Rosa omeiensis is an elegant early flowering rose known for its sprays of small creamy usually four-petalled flowers, ferny leaves with many leaflets and triangular prickles.
From Mt Emei in Sichuan came this variety. Mount Emei is one of the four sacred mountains of Chinese Buddhism and at 3099 metres is the highest of the four. The others are Mt Wutai in Shanxi, Mt Jiuhua in Anhui and Mt Putuo in Zhejiang.
If Rosa omeiensis comes from Mt Emei, why is it not called "Rosa emeiensis"? The answer is simple, at the time it was discovered the standard romanization system for Chinese characters was the Wade-Giles, which renders the Chinese name Omei. However in the Pinyin system, standard today for the romanization of Mandarin Chinese, it is Emei.
It is generally considered a variety of Rosa sericea which ranges from northern India to central China and is quite variable. The Flora of China however keeps R. sericea and R. omeiensis separate. R. omeiensis has a more northerly distribution and more succulently fleshy fruits. The fleshy part of the hip often continues down into the pedicels of R. omeiensis, making the hips conspicuously pear-shaped, whereas the hip of R. sericea is globose with normal pedicels. Rosa sericea has fewer pairs of leaflets, which are densely sericeous beneath, whereas in R. omeiensis the leaflets are either glabrous or somewhat pubescent beneath. Large-prickled forms of both these roses occur.
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