[4] A climbing shrub with deep pink flowers and relatively few thorns, it has had a history of cultivation as an ornamental plant.

It can be distinguished from other members of its genus by its relative lack of thorns (prickles), especially higher up on the plant, its oblong fruits (hips) which hang downwards (are pendulous, hence the specific epithet), its hispid peduncles and petioles, and its smooth stems and branches.

[6] It prefers to grow in relatively warmer, shadier, and wetter areas alongside streams, in openings in forests, or on rock piles, between 350 and 2,500 m above sea level.

[1] It is mostly found in the subalpine zone of the mountains of Central and Southern Europe: the Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Alps (at elevations of up to 2300–2600 m in the various parts of the range), throughout the Carpathians (up to 1800 m in the Tatras), in Czechia and adjacent areas of Germany and Poland, in the Apennines and in the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula (at elevations of 1000–2500 m in Bulgaria).

Often called by its synonym Rosa alpina, the Alpine rose has been in cultivation for hundreds of years (c. 1683), with many varieties that are practically forgotten today.