Small clonal woody shrub with many upright stems 16-60 inches long. Flowering branches armed with long, more or less straight thorns, which are broad at the base, few small, numerous scattered thorns, and numerous stellate hairs. Leaves with 3 to 5 wedge-shaped leaflets, rounded at the broad apex, 1/4 to 3/4 inches long and 1/8 inch to ¾ inches wide, glabrous or hairy, without glands, with 5 to 12 teeth, usually all above the middle. Petioles hairy or not, sometimes with a few bristles. Stipules attached for half or more of their length, 1/8 to 3/8 inch long with spreading bases. Flowers single at the ends of stems, their stems short, 3/8 inch or less. Sepals oval, broad at the base, 3/8 to 3/4 inch long with two or more lobes, with or without teeth or glands on the margins, the inner surface hairy and the outer surface bristly and hairy, erect and covering the fruit. Petals oval, widest above the middle, 7/8 to 1 1/8 inches long and 7/8 to 1 inch wide, flowering May to June.

Clonal shrub with numerous stiff upright stems, 0.25-1.5 m long and armed with numerous long straight white to straw-colored paired infrastipular spines and with or without scattered internodal bristles and prickles. Stems brown, densely pubescent with short stipitate glands, these often encircled by stiff, white stellately-arranged basal pubescence. Leaves with 3-5 obovate leaflets 5-12 mm long and 3-9 mm wide, cuneate at base, with 4-8 crenate or dentate coarse serrations above the widest part, occasionally minutely doubly serrate, bearing minute white sericeous pubescence on the margins, upper surface, and rachis, and few to numerous glands on leaflets immediately below the inflorescence; stipules adnate to the petiole, foliaceous above. Flowers solitary, terminal, about 5 cm across, sepals ovate-lanceolate, stiff, to 25 mm long, the three tips caudate-acuminate and slightly spatulate, often linear lobed, densely long-bristly below the tip, persistent and erect in fruit; petals obovate, dark pink, 15-20 mm wide, 17-25 mm long; hypanthium densely covered with long, stout, straight prickles, some gland-tipped. Fruit spheroid, 10-18 mm in diameter; seeds brown, smooth, about 4 mm long. Flowering May-June, fruiting September.

The only other native wild rose in Arizona, Rosa arizonica, has longer stems which lack stellate hairs, has hooked thorns, and larger ovate leaflets with more and smaller teeth well to below the middle. The two are not known to occur together. R. stellata var. abyssa is also clonal in habit, a feature not noted for R. arizonica.