Smelling the Rosa Rugosa

This ornamental plant, Rosa Rugosa is found all over the coastal areas that I travel in the summer. I first noticed this beautiful plant in Nantucket many years ago, and then again on the Cape, and now again in Maine! After being in the pollution of the city during the winter where I cannot smell anything, it is always so wonderful to come north where the air is clean and smell the roses!

From Wikipedia: The sweetly scented flowers are used to make pot-pourri in Japan and China, where it has been cultivated for about a thousand years. This species hybridises readily with many other roses, and is valued by rose breeders for its considerable resistance to the diseases rose rust and rose black spot. It is also extremely tolerant of seaside salt spray and storms, commonly being the first shrub in from the coast.