I found these wild roses in the woods, across the street from Jimmy’s place, above the west bank of the Flathead River. I think that wild roses are our most comment wildflower, near town and in the mountains.

For those of you who are fortunate to have wild roses where you live, the rose hips (seed pods) are higher in Vitamin C than the fruits you can buy in the supermarket. They taste great and kids love them. Our sons used to scour the woods for these treats. Rosehips can also be dried to make tea.

In our area, wild roses bloom from June to July and you can harvest the rosehips anywhere from late August to October.

Rosa acicularis, also known as the prickly wild rose, the prickly rose, the bristly rose and the Arctic rose, is a species of wild rose with a Holarctic distribution in northern regions of Asia, Europe, and North America.

It is a deciduous shrub growing 1–3 m tall. The leaves are pinnate, 7–14 cm long, with three to seven leaflets. The leaflets are ovate, with wavy margins. The flowers are pink (rarely white), 3.5–5 cm diameter; the hips are red, pear-shaped to ovoid, 10–15 mm diameter.

This native species of the U.S. and Canadian northern Great Plains is the provincial flower of Alberta. It is not as common in the Parkland region of the Canadian Prairie provinces as Rosa woodsii (Woods’ rose), but is the most abundant rose in the boreal forests of northern Canada and Alaska. [from the wikipedia article]

Photo taken June 16, 2011, in Columbia Falls, Montana (USA), with a Kodak EasyShare Z712 IS camera.