Cistus ladanifer - Rockrose

Rockrose (Cistus ladanifer) is an evergreen Mediterranean shrub of dry, sunny hillsides. Its sticky leaves exude the aromatic resin labdanum, traditionally harvested for perfumery, soap, and medicine.

Inputs

• Hardiness zone 6¹
• Hardiness zone 7¹
• Hardiness zone 8¹
• Hardiness zone 9¹

Outputs

• Human food¹

Type

• Shrub
• Evergreen

Functions

• Drought-tolerance¹
• Attracting bees¹
• Wildlife habitat¹
• Flammable²

Footnotes

1. Cistus ladanifer | Plants for a Future ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. White, R.H. & Zipperer, W.C., “Testing and classification of individual plants for fire behaviour,” International Journal of Wildland Fire 19(2), 2010, pp. 213-227 (https://research.fs.usda.gov/download/treesearch/36499.pdf), Table 6: cone-calorimeter data (after Weise et al. 2005) ranking Cistus ladanifer 9th of 10 species tested for time to sustained ignition; corroborated by Contra Costa County Fire Protection District’s “Wildland Urban Interface Vegetation Lists,” 2021 (https://web.archive.org/web/20250504084353/https://ccfd.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/CCFD-WUI-Vegetation-Lists-2021.pdf), which requires 30ft structure clearance for “Cistus Spp.” ↩