Image: blush pink rose at the Niagara Falls Botanic Garden – by E. Jurus, all rights reserved
Roses are beautiful.
But like all things with great beauty, over the millennia they’ve incited great passions. If you think of them only as an expensive flower to give at Valentine’s, or send in sympathy, or fuss around with in your garden, you’re in for quite a surprise.
I can’t grow them, as I wasn’t blessed with a green thumb, but I do love to visit them, breathe in their fragrances, and take lots and lots of photos.
According to ancient mythology, we have the randy ancient Greek pantheon of gods to thank for the rose – the first flower ever, created from the virgin blood of beautiful Psyche (the goddess of the Soul) after she was seduced by Eros, the god of Love.
However, fossil records show the genus rosa as dating back some 30 million years, found in Europe, Asia, and North America.
Ornamental roses have been cultivated going back to at least 500 BC in China, Persia and other Mediterranean countries. Confucius (551-479 BC) described them being grown in the imperial gardens of the Chou dynasty. They captivated whoever came across them.
The Romans, in particular, seem to have developed something of an obsession with them. Petals were eaten in gourmet dishes and used to flavour wine, as well as to scent bathwater, carpet floors and scatter as confetti at lavish parties. Emperor Nero reportedly spent four million sesterces (an estimated $10 million in today’s currency) on their velvety-soft petals for a single banquet. There was an extravagant rose festival held annually in Rome called the Rosalia.
Roses were precious indeed. In a mix of religious tradition, it was believed that Cupid (the Roman version of Eros) gave a rose to Harpocrates, an Egyptian god who symbolized silence to both the Greeks and Romans, in exchange for keeping quiet about the love affairs of Cupid’s mother, Venus. (As much as I love roses, if I were Harpocrates, I might have held out for more.)
From this, it became the custom of the Romans to hang a rose from the ceiling of a meeting to indicate that the contents were to be kept private/a secret. This led to the phrase “sub rosa” (literally ‘under the rose’), which is still used today with the same intent.
Rose garlands were placed on Roman tombs to honour the spirits of the dead, a custom that continues today in floral bereavement arrangements.
From the old, simply-flowered wild roses, today there are over three hundred species of rose. Different species of rose hybridize easily, leading to the development of the enormous range of cultivated garden roses. It’s estimated that there are now something like 30 to 35 thousand hybrids and cultivars.
Roses range in size from compact, miniature roses to climbers that can reach seven meters in height. They generally have “prickles” – not thorns (according to rose experts). Thorns are modified stems, whereas prickles are outgrowths of the epidermis (the outer layer of tissue of the entire plant, meaning that prickles can be found in places other than the stem – let’s make sure we get this right 😉). Rose prickles are typically sickle-shaped hooks, which help roses hang on to other vegetation, or fences, making some of them excellent climbers. Despite these defensive prickles, deer seem to be able to get around them and like nosh on roses, requiring protective fencing in some areas (the Niagara Falls Botanic Garden is surrounded by a substantial fence with latching gates, although now a beautifully ornamental fence is being built).
There are three main types of roses: Wild Roses, Old Garden Roses and Modern Roses. Most the roses in gardens today are considered Modern Roses, which were bred for large blooms continuously throughout the growing season.
Wild Roses, or “species roses,” typically have a single bloom with a five-petalled flower. They’re almost always pink; it’s unusual to find any red or white ones, and a yellow Wild Rose is extremely rare.
Old Garden Roses are often called “antique” roses and “historic” roses, They have double blooms with a strong fragrance, but they only bloom once per season. However, they’re very hardy and disease-resistant.
Modern Garden Roses began being bred after 1867, taking the place of heritage Old Garden Roses. They provide a continuous, larger bloom and last longer as cut flowers in vases, but typically have little fragrance and are less hardy and disease-resistant than their predecessors. Well, as the saying goes, you can’t have everything.
Hybrid Tea, Grandiflora and Floribunda roses are specific varieties.
When hybridizers in the 1800s crossed the ancient China rose, Rosa chinensis, with the European Rosa gigantea, the resulting flower had a smell that was said to be reminiscent of a cup of China tea and so it was nicknamed the ‘tea rose’. Hybrid teas have numerous ornate blooms with 30 to 50 petals on long stems and are dazzling in gardens. Thousands of varieties have been bred, and outdated hybrids make way for the new constantly.
Shrub roses are notable for their cold hardiness. Their blooms are produced in bountiful clusters on sprawling shrubs anywhere between five and 15 feet in every direction. Shrub roses have several subcategories, one of which is the David Austin English Rose.
There are far too many other varieties of roses to even mention. Let’s look at their uses over the centuries, from scents and flavouring to religious and political propaganda.
Rose perfumes are made from rose oil (also called attar of roses), which is obtained by steam-distilling the crushed petals of roses. The weight of oil extracted is miniscule – about 1/3000th to 1/6000th of the weight of the flowers themselves. Around two thousand flowers are required to produce a single gram of oil – hence the costliness and value dating back to ancient times. (Perhaps Harpocrates was smarter than I gave him credit for.)
