Birth flower for May 19
Wild rose
Meaning: Simplicity and poetic love
The multiflora wild rose of East Asia is one ancestor of many modern roses, with clusters of sweet-scented, five-petaled white flowers. Gardeners have long used it as a tough rootstock for grafting fancier roses. In Japan its red hips, called eijitsu, are a traditional herbal laxative. Schubert's famous song 'Heidenröslein' is about its European cousin.