Your Daily Facts about Roses
The father of Botany Theophrastus (371-286 BC) first classified and identified plants. In his classic books Enquiry into plants and De Causis Plantarum (The causes of plants) he wrote about a “hundred-petaled rose” and called it centifolia (literally: hundred petals).
Roman Emperor Nero liked to shower his guests with fresh rose petals. According to the legend, the dense rose-petal cloud nearly suffocated some of the guests.
In the Middle Ages, it was customary for the wealthy to put rose petals and rose oil in their baths. Many noblewomen carried bouquets of fragrant flowers to cover body odors.
The early Christians saw a correlation between the five petals of the Rosa sancta and the five wounds of Christ. The red rose stood for Christ’s blood, while the white rose for the Virgin Mary.
It was in the 17th century that French explorer Samuel de Champlain brought the first cultivated roses to North America.
The oldest garden rose is the Rosa Gallica Officinalis, the apothecary rose. The oldest garden rose classes include the Albas, Centifolias and Damasks.
The first patent ever registered for a plant was a patent for a hybridized rose, which gave “ever-blooming” characteristics to the climbing rose. It was issued by the United States Patent Office on August 18th to Henry F. Bosenberg for his “Climbing or Trailing Rose”.
The largest rose ever bred was a pink rose measuring approximately 33 inches in diameter. It was bred by Nikita K. Rulhoksoffski from San Onofre, California. The world’s largest rosebush is a white Lady Banksia located in Tombstone, Arizona. It’s original root came over from Scotland in 1885. From a single trunk, which is nearly six feet in diameter, it spreads over an arbor that covers over 8,00 square feet, enough to shelter a crowd of 150 people.
The world’s oldest living rose is believed to be 1,000 years old. It grows on the wall of the Cathedral of Hildesheim in Germany and its presence is documented since A.D. 815. According to the legend, the rosebush symbolizes the prosperity of the city of Hildesheim; as long as it flourishes, Hildesheim will not decline. In 1945 allied bombers destroyed the cathedral, yet the bush survived. Its roots remained intact beneath the debris, and soon the bush was growing strong again.
The largest private rose garden in the world is in Cavriglia, Italy, and holds over 7,500 different varieties of roses. More about the Cavriglia rose garden and other famous rose gardens.
The only rose known to have only four petals is Rosa Sericea, brought to Europe form the Himalayas at the end of the nineteenth century.
The oldest representation of a rose is a fresco in the palace of Minos in Cnossos, Crete. It depicts a five-petaled pink rose dates to about 1450 B.C.
At first, rose oil was added to medicine to mask their bitter taste. It was only afterwards that the medicinal virtues of rose oil were discovered.
The first rose to leave the earth was as miniature rose called “Overnight Scentsation” that had been cultivated by IFF researcher Dr. Braja Mookherjee for experiments in space. The rose needed to be small to fit inside Astroculture, a plant growth chamber measuring 17 by 9 by 21 inch enclosure and developed for the middeck of the space shuttle to provides plants with the appropriate temperature, humidity, light, and nutrients during spaceflight. The purpose was to measure how low-gravity would influence the rose’s smell.
The buds of the smallest rose, “Si”, are the size of a grain of rice.
The oldest living rose bush, which is now the size of tree, grows against a cathedral in Hildesheim, Germany. Documentation proves it has been there since A.D. 815. During World War II, the bush caught fire from Allied bombs dropped nearby, but the root system was undamaged and the bush still flourishes today.
The world’s largest rose-bush is located in Tombstone, Arizona. It is almost two hundred years old and is adorned with more than two hundred thousand white blooms when in full bloom. Its trunk is nearly six feet in diameter, and its branches form a canopy large enough to shelter a crowd of 150 people.