Rosa indicaL.

cyme rose

WFO wfo-0001014404 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rosa indica, photographed by Jacy Chen
fig. a Jacy Chen, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-04-30 / obs. 131648902

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 5 botanical countries

Regions where Rosa indica is native: China South-Central, China Southeast, Taiwan, Laos, Vietnam China South-CentralChina SoutheastTaiwanLaosVietnam
Native distribution of Rosa indica, 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
China South-Central CHC ASIA-TEMPERATE
China Southeast CHS
Taiwan TAI
Laos LAO ASIA-TROPICAL
Vietnam VIE

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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 114 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.6 °C 10.0 °C 13.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 27.2 °C 28.8 °C 33.4 °C
Annual rainfall 1,131 mm 1,361 mm 2,805 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 84 mm 135 mm 238 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 114 research-grade observations of Rosa indica that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 41 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 amoyensis Hance
  • Rosa banksiae var. microcarpa Regel
  • Rosa bodinieri H.Lév. & Vaniot
  • Rosa borbonica Dippel
  • Rosa cavaleriei H.Lév.
  • Rosa chaffanjonii H.Lév. & Vaniot
  • Rosa cymosa Tratt.
  • Rosa cymosa f. plena Z.X.Yu & G.Z.Liu
  • Rosa cymosa var. dapanshanensis F.G.Zhang
  • Rosa cymosa var. puberula T.T.Yu & T.C.Ku
  • Rosa esquirolii H.Lév. & Vaniot
  • Rosa fragariiflora Ser.
  • Rosa fragariifolia Ser. ex Steud.
  • Rosa fukienensis F.P.Metcalf
  • Rosa indica unranked alba Andrews
  • Rosa indica unranked caryophyllea Thory
  • Rosa indica unranked creunta Thory
  • Rosa indica unranked incurva Andrews
  • Rosa indica unranked lawrenciana Thory
  • Rosa indica unranked longifolia Thory
  • Rosa indica unranked minor Andrews
  • Rosa indica unranked pannosa Thory
  • Rosa indica unranked purpurea Andrews
  • Rosa indica unranked rubra Andrews

and 17 more.

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.