Gardens > Plants > Roses
Botanical name: Rosa
Official flower of the month of June
We’re not even going to try to give you any useful advice about this month’s flower, the rose. There is just so much knowledge available that we just wouldn’t be able to do justice to it.
Instead, we thought we’d impart some lesser known snippets of completely useless information that we have uncovered on your behalf:
- The red rose is the symbol of England
- The red rose is also the symbol of love
- It appears the holy grail of roses has recently been found – a collaboration of Japanese and Australian scientists have actually just produced a blue rose which is likely to be commercially available in approximately 3 years. Although by our eyes it looks definitely purple, we are assured that this particular rose is made with blue pigment unlike any other rose before it, and now that the pigment has been cracked the colours will become more blue when the acidity of the petals can be modified (an ‘easier’ challenge than the pigment apparently!)
- ‘Black’ roses are in fact a very dark red
- Fossilized roses have been discovered that date as far back as 40 million years
- According to Greek Mythology it was Aphrodite that named the rose
- Different coloured roses mean different things and during the mid 18th century they were used as a code language of love between forbidden lovers of the Middle Eastern harems. When the writings of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu were discovered after her death in which she described the secret codes the subsequent language of flowers was developed.
- Josephine, wife of Napoleon, grew over 250 varieties of rose
- Cleopatra herself apparently covered the floors of her palace with a thick layer of rose petals every day, and rumour has it, the pillows of her bed were stuffed with rose petals
- The world’s oldest living rose is thought to be about 1,000 years old and adorns the Hildesheim Cathedral of Germany
- Rose legends abound:
o The romans believed that where the tears of Venus fell as she mourned her beloved Adonis, white roses grew
o Venus again! Where Venus cut her feet walking in ‘the’ garden, droplets of her blood turned the roses red
o And Venus yet again! Legend has it that her son Cupid accidentally shot his arrow into a rose garden when a bee stung him and the sting of the arrow caused the roses to grow thorns
o The rose was created, says a Roman Empire legend, when Diana, friend of the beautiful Rhodanthe, grew so jealous of her friend and the persistent hoards of suitors that plagued her that she turned Rhodanthe into a rose and her suitors into thorns
- The rose is the national (floral) emblem of the United States
- Although the rose doesn’t bear any fruit the rosehip contains a higher level of Vitamin C than most other fruits and vegetables – Rosehip tea is often recommended during pregnancy
For all things roses check out:
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