The flower stems and young shoots of roses are edible, as are the petals (without the white or green bases). Rose water, made by steeping the petals in water, is used to flavour food and scent cosmetics, as well as for medicine and religious practices. The technique originated in Persia and then spread through Arabia and India; I’ve bought bottles of food-grade rosewater in shops carrying ‘exotic’ foods to flavour my baking with. It’s a lovely flavouring, but must be used in moderation, or your food can begin to taste ‘soapy’. Candied rose petals look beautiful as a garnish on romantic desserts.
Rose hips, the fruit of the plant, are high in vitamin C, and can be made into jams, jellies and marmalades. You may have imbibed rose-hip tea to ward off a cold.
Rose petals can be used to flavour black tea, which easily picks up the essences of things around it (this is one of the reasons you store it in sealed containers, and preferably not around any other foods).
Roses have been adopted as symbols of both good and bad for millennia.
In ancient Greece, the rose was closely associated with the goddess of love, Aphrodite. In Homer’s epic Iliad, she protected the body of Hector using the “immortal oil of the rose”, and nursed a beautiful young man “among rose blossoms”. She created red roses by wounding herself on a thorn – nay, “prickle” – and staining the flower with her blood.
The rose became identified with the Virgin Mary when the Roman Empire was Christianized. The rose symbol eventually led to the creation of the “rosary” and other devotional prayers in Christianity.
Since the 1400s, the Franciscan order has had a Crown Rosary of the Seven Joys of the Blessed Virgin Mary (The Annunciation, Nativity of Jesus, Adoration of the Magi, Resurrection of Christ, Ascension of Christ to Heaven, Pentecost, and finally Coronation of the Virgin in Heaven). In the same time period, the Carthusians promoted the idea of sacred mysteries associated with the rose symbol and rose gardens.
Christianity was initially opposed to the use of the rose as a symbol for the Virgin Mary because of the flower’s association with ancient Roman ‘debauchery’. Ultimately, though, the rose was declared “the most perfect of flowers,” and was believed to have grown without prickles when it grew in Paradise, until the Original Sin of Adam and Eve.
Consequently, Mary came to be represented by a white and thornless (prickle-less) rose, and even appeared as a symbol of chastity in paintings, such as Nicholas Hilliard’s famous ‘Pelican’ portrait of Elizabeth I.
The story of Aphrodite cutting herself on the prickles of a rose bush to help her dying lover, Adonis, led to the rose being associated with blood and death, and the rose then became a symbol for Christ: his crown of thorns were those of a rose bush.
In literature, the rose took on a certain concupiscence. A 13th century tale, Le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose), was full of puns about seizing young buds, rosy de-flowerings, pricking, scattering seed and the like. The term ‘deflower’, came from the 17th-Century English botanist Nicholas Culpeper, who compared the female genitalia to a half-blown rose. By Victorian England, roses were, unsurprisingly, considered offensively sexual.
Shakespeare made great use of roses in his plays, most famously in Romeo and Juliet, which has one of the most famous quotes ever made about the flower: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
In Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, the rose resume its political connotation during the French Revolution when Madame Defarge added roses to her hat to signify the presence of possible spies or supporters of the French monarchy to other revolutionaries.
The classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, hinged upon a rose wrongly snipped. Belle’s loving father plucked a beautiful rose to bring home to his daughter, because it’s the only treat she requested, but it was from the cursed Beast’s garden, and as payment she was forced to live as a prisoner of the very garden where it had grown.
My favourite literary mention, though, is in Alice in Wonderland, where the nasty Queen of Hearts made her gardeners, who’d accidentally planted white roses, laboriously paint them all red. If not, their own heads would be clipped.
Politically, roses have become popular symbols. In 15th-Century England, the rival “houses” of Lancaster (Red Rose) and York (White Rose) carried out the now-famous Wars of the Roses for control of the throne. When the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, defeated Richard III and married Elizabeth of York, he created the Tudor Rose out of both colours. The Tudor Rose eventually became a national symbol of England.
More recently, in 1986 President Ronald Reagan signed legislation to make the rose the floral emblem of the United States.
Roses have made their way into many arenas. The well-known Compass Rose, a stylized visual device on maps to point out East, South, West and North, was actually derived from what’s known as a Wind Compass, an even earlier graphic from the 1300s on portolan charts (nautical charts with entries such as currents, bays and ports). Wind roses showed the frequency of winds blowing from particular directions over a specified period of time. They used 16 cardinal directions, such as north (N), NNE, NE, etc., , and are still used today in constructing airport runways, since the wind can affect the speed of aircraft at both landing and takeoff when pointing against it.
Roses of course made their way into fashion. There was even a famous colour in Victorian England called Ashes of Roses, a somewhat greyish-rose colour that seems appropriate for such a repressed society. It stuck around in Edwardian times, but was renamed Old Rose (less cumbersome, apparently, and perhaps viewed as a little old-fashioned by then.
As you can see, the originally humble rose grew into great prominence and significance since it first appeared on our Earth. Today it still graces the pages of novels and delights both gardeners and garden visitors, and I for one am very happy that it has transcended all the turmoil and survived as an item of remarkable beauty and elegance.
As poet Robert Herrick wrote:
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
In other words, stop and smell the roses!