Beach Rose, or Rosa Rugosa, is common along coast of New England, and especially on the dunes of southern Maine. It is not native. It was introduced for dune control and sea-side landscaping from Asia, where it is native to coasts of northern China, Korea, Japan, and southern Siberia. Rose Hip Jelly, a regional specialty, is made from the hips or pips (fruit) of the Beach Rose. Like many other introduced plants, it has been a mixed blessing…it certainly holds the dunes down and makes a bold show in lawns and boarders, but where it grows wild it has almost completely displaced native dune grasses and wildflowers.

Mostly you see the red variety. The white is a cultivar, and through I found it growing wild along the abandoned Bridle Path in Kennebunk, it almost certainly escaped from someone’s garden, or perhaps there was once a house along the Path just there, as there is evidence of ditching and draining and possible cultivation in the marsh near-by, and several other introduced ornamentals (including Hawthorn and Japanese Barberry) on the Bridle Path within sight of the patch of white roses.

The big showy white petals do, as I see it, very interesting things with light

Nikon Coolpix P500 in Close Up Scene mode (assisted macro). Both main shots at f8 @ 1/800th @ ISO 160.

Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.

And, for the Sunday thought…

If, as I strongly suspect, what we have along the Bridle Path just there, where the white Rugosa Rose blooms, are the remnants of someone’s gardening efforts from the last century (or even the one before…there is a particularly Victorian aspect to the mix of plants) it just goes to show how much power there is in the human intention…the power to alter the landscape for generations…well beyond the lifetime of the particular person of intent. And, of course, the problem status of the Rugosa Rose on New England dunes testifies to our inability to completely foresee the consequences of our intentions. We, as children of the creator, have, indeed a measure of the creator’s power…certainly enough to create our own versions of Eden where ever we go…but as creatures of time, who lack, while we are here on this earth, the eternal perspective, we can not see far enough ahead to know what exactly we do.

I am, to be honest, of two minds about this. One part of me recommends caution…that we ought, given our limitations, to take a “hands off” stance…to leave nature to her own devices, and not meddle with the landscape.

But part of me feels that managing the ever changing landscape is what we are here to do…that in fact…we will always be gardeners in the Eden the creator is creating…and that is right that we exercise our little bit of creativity in the moment…every moment…to tend and expand the landscape of creation. If the Rugosa Rose has run beyond any intention, it will require creative intent on the part of the children of the creator reign it in.

Too often, I think, we set man and nature against each other. Man made is unnatural. A garden is not nature. Too often, I think, we forget that man is part of nature…that our creative intent is force of nature as sure as wind and sun and rain. It is, as I see it, only by remembering that all the time, and passing it generation to generation, that we can overcome the limitations of our time-bound perspectives. We are children of the creator, charged with creation in the moment. If the Rugosa Rose is a problem, we need to get creative about it. In this moment.

Or that’s what I think this Sunday morning.

Happy Sunday. Enjoy what the light does with the petals of the White Rugosa Rose!