Rosa abyssinicaR.Br. ex Lindl.

WFO wfo-0001008651 Accepted WFO 2026-06 4 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–d · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Rosa abyssinica, photographed by stephen
fig. a stephen, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-02-19 / obs. 64104947
Rosa abyssinica, photographed by stephen
fig. b stephen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 64104967
Rosa abyssinica, photographed by Stefano Menchetti
fig. c Stefano Menchetti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 14066693
Rosa abyssinica, photographed by Stefano Menchetti
fig. d Stefano Menchetti, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 14066619

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 6 botanical countries

Regions where Rosa abyssinica is native: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan-South Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen EritreaEthiopiaSomaliaSudan-South SudanSaudi ArabiaYemen
Native distribution of Rosa abyssinica, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Eritrea ERI AFRICA
Ethiopia ETH
Somalia SOM
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Saudi Arabia SAU ASIA-TEMPERATE
Yemen YEM

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Also published as 5 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Rosa bottaiana Boulenger
  • Rosa moschata var. abyssinica (R.Br. ex Lindl.) Crép.
  • Rosa schimperiana Hochst.
  • Rosa schweinfurthii Boulenger
  • Rosa sempervirens var. abyssinica (R.Br. ex Lindl.) Regel

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.