- Burgundy Rose simplicity and beauty;unconscious beauty
- Carolina Rose love is dangerous
- China Rose grace or beauty ever fresh;beauty is always new
- Damask Rose brilliant complexion;beauty ever new
- Dog Rose pleasure mixed with pain;simplicity
- Eglantine poetry;I wound to heal
- Moss Rose voluptuous love;confessions of love
- Multiflora Rose grace
- Musk Rose capricious beauty
- Provence Rose my heart is in flames
- Rose love and beauty
- White Rose simplicity
- White and red roses together unity;warmth of heart
- White rosebud too young to love;girlhood;a heart ignorant of love
- York and Lancaster Rose war!
Al Damascene rose was taken by early Christians to Abyssinia and planted in the Province of Tigre,where it was known as the Holy Rose(Rosa sancta)
. It spread and forms were intorduced into Europe by returning Crusaders.
Indeedthe famous French poem Le Roman de la Rose(The Romance of the Rose),an elaborate allegory on love and secular life begun in the latter half of the 13th century,later translated and completed by Geoffrey Chaucer,tells of roses being intorduced into France from the lands of the Saracens.
King Midas,the lengendary king of Phrygia,a former kingdom in western and central Asia Minor,is said to have grown the Autumn Damask Rose and introduced it into gardens in a district of Macedonia,where much later a
form of it was used to produce rosewater and attar of roses in the Kazanlik region of Bulgaria.
The earliest record of a rose is thought to be of a Damascene rose,a natural hybrid between Rosa gallica and Rosa phoenicea, found in frescoes at Knossos,a ruined city on the island of Crete and at one time capital of the Minoan civilization,about 3000-1100 BC. Also depicted on frescoes, this time in Pompeii and subsequently mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 BC),later known as the "father of history", is the Autumn Damask Rose.
The French poet and songwriter,Thibaut (sometimes Theobold) IV,Count of Champagne and Brie,and King of Navarre,returned to Provins in 1240 after 2 years in Palestine, taking roses with him.From the 13th to 19th century, Provins was famous for medicinal roses.Many of these roses became known as Gallicas because of their assumed derivation in France, but were really forms of the Damask Rose.
During the Middle Ages,roses were mainly grown in monasteries, often for religious and medicinal uses.Native species hybridized with each other and created natural seedlings of new varieties, while others produced mutations
(sports), a process which has occurred for thousands of years.For example,in 1954 the Dog Rose (Rosa canina)by chance produced the beautiful
'Abbotswood'.
Alba,Centifolia,Damask,Gallica and Musk roses were supreme until the introduction into Europe of our Chinese hybrids between 1792 and 1824.
These roses helped to create a wider colour range,as well as having the ability to flower recurrently throughout summer.Before this,most roses flowered once and were devoid of bloom the rest of the year.
Further roses were introduced and many were cross-bred,resulting in the Noisettes,Bourbons,Tea roses,Hybrid China and Hybrid Perpetuals.
Most recent have been the Hybrid Tea and Floribunda roses. Miniature roses have enabled roses to flourish in small gardens, while walls,fences,arbours and pergolas can be colourfully clothed with climbers and ramblers.There are even roses that act as ground-cover plants.
Roses are native to the Northern Hemisphere,mainly China but also Europe and North America.Some botanists claim there are over 3,000 distinct species of roses,but the number of good ones is no more than 150 and only a relatively few of these have contributed to the wealth of roses grown today.Roses are very promiscuous(WHAT?!),freely hybridizing with each other as well as allowing man to manipulate them to create an even wider range.(I see...hehe!)
Little is known about St Valentine,other than there were at least 2 matyrs of that name,both dying for their religion on Feb 14. During the third century,St Julius I,Pope from 337-352,allotted a saint day to St Valentine,and when Christianity reached Britain,the Feast of Lupercalia was moved forward one
day and merged with St Valentine's Day.At one time,it was commonly believed that all birds chose their mates on this day.
Roses have long been featured in rhymes associated with St Valentine's Day,
a fusion of pagan and Christian customs.The Roman feast of Lupercalia, celebrated on Feb 15, was a mating ritual when girls of a marriageable age had their names put into an urn for the local lads to select.
This fertility festival gained popularity and gifts were given by men to women of their choice.It also became a custom to recite poems:
Carnations are sweet and so are you.
Thou art my love,and I art thine,
I draw thee for my Valentine.
A variation was:
and so are you;
These are the words you bade me say,
For a pair of new gloves on Valentine's Day.
The gift of a pair of gloves was said to symbolise lasting love. Sending cards anonymously became popular,perhaps the legacy of uncertainty and anticipation when a young man selected the name of a girl out of a Roman urn.
Roses have been widely used as emblems in North America- indeed,they have been adopted by several states.The White Cherokee Rose is claimed by Georgia.
Curiously,it is not native to North America,originating in China but naturalized in the southern states as early as 1780.In legend,it is associated with an Indian girl who was magically turned into a flower when captured by a hostile tribe.The district of Columbia has adopted the American Beauty Rose,while the Wild Prairie Rose is claimed by North Dakota. However,Rosa arkansana,a North American native rose and at one time a persistent weed of prairie wheat fields,is also claimed by North Dakota.The Pasture Rose is the state flower of Iowa.
A legend surrounds the blood-red petalled Grant Rose,which is supposed to have sprung from the blood of Mrs Grant,an early settler in Florida killed
by a Seminole(native American Indian).
Perhaps the best known rose emblems are those of the houses of York and Lancaster during the Wars of the Roses in England.That is a long story which I shall leave for another time.
As you can see,roses are in a class of their own,with each type symbolising
different qualities.I have a list of meanings of
other flowers too.
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