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History of the Rose:
There cannot be many gardens, which do not have at least one rose
amongst its list of plants, for few gardens would be complete
without the beauty and fragrance these splendid flowers. Blooming
from spring until autumn, they have never lost their appeal and
charm; they are as popular today as they have been throughout the
centuries. It seems incredible to learn that the rose goes back
throughout history for as long as it has, but fossil evidence has
proved that they date back 35 million years.
Wreaths of Damask-like roses have been found in
Egyptian tombs; seemingly the same rose called at one time "Rosa
sancta" (the Holy Rose) has been grown down to present times in holy
places in eastern Africa. Roses are mentioned in the Iliad and
Odyssey of Homer; four centuries later in the 5th century B.C. the
historian Herodotus remarked on King Midas's gardens planted with
roses in Phrygia. A century after that, Theophrastus recorded
botanical descriptions of contemporary roses, noting that the
flowers were grown in Egypt as well as in Greece. At about the same
time but thousands of miles to the east Confucius commented on
extensive rose plantings in the Peking Imperial Gardens.
Two geographical groupings which, at first, developed separately,
have had-both in their separation and in their ultimate
combination-the greatest impact on rose history: The
European/Mediterranean group of species and their hybrids, and the
Oriental group of species and their hybrids. The European roses are
primarily the following: Gallicas, Albas, Damasks, Damask Perpetuals,
Centifolias, and Mosses. The mainstream Oriental groups are Chinas
and Teas. The European sorts-with one important exception-have only
one season of bloom per year, while the Orientals repeat bloom more
or less continuously.
Throughout history the rose has been a symbol of love and romance,
beauty, war, and politics. In nature, the genus Rosa has some 150
species spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from Alaska to
Mexico and including northern Africa. Roses began to be cultivated
some 5,000 years ago. They were and to some extent still used today
as confetti at celebrations. Rose hips are very high in vitamin C;
you will often see them listed as the main source for vitamin C in
many commercially available Vitamins.
The delight in their fragrance brought about the
distillation-of-rose-essence industry, which still has local
importance in a few areas of Europe (formerly France, now primarily
Bulgaria). The 'Cabbage Rose' R. x centifolia was created in France
in the 16th century from several crossings of botanical roses, with
its hundred petals was introduced in Grasse for the production of
rose essence. Despite being almost sterile, the Cabbage Rose gave
birth to multiple mutations such as the moss rose, covered with
green moss like growth on their sepals and stems, or the
lettuce-leafed rose, R. x centifolia 'Bullata.'
During the Roman era, a repeat-blooming variant of the Damask rose
evidently appeared, the first member of a group, which came to be
called "Damask Perpetuals." The roses of these most ancient times in
Europe and the Mediterranean were seemingly the Damasks, the Albas,
and the Gallicas.
Roman nobility established large public rose
gardens in the south of Rome. After the fall of the Roman Empire,
the popularity of roses seemed to rise and fall depending on
gardening trends of the time.
During the fifteenth century, the rose was used
as an emblem for the factions fighting to control England. The white
rose symbolized York, the red rose symbolized Lancaster, as a
result, the conflict became known as the "War of the Roses."
Roses were prized during the seventeenth century
to such an extent that they became a commodity with which to barter.
The culture of growing roses in France began with the introduction
of R. gallica 'Officinalis', taken to France in the 13th century by
Thibault IV from the Holy Land, the country of the Damask rose. It
was believed to be a natural hybrid between R. gallica and R.
moschata. The Empress Josephine the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte had
such a passion for roses that she established an important and
extensive collection of botanical species and horticultural
varieties of roses at Chateau de Malmaison, an estate seven miles
west of Paris in the 1800s. The "beautiful Indian" as she was know
was born in the Antilles or West Indies, she was given the names
Marie-Joseph-Rose-Tascher de la Pagerie. Was it because of her third
name that made her love roses so much? It is said that she brought
together 250 varieties, nearly all the known roses at the time.
Thanks to her, France would be the country of reference for roses
for the duration of the 19th century.
The garden became the setting for Pierre Joseph
Redoute's work as a botanical illustrator. In 1824, he completed his
watercolour collection "Les Rose," which is still considered one of
the finest records of botanical illustration.
