Rosa

The familiar hybrid garden rose — a deciduous, thorny shrub grown for its showy, often fragrant blooms that repeat from late spring to frost. Modern hybrids (hybrid teas, floribundas, grandifloras, and shrub roses) descend from centuries of crossing across the genus and span roughly 1-8 feet tall depending on the class. Rewarding but high-maintenance: full sun, good air circulation, and a regular disease-management routine are the price of the long bloom season.

A tough, exceptionally salt- and cold-hardy species rose forming a dense, suckering thicket of upright, very thorny stems clothed in deeply wrinkled (rugose) dark-green leaves. From late spring through summer it carries large, fragrant single flowers in magenta-pink to white, followed by big, tomato-shaped red hips that are edible and very high in vitamin C. NC State Extension lists it for USDA zones 2a-7b. Its toughness is also its drawback: it spreads aggressively by suckers and seed-bearing hips and is invasive on coastal dunes in parts of the northeastern US and northern Europe.