The romance of the rose

Generations have sought that unattainable mystical creature, the perfect rose: shapely, dark red and sweetly scented. What is it about this flower that holds us so in thrall,

- Charles Quest-Ritson

ROSES are the world’s most popular flower. And they were among the first to undergo domestication, both in China and in the Middle East—the famous Fertile Crescent that was the cradle of settled civilisation as we know it. In Roman times, roses were imported every year from Egypt, where they flowered many weeks earlier, for feasts and festivals—think of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s painting of the Emperor Heliogabalus smothering his roistering guests beneath an avalanche of rose petals.

After some hesitation—because roses were associated with heathen tales of Venus and Adonis—the Christian church absorbed the symbolism of roses into its allegories and practices. The red rose came to represent Christ’s suffering and is often seen in Medieval and Renaissance art. The usual subject for these images was Rosa gallica ‘Officinalis’, the richly scented beauty with delicate petals that we know as the red rose of Lancaster.

Red roses come in endless shades, hues and degrees of intensity. Old roses—gorgeous Gallicas such as ‘Charles de Mills’—often have a purplish tinge to their redness. This was the norm until bright-red roses that sparkle in sunlight were introduced from China at the start of the 19th century. Both are in the ancestry of all our florists’ roses today— the fragrant French rose and the brilliant-red Chinese. If you look carefully at a red rose, you often find that it has a bewitching white stripe or two at the base of the petals. This is a gene that came from China, with the first perpetual-flowering roses. Treasure it.