The dog rose, or wild rose bush, is a thorny shrub with delicate flowers and bright red fruits very rich in vitamins, found in hedgerows and woodland edges throughout Spain.
| Kingdom | Plantae |
| Division | Magnoliophyta |
| Class | Magnoliopsida |
| Order | Rosales |
| Family | Rosaceae |
| Genus | Rosa |
| Species | Rosa canina |
It is a climbing or arching shrub of up to 3 metres, with long, flexible stems armed with curved, hook-shaped thorns. In spring it produces simple five-petalled flowers, white or pink, with numerous yellow stamens in the centre.
After flowering it develops the rose hip, an orange-red false fruit that stays on the plant for much of the autumn and winter.
It is native to Europe, north-west Africa and western Asia, and is found throughout practically the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. It grows wild in hedgerows, woodland edges, banks and scrubland, often forming part of living hedges alongside other thorny species.
Its fruits, the rose hips, contain several times more vitamin C than citrus fruits. During the Second World War, when oranges were scarce in the United Kingdom, they were gathered in huge quantities to make rose hip syrup to supplement the population’s diet.
