Sweet Briar Rose - A Relic of the Goldrush

Looking for inspiration for my first blog post I decided to take a stroll around the garden. Not long into my walk, I spied a little pink flower that I hadn't noticed previously. There, nestled among the bottle brushes and blocked from view by a prickly kangaroo thorn, was a rose bush: a sweet briar rose.

Introduced to Australia in the early years of European settlement, this rose bush is now considered a weed, due to its ability to clump and spread quickly. Its seeds are spread by animals and often lie dormant in the soil until disturbed. 

However, this weed has historical significance. Back in the 19th century, scurvy, a disease caused by the lack of Vitamin C, was still prevalent. Most of us associate scurvy with sailors who did not have access to fresh fruit and vegetables on long sea voyages, but scurvy also afflicted those on land.

Briar roses, hardy and good hedging plants, were often planted around homesteads. They were also popular as ornamentals and their berries (hips) were considered a good source of Vitamin C, which could be eaten raw, but were usually made into a syrup.

Miners may have planted these roses around gold diggings to augment their poor diets to protect themselves against scurvy. I haven't found any articles to support this, but have read descriptions of old cemeteries and house sites with briar roses still growing in the grounds. This is often explained by other roses reverting to root stock, but I like to think otherwise.

My garden was once part of gold diggings back in the 1850s when thousands of tents and ramshackle buildings covered the hills. It would have been an ugly sight, denuded of vegetation, and, in my imagination, lacking in colour except, perhaps, for the pale pink flowers of the roses.  Therefore, I look upon my briar rose, not as the result of random animal droppings, though this may be the case, but as a piece of living history: a pretty relic of the gold rush.