Are You a True Rose Expert?

All about Roses: Species, Botany, Uses, and Symbolism

• Roses are woody perennial flowering plants with over 300 species and tens of thousands of cultivars.
• They can be erect shrubs, climbing, or trailing, with stems armed with sharp prickles, and their flowers vary in size and shape, usually large and showy, in colors ranging from white through yellows and reds.
• Most species are native to Asia, with smaller numbers native to Europe, North America, and northwestern Africa.
• The name rose comes from Latin rosa, perhaps borrowed from Oscan, from Greek ῥόδον rhódon, itself borrowed from Old Persian wrd- (wurdi), related to Avestan varəδa, Sogdian ward, Parthian wâr.
• The leaves are borne alternately on the stem, usually 5 to 15 centimeters long, pinnate, with (3–) 5–9 (–13) leaflets and basal stipules, often with a few small prickles on the underside of the stem.
• The flowers of most species have five petals, with the exception of Rosa omeiensis and Rosa sericea, which usually have only four, and beneath the petals are five sepals.
• Roses are insect-pollinated in nature, and the aggregate fruit of the rose is a berry-like structure called a rose hip, often red with 5–160 "seeds" embedded in a matrix of fine hairs.
• Roses have been cultivated for millennia, with at least 30 to 35 thousand hybrids and cultivars selected for garden use as flowering plants, most double-flowered with many or all of the stamens having morphed into additional petals.
• Rose perfumes are made from rose oil, a mixture of volatile essential oils obtained by steam distilling the crushed petals of roses, with rose water used for cooking, cosmetics, medicine, and religious practices.
• Rose hips are high in vitamin C, are edible raw or used to make jam, jelly, marmalade, and soup, or are brewed for tea, and rose petals or flower buds are sometimes used to flavor tea or make rose water syrup.
• The long cultural history of the rose has led to it being used often as a symbol, associated with the goddess Aphrodite, the Virgin Mary, and the Wars of the Roses, and appearing in art, including detailed watercolors by Pierre-Joseph Redouté, still life paintings by Henri Fantin-Latour, and works by impressionists such as Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
• Cultivated roses are often subject to severe damage from insect, arachnid, and fungal pests and diseases, requiring regular treatment to control these problems.
• In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation to make the rose the floral emblem of