The Bottom Line: Fun facts about roses!
The Full Story:
- People have been passionate about roses since the beginning of time. In fact, it is said that the floors of Cleopatra's palace were carpeted with delicate rose petals, and that the wise and knowing Confucius had a 600-book library specifically on how to care for roses.
- The people of ancient Greece used roses to accessorize. On festive occasions they would adorn themselves with garlands of roses, and splash themselves with rose-scented oil.
- Oldest rose ever? It’s one-thousand years old. The world's oldest living rose continues to flourish on the wall of the Hildesheim Cathedral of Germany.
- Leave it to the romantic French to be the ones to first deliver roses. It was in the seventeenth century that French explorer Samuel deChamplain brought the first cultivated roses to North America.
- Color of the rose depends on the species. Roses can be found in different shades of white, yellow, pink, orange and red colors. Blue and black roses do not exist.
- Each color of the rose symbolizes certain value. Red rose is a symbol of love, yellow of friendship, orange of enthusiasm, white of purity and pink of joy.
- Wild roses have 5 petals and 5 sepals. Large number of petals is a result of mutation and it can be seen in cultivated roses.
- Roses are well known by their prickles. They look like hooks which facilitate bonding to the other plants (in the climber types of roses) and protects stem from herbivores.
- It's official - the rose is New York's state flower.
- Rose hip is a fruit of rose. It is rich source of vitamin C. Rose is sometimes used in folk medicine to relieve stomach pain and to treat cancer.
- Roses can survive long periods of time. Roses that covers the wall of the Cathedral of Hildesheim in Germany have been there over 1000 years.
- Wherefore art thou rose? In the readings of Shakespeare, of course. He refers to roses more than 50 times throughout his writings. But then, roses are often used in literature and songs – at last count, there are over 4000 songs dedicated to roses.