A suckering shrub up to 3 or 4 ft high, in the wild often a subshrub cut to the ground each winter; stems clad with slender, straight prickles and bristles, sometimes very densely so. Leaflets nine or eleven, more rarely seven, elliptic or sometimes obovate, 1 to 2 in. long, lustrous above, glabrous on both sides except for the sometimes downy veins beneath, edged with fairly deep, simple, eglandular teeth. Flowers pink, about 11⁄2 in. across, borne around midsummer in lateral clusters, or later at the end of strong growths from the base. Pedicels and receptacle glabrous, sometimes slightly glandular. Sepals narrow, slenderly pointed, sometimes glandular on the back. Fruits globose to pear-shaped, about 1⁄2 in. wide, smooth or slightly glandular, crowned by the usually spreading sepals.
Native of the central USA from Wisconsin and Minnesota to Colorado and Kansas.
var. suffulta (Greene) Cockerell R. suffulta Greene; R. pratincola Greene; R. heliophila Greene; R. arkansoides Schneid. – Rachis and underside of leaflets downy. More widely distributed than the typical state and extending into Canada.
R. arkansana has never been much cultivated in Britain, but it is an interesting rose owing to its ability to flower on strong shoots of the current season, and is by all accounts a pretty one, especially its var. suffulta, of which there are forms with white and with deep pink flowers, and two named clones with double flowers – ‘Woodrow’ and ‘John Allen’. Some hybrids have been raised from the var. suffulta in the USA.
R. alcea Greene is closely allied to R. arkansana var. suffulta, but more glandular. Another ally of R. arkansana is the Californian R. spithamea S. Wats.