidata; the facts follow the sources below; photo recognition is not offered.
