or eglantine Small, prickly wild rose (Rosa eglanteria, or R. rubiginosa) with fragrant foliage and numerous small pink flowers, native to Europe and western Asia. Widely naturalized in North America, it grows along roadsides and in pastures from eastern Canada southwest to Tennessee and Kansas. The shrub form, which can grow 6 ft (2 m) high, is useful for screening out traffic noise and beautifying highways