A HISTORY OF THE ROSE.

1. ANCIENT ROSES

The wild rose was most certainly enjoyed by early people for it’s sweet petals and tasty his, and rose cultivation probably began around 5,000 years ago in China.

The rose mentioned by many Greek historians were almost certainly Rosa gallica, the ancestor of numerous European roses. Known as the ‘Apothecary’s Rose’ or ‘Red Damask’, R.g. officinalis was the main source of rose oil and medicinal remedies in Europe until the introduction of rose species from the Far East.

The early Christian church condemned roses as a symbol of depravity, with some justification since Nero’s obsession with these flowers almost certainly contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. The emperor’s excesses were notorious and it is said that tons of roses were required for the numerous banquets he gave where guests sat on pillows stuffed with them. Vast quantities of petals were showered over people at orgies, reputedly suffocating at least one participant and pure rose-water baths were offered to all the guests.

Roses symbolized success in Roman times and millions of petals were threaded on to brass wires to make garlands and headdresses. Peasants consequently came to believe that it was more profitable to grow roses than corn, a disastrous misconception noted by the Roman poet Horace and other intellectuals of his time.

2. THE MIDDLE AGES

Little information exists about the cultivation of roses following the collapse of the Roman Empire until about AD 400, when the church adopted the white R. alba as the emblem of the Virgin Mary.

In 1272 Edward I of England, upon his return from the last Crusade, ordered rose trees to be planted in the gardens of the Tower of London and chose a gold rose as his own symbol.
It is possible that returning Crusaders were responsible for the introduction of R. damascene. Certainly by the end of the fifteenth century the rose ‘Autumn Damask’, known in France as ‘Quatre Saisons’ and the first ros in Europe to produce two crops of flowers every summer, was growing in English gardens.

It is debatable whether R. gallica was brought to England by the Romans or at a later date by returning Crusaders. It was, however, the emblem of the House of Lancaster in the prolonged struggle against the house of York (who adopted R. x alba) during the bitter Wars of the Roses in England in the fifteenth century.

The marriage of Henry Tudor (Henry VII) and Elizabeth of York finally united the factions. Their emblem was a white rose in the centre of a red rose entwined with a crown. Since then the British royal family have adopted the rose as their own.

By the end of the sixteenth century, R.foetida had been introduced into Europe from what was then Persia and R. moschata, the musk rose, was certainly favoured by thecourt of Henry VIII.

European roses were taken to America by the Pilgrim Fathers and by the beginning of the seventeenth century were growing in many gardens in Massachusetts. North America already had its own species, R. virginiana and R. carolina. Another, R. setigera, would later produce some vigorous rambler cultivars including the pale pink. ‘Baltimore Belle’, still famous in America and the climber ‘Long John Silver’, a fragrant pure white.

3. EARLY HYBRIDS

Until the process of hybridization was understood in the nineteenth century, new rose varieties