Roses Throughout History

Throughout history, roses were used in incredibly extravagant ways. The Romans thought nothing of carpeting their huge banquet halls with rose petals, and it is said that Cleopatra once received her beloved Marc Antony in a room literally knee-deep in rose petals.

Acclaim for the Rose

The rose has been acclaimed in an almost endless number of ways. For example:

• The rose is the only flower to which a garden has been totally devoted on the grounds of the United Nations, on the White House grounds in Washington, D.C., and in thousands of public parks throughout the nation.
• The month of June has been set aside as National Rose Month since 1969.
• The fourth week in June has been designated by the Governor of Indiana as "A Rose for Friendship Week" due to the almost single-handed efforts of J. B. Hoy, a semi-retired businessman.
• The rose inspires fashion, interior design, sculpture and architecture. It is the design theme for countless patterns of silver, china, wallpaper, carpet and clothing. The "bed of roses" is one of the most popular motifs for spreads and coverlets.
• Fairy tales carry themes of roses to children. Grimm’s Beauty and the Beast, for example, characterizes the rose that Beauty’s father picked in the Beast’s castle garden. In Alice in Wonderland, the gardeners painted white roses red to please the Queen of Hearts.

Roses and Royalty

The rose is called the "Queen of Flowers." While roses are readily available to all of us, they also have been known to "hob nob" with royalty. The King of Sweden, for example, sent Silvia Sommerlath, now his wife and Sweden’s Queen, one dozen yellow roses every day during a four-year romance. That adds up to 1,461 dozen . . . or 17,532 individual flowers.

Queen Elizabeth and Princess Grace of Monaco are among those who have had roses named after them.

Rose Stamp

The rose was first honored by the U.S. Postal Service in 1978 with its very own stamp. It’s a first class stamp that features illustrations of two award-winning roses.

The Quest for the Perfect Rose

Today’s roses are the result of centuries of genetic reshuffling, the work of both nature and man. Rose hybridizers have been able to combine and recombine genes for constant improvement. The results have been new colors, forms, textures, habits and fragrances, more vigor and disease resistance.

Most of the roses currently on the market primarily have been produced by the work of about 50 professional hybridizers. Each one cross-pollinates thousands of roses every year in hopes of finding that "perfect" one. The number of possible genetic combinations for new roses is mind boggling, but the odds have been placed at about 100,000 to 1 against any specific cross-fertilization producing an outstanding new rose.

George Washington - Our First Rose Breeder

George Washington, our first president, was our first rose breeder as well. Washington laid out his own garden at Mt. Vernon and filled it with his own selections of roses. He named one of his varieties after his mother and it is still being grown today.

The World’s Largest Rosebush

The world’s largest rosebush is located in a city named Tombstone in Arizona. Planted from a slip from another rosebush in the late 18th century, its trunk is nearly six feet around.

When in full bloom, this rosebush has more than 200,000 blossoms - and its branches spread out six feet thick over an arbor under which more than 150 people can be seated comfortably.