Rosa laxa

A native eastern + central North American thicket-forming shrub producing arching thorny canes + clusters of large sweet black berries in mid-to-late summer. Among the most important wildlife fruit producers in eastern forests - birds, mammals, + insects all depend on the fruit. Like raspberry, biennial-caned (primocane year 1, fruits in year 2 as floricane, then dies back). Spreads via root suckers + tip-rooting cane tips; manage with annual pruning.

A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5 to 12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh - they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.

Cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis, Bignoniaceae) is a vigorous, evergreen scrambling shrub from southern and south-central Africa, valued for tubular orange-to-apricot flowers borne erratically across much of the year. It reaches about 6.6 to 9.8 feet tall and wide as a free-standing shrub, or can be trained much taller on a trellis or wall, and is widely used for informal hedging and as a hot-color border or container plant. It is frost-tender (RHS H1C; roughly USDA 9b-11) - in cooler climates it is grown under glass or as a summer container plant and overwintered indoors. In frost-free, mild climates it can become weedy: it has naturalised and is treated as invasive in parts of Australia and on islands such as the Azores, so site it where suckering and self-layering can be managed. It is not a recognised edible and is not flagged as notably toxic, though several plant parts feature in traditional southern-African medicine; treat it as ornamental rather than for consumption. Note the accepted binomial here is Tecomaria capensis (POWO/GBIF); the widely-seen Tecoma capensis is a synonym.

The China rose of central and southern China, long known by the old name Rosa indica and also called Bengal rose, is the rose that taught garden roses to flower again and again. Trees and Shrubs Online describes the China roses as a race of garden roses, bred in Chinese gardens from wild plants, that bear successive crops of flowers on the same stem, which is why their Chinese name means Monthly Roses; through Pink China roses that reached Europe from about 1781 they are ancestors of most modern garden roses. NC State Extension describes a rounded, prickly, deciduous shrub 6 to 8 feet tall and wide, with clusters of four or five slightly fragrant flowers in white, pink, red or purple through the summer and red hips afterwards. It is a warm-temperate rose, listed for zones 6 to 9, and a demanding one: NC State calls it high maintenance, lists black spot, powdery mildew, rust and rose rosette disease among its problems, and says deer frequently damage it.

Doublefile viburnum is a deciduous shrub native to China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, grown for its spectacular tiered, horizontal branching draped in flat lacecap flower heads in late spring. It earns its place as a four-season focal point - white flowers in May, blue-black drupes in late summer, and often vivid red-purple autumn colour - but the honest catch is its sheer footprint: mature plants can spread 13 to 16 feet wide with rigidly horizontal branches that resent hard pruning, and the fruit is not edible.

The French rose of central and southern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus and Iraq is one of the oldest garden roses: Trees and Shrubs Online says it has been cultivated since time immemorial, and it is a parent of the Damask rose. It is a low, suckering shrub, 1.5 to 4 feet tall in the Trees and Shrubs Online description, with dark green leaves and fragrant, bright rosy pink to crimson flowers once a year in early summer, followed by small, leathery hips. Its semi-double crimson form, the apothecary's rose (var. officinalis), was grown by apothecaries for centuries and is the red rose of Lancaster; the striped 'Versicolor' is Rosa mundi. It spreads by suckers into patches and has escaped from gardens: Flora of North America records it on roadsides, railways and old house sites across eastern North America, and the Invasive Plant Atlas of the United States cites an invasive listing for it in Arlington County, Virginia. Plant it where its suckers can be kept in check.