Cass, That is a beautiful map!
Paul, I have a few North American species roses, but it is far from a comprehensive collection, and they are just leafing out. Sometimes I am a bit slow to discover scent, because most roses are very short in my pure sand, and I don
I only mapped the species that made sense because they are known to range in Eastern Oregon and/or they have glandular leaflets. I don’t think Paul is likely to confuse his rose with R. rubiginosa, for example.
I have a rose labelled Rosa nutkana. The reverse of the leaflets is definitely glandular, and the scent is resinous, easily detected to my nose. I guess you might call it cedar. To me, it smell like a hardy Geranium I grow called ‘Biokovo.’ The trouble is…I have no confidence that the rose really is Nutkana. It’s blooming right now. This is way early. We’re still having frosts and freezes at night. Is Nutkana a known early bloomer? It’s possible I shocked it into bloom when I almost barerooted it removing grass as tall as the rose.
This particular Nutkana actually looks like one of the local NorCal forms of Californica except the armature is not familiar (no stout prickles anywhere). Maybe a hybrid of the two…hmmm…how would the ploidy turn out if the tetraploid Californica hybridized with the hexaploid Nutkana?
Paul, an terrific source of native plant lists and locations (and plants) for native species roses is the Native Plant Society. At least in California, the local chapters have mapped just about every public place and prepared online databases of plants. They are composed of an avid group with trained biologists among their membership and know their species roses much better than experienced rosarians, having seen them in different geographical locations. Their plant sales feature the real thing.
Timo, Nutkana suckers extenstively if you live in a climate with ample rainfall. The dimension is for the width of a thicket within a relatively short period of time. If your plant is budded, then…never mind. 
This will not help identify Pauls mystery rose but it does provide another source for species distribution data.
Note that you can download a Google Earth file showing collection pionts for each rose species in the database - or even all of Rosa, except I did that and I think it went over the 10,000 marker limit.
I did view the Oregon markers after downloading all Rosa. The only other species it showed besides those Cass mapped on the Oregon Plant Atlas was R. pisocarpa.
Note also that it lists 3,240 species of Roses. I didn’t count them but that’s what is says. See
Maybe Paul has found species number 3241.
There is a small chance it could be Rosa pinetorum. I have read some evidence that states it may be in oregon. It is rare in northern california and that is not to far from oregon. I do not know of any confirmed sightings in oregon however. It does have scented foliage.
I’ve found numerous plants of what I believe is R. nutkana in the area and some (not all) of them have the same scented foliage. Why is this not described in the literature, I wonder???
Paul, I’ve wondered why botanical diagnoses almost never mention scent. It is so consistent that there must be a reason. Scent does not survive in the dried specimens, and that may be one explanation. It would be interesting to know if Nutkana from the far north of its range in British Columbia (outside the range of Rosa californica’s glandular forms) is also glandular.
Hybrids of native species with Rosa multiflora is something I discounted until I was reminded of the astoundingly glandular and fragrant foliage and buds of Russelliana. Russelliana might have been used as a rootstock, as we find multiple large stands around old Gold Country houses - - in one case, four or five plants scattered around the house.
Why is this not described in the literature, I wonder???
Consider how few leaf scents are reported generally. Even HMF lacks a foliage scent category and sticks all scents under ‘Bloom’ for search purposes. So I think the answer is ‘nobody asked’.
Without a chemical analysis of the leaf oils it is impossible to know for certain what compounds are responsible for the cedar scent in your nutkanas. However, cedar scent is generally attributed to the sesquiterpene derivitives cedrol and cedrene. This paper
shows that the Common Moss produces sesquiterpenes (classed as germacrene) so it has the machinery to get most of the way cedrol or cedrene.
There seems to be an opportunity here to create a cedar scented moss. It would appear that your cedar scented nutkanas are great candidates for crossing with Nutshop.
i have like 300 seedlings of Rosa california x Rosa multiflora germinating, but neither are glandular 
But it is possible!
I do plan on crossing Rosa rubiginosa x Scarlet Moss/Rose Gilardi/Mood Music/Dresden Doll in about a month, though.
HMF has a characteristic of “fragrant foliage.” See e.g. R. primula, Gloire de Rosomene, “Grandmother’s Hat,” Rosa rubiginosa. It’s a characteristic that we forget to list or don’t know about because the only hint is that the foliage is described as glandular.
For species, it’s a hard call. Many species have both glandular and eglandular forms and varieties. A number of the descriptions I have for Nutkana describes the leaflets as glandular, but the subspecies macdouglii, for example, is keyed as eglandular.
HMF has a characteristic of “fragrant foliage.” See e.g. R. primula, Gloire de Rosomene, “Grandmother’s Hat,” Rosa rubiginosa. It’s a characteristic that we forget to list or don’t know about because the only hint is that the foliage is described as glandular.
My comments were not meant as a criticism, only to illustrate how little attention is paid to scented foliage. Hopefully as time goes by more such data will get added there. HMF is a spectacular resource having one of the best databases, and for sure the best database application interface design, that I have ever seen.
A number of the descriptions I have for Nutkana describes the leaflets as glandular, but the subspecies macdouglii, for example, is keyed as eglandular.
I have wondered whether the presence of pine scented glandular trichomes on nutkana may have influenced Ralph Moore’s choice of crosses with it. The mossing gene switches trichomes to an indeterminant growth pattern so in principal roses with lots of trichomes are the best candidates for getting lots of moss if you can introduce that gene.
Hey Jadae is this one of the rare species Rosa adenocarpa.
Timo,
I have R. woodsii ultramontana here in great abundance, and I’ve never seen it grow taller than about a meter and a half where I live, and two or three meters tall higher up in the mountains.
But it has the most marvelous scent and the hips! They make a priceless tea!
I tripped over this reference to a letter in the Historic Rose Journal:
Rosemary Foster
Letter re: R. nutkana with scented foliage?
No 12, Autumn 1996
The issue is available for about $6.
Link: www.historicroses.org/index.php?s=journal_articles_index
R. woodsii ultramontana is not growing like mad here. It’s his first year but I was expected it was like weeds.
I made my first cross with R. minutifolia f. albiflora today. I put a little Gelber Engel on it. Lot of blooms are going to show up.
Thanks Don,
I have concluded that what I have is indeed R. Nutkana, a particularly pungent form. I checked my local specimens of R. nutkana and many do have the cedar/pine scented foliage although to a lesser degree than my seed grown specimen. Curious that this characteristic is rarely mentioned in literature.
Paul
Be sure to use it in breeding =)
Its already been worked in to this year’s breeding. 
Nice! I used Baby Love on Rosa rubiginosa this spring. I wanted to put Dresden Doll on it…but the mini mosses take too long to bloom, and then R. rubiginosa was out of blooms =( I’ll save pollen next year. It should be a better spring/summer for breeding imo.
I was browsing species roses at HMF and noticed one named Rosa balsamica Besser. There’s no other information at HMF except that it grows at Sangerhausen. A google search turned up only that it is native to Europe and the Ukraine though a check at the GBIF data portal gave to collection points for it, both in Norway. If you have Google Earth installed you can see markers for these collection points in this file:
http://holeman.org/ge/Rosa balsamica.kmz
So, if anyone happens to have a fjord in thier back yard maybe you could check to see if R. balsamica is there and if, indeed, the foliage smells like balsam.
My neighbor has a ford his yard, and with the deodorizer hanging from the mirror, it does indeed smell akin to balsam.
I once acquired a rose alleged to be r. xanthina spontanea with fragrant foliage. I wonder if it was primula instead? It died in Katrina.