A shrub of dwarf, compact, bushy habit, whose stems are copiously furnished with stiff, whitish, straight or decurved prickles up to 3⁄8 in. long, intermixed with which are numerous small needle-like prickles and glandular bristles. Leaves 11⁄2 to 3 in. long, pine-scented and often sticky, owing to the dense glandularity of the rachis and leaflets, which are mostly five or seven in number, rarely nine, oval or obovate to roundish, 1⁄4 to 1 in. long, glabrous or more or less downy, glandular on both sides, edged with compound glandular teeth. Stipules glandular, broad, with short, triangular tips. Flowers rosy pink, 1 to 11⁄2 in. across, usually in pairs or solitary; pedicels 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 in. long, usually densely covered with stalked glands and sometimes downy. Sepals up to 1 in. long, slightly expanded at the apex, with a few slender, gland-edged appendages. Styles hairy. Fruits globose or ellipsoid, or broadest slightly above or below the middle, dark red, up to 1 in. long, smooth or glandular-bristly; sepals usually persistent. Bot. Mag., t. 8826.
Native of S. Europe from Italy and Sicily eastwards through S.E. Europe and Crete to Asia Minor, the Caucasus, the Lebanon, Iran and Afghanistan; introduced early in the 19th century. It is remarkable for its excessive covering of glandular hairs or bristles, more marked even than in R biebersteinii (horrida), from which it differs also in its hairy styles, very wide stylar aperture, fruits with usually persistent sepals and pink flowers. R. sicula has persistent sepals, but its wood lacks the bristles and needles so characteristic of R. pulverulenta.
R. pulverulenta is a variable species in such characters as the length of its prickles, presence or absence of down on the leaflets, the presence or absence of glandular bristles on the fruits and the size and shape of these. The plants portrayed in the Botanical Magazine and in Willmott, The Genus Rosa (p. 467, t.) came from the Darmstadt Botanic Garden; they have large ellipsoid densely hispid fruits and may derive from an introduction from the mountains above Kotor in S. Dalmatia, shortly before 1870, to the Vienna Botanic Garden. These plants have been distinguished as var. dalmatica.