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The Legend and Romance Behind the Rose
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11016 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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6 / 1986 |
1,616 Words |
| Author
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Eric Rosenthal
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Earth's garden has been graced with the beauty of roses since time immemorial. The oldest trace of what today remains our most cherished group of flowering plants is a fossilized imprint discovered in the Colorado wilds. Botanists judge that this ancient but unmistakable leaf unfurled over forty million years ago.
Wild species were first brought under cultivation by the Chinese about three thousand years before the birth of Christ. Roses became so popular in China that by the time of the Han dynasty, just before the Christian era, huge garden parks were devoted to them. Historical records indicate that the vast amounts of arable land allotted to roses actually threatened China's agricultural capabilities. In the interest of food production, a great many of the parks were dismantled by imperial decree.
The ancient Greeks referred to roses as the "queen of flowers." According to the lyric poet Anacreon, the original rose sprang from Venus' blushes when, bathing, she was observed by an appreciative Jupiter:
The gods beheld this brilliant birth,
And hailed the Rose, the boon of earth.
A more scientific account of the rose was provide in the third century B.C., by the great naturalist Theophrastus, who included useful tips on rose culture in his botanical masterwork Enquiry into Plants. Raising roses was an endeavor worthy even of Greek kings. Midas, who possessed the legendary golden touch, also possessed enough of a green thumb, or so it was said, to have nurtured a spectacular sixty-petaled rose in his royal garden in Phrygia.
The ancient Romans' propensity for excess extended in particular to rose blossoms. Shiploads of flowers were imported from Egypt to satisfy Roman whims and pleasures. Revelers were decorated with the blooms, as were the rooms in which they celebrated. At a feast thrown by Emperor Elagabalus (a leader remembered for having appointed his hairdresser commander in chief of the army), rose petals were strewn so deeply over the floors that some guests were literally suffocated to death. Roses also were used at military ceremonies, weddings, and funerals; in perfumery; in wine and confections; and for medicinal purposes. The demand was so great that rose-growing became a profitable Roman industry.
Roman debauchery took the bloom off the rose's lofty image as far as the early Christian church was concerned. But new champions of the flower were found in the Arabic world. The Near East became richly planted with many of the known rose species and natural hybrids. As Moslem conquests extended to Persia, India, and China, the victors brought their cherished roses along with them. And more importantly, new species encountered in the Far East were taken west. Some of these magnificent Oriental varieties are the ancestors of today's most popular hybrids.
Eventually, Christians not only returned to the rose but made it a symbol of their beliefs. The white rose came to represent the purity of the Virgin Mary, and a sacred series of prayers relating to the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary came to be called the "rosary," the term for a garden of roses. Of all its religious expressions, however, none surpasses the divine glow of "rose windows," kaleidoscopic stylized
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