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Penny Finds Rare Rose Hybrid in Peaks

Penny has been spending some of her retirement searching for rare plants in the Derbyshire Dales National Nature Reserves (NNRs) for Natural England – a very pleasurable task! Imagine her delight and surprise when searching for old burnet rose (Rosa pimpinellifolia) sites to find not this, but a very rare Rosa x sabinii – determined by a rose expert for her. This is a hybrid between Rosa mollis (soft downy-rose) and Rosa pimpinellifolia (burnet rose), so has presumably been mislabelled as burnet rose for some years.

Alan Willmot (co-ordinator of the Derbyshire Flora project) revealed that this is the first record for over 100 years, the last one being in 1911 and that there are only 8 records for the plant in all from between 1882 and 1911 in Derbyshire. All records are from the White Peak including Middleton, Miller’s Dale and Cressbrook Dale. Penny has also found two locations for the suspect burnet rose in Cressbrook Dale so will check this out when/if it flowers next year.

For more information, please see the Derbyshire Flora Project website – www.derby.gov.uk/apps/flora/, and the Biological Records Centre Online Atlas website www.brc.ac.uk/plantatlas/