Researchers from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) have discovered three new species of wild roses in three of the highest and oldest volcanoes in the Canary Islands. The three new roses have a combination of characteristics which is not found in any wild rose neither from Europe nor from the rest of the populations of the Canary Islands.
The study, published in Flora Montiberica, proposes three species new to science found in the highest and oldest volcanoes in the Canary Islands: in the The Boys’ Rock ofLa Palma (R. roque-muchachensis), in the canyons of Mount Teide (R. cannadas-teydensis), and in the Tejeda Caldera in Gran Canaria (R. gran-canariae)”.
The cultivated roses come from the domestication of wild roses. More specifically, the genus Rosa, which has about 150 species precursors of cultivated roses, has been studied and manipulated for centuries in Europe, America and Asia. The rarity of the populations and the taxonomic complexity of the Canary Islands roses have allowed only a superficial study, so that there are many confused records since the beginning of the 20th century.
The study is led by Pablo Vargas, CSIC researcher at the Royal Botanical Garden (RJB-CSIC), Manuel Nogales researcher at the Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology (IPNA-CSIC) and Modesto Luceño, professor at the Pablo de Olavide University of Seville, who were in the Canary Islands to develop a taxonomic study when they discovered these wild rose bushes which had not been described or catalogued to date.
Based on the current taxonomic treatment adopted for European roses over the last six decades, “we propose a minimum of six species of wild roses (section Caninae) for the Canary Islands, of which only two have been previously cited: Rosa micrantha and R. rubiginosa,” said Pablo Vargas.
remote enclaves
Researchers visited isolated enclaves of the Canary Islands archipelago thanks to the biologists of the municipalities and national parks who work on all the islands: La Palma (F. Manuel Medina, A. Lerín), La Gomera (A. Fernández, R. Chinea «Sito»), Gran Canaria (I. Nogales, C. Suarez, S. Cabrera) and Tenerife (C. González Montelongo, Alfredo Reyes Betancort, M. Marrero). They have also studied the type material and original specimens located in the herbaria of the Linnean Society of London and the University of La Laguna, in Tenerife.
Vargas, Nogales and Luceño analyzed in detail 19 key characters for the study of the genus Rosa in the Canary Islands, a little-known genus because its European and African colonizers originated from difficult identification.
To develop this work, Vargas and Nogales collected specimens of wild roses and studied a total of 75 copies in the herbariums of the University of La Laguna (TFC), the Acclimatization Garden of Orotava (ORT) and in the herbarium of the Royal Botanical Garden-CSIC of Madrid (MA).