Spurred on by this imperial patronage, several French
breeders--notably Dupont and Descemet developed several hundred new
cultivars in the European groups Gallicas, Damasks, Albas,
Centifolias. Descemet kept very careful notes of the results of
particular crosses, and may be said to have been the first in the
West to practice controlled cross-breeding. After the fall of
Napoleon and the death of the Empress, Descemet had to flee France,
history tells us that an ex-soldier of Napoleon's army, wounded in
Italy, now prosperous as a hardware-shop owner, indulged his
interest in roses and bought what remained of Descemet's nursery and
breeding notes after the site of the nursery was ransacked by
invading English troops. This was Jean-Pierre Vibert, whose
intelligence and industriousness working from 1816-1850 had a
lasting influence on the French rose industry.
It wasn't until the late eighteenth century when trade with the
Orient permitted the importation of new botanical plants into
Europe, that it was possible for cultivated roses to be introduced
from China. By the period 1750-1824, four cultivars in particular
had been developed. Two were true China roses, one pink, and the
other red. Two were Tea roses, one blush, and one yellow. Most
modern-day roses can be traced back to this ancestry. These
introductions were repeat bloomers, making them unusual and of great
interest to hybridisers, setting the stage for breeding work with
native roses to select for hardiness and a long bloom season.
During the 1830s work continued in earnest on the
breeding between the Oriental roses and the Europeans. It was the
Englishman Bennett, a cattle farmer converted to rose breeding, who
applied the laws of heredity of his previous occupation to the
breeding of roses. Due to the laws of genetics, the first progeny of
crosses between once-bloomers and repeat-bloomers the next
generation bloomed only once. As they were crossed with each other,
however, and then back to the Chinas and Teas, repeat-blooming
hybrids began to appear. These were crossed with Damask Perpetuals.
The crosses with the new material were made as work continued in all
groups of roses. Never before the 1830's had such a diversity of
disparate roses been available--and never since. Almost every
available species, no matter how obscure, had varieties and
sub-varieties of varying colour or form due to breeding of sports. A
sport of the Centifolia, the Moss Rose, had appeared a few decades
before, and now began to spread its unique array of cultivars over
the rose scene as the breeders worked with it. Many of these early
efforts by plant breeders are of great interest to today's
gardeners.
Breeding experimentation continued. The original, rather weak
growing Teas were crossed with Bourbons to make a new, robust sort
of Tea. As the search to widen the range of Hybrid Perpetuals
continued, they were crossed with the Teas producing a group, which
came to be known as Hybrid Teas. Efforts along these lines really
got underway seriously in the 1870's, though there had been a few
earlier such crosses as well.
Roses have been the gardening inspiration for such influential
garden designers as Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West. Their
idea was to create gardens on formal lines and then to plant it in
the way that produced a rich pattern of tumbling cottage-garden
effect. Their designs are timeless, many, which they created, are
still in existence, others which had been allowed to become
over-grown have been returned to their original splendour and
greatly admired for their outstanding design and beauty.
During the Edwardian period the fashion changed, the Old roses had a
new rival and where replaced in popularity by the hybrid teas.
Strong colours and continuous flowers made the teas appear exciting
to the new gardening fraternity.
Then a new group of roses appeared in the 1970s
originated from crosses made between certain Old Roses and Modern
Hybrid Teas and Floribundas. Combining the charm and wonderful
fragrance of an Old Rose, with the colour range and summer-long
flowering of a Modern Rose they drew together the outstanding
voluptuous beauty of the Old but stretched out the flowering season
providing the modern gardener with the very best of both worlds.
These are the English Roses, with strong fragrant blooms; even more
fragrant than many of the Old Roses, with colours ranging from
white, cream to shades of pink, yellow, apricot to peach, lilac to
crimson, purple and many shades of mauve.
Whether you choose to grow the Old or the newer varieties the choice
is wide and the colour and flower form is extensive. There are
specific roses for almost any situation the key is to match the rose
variety to the site. All major rose growers catalogues give not only
the description of the flower but growing characteristics and
location and cultivation advice for optimum success.
Article
©MrsGreenFingers.co.uk 2005 No Unauthorised Distribution in full or
in part without express written permission.
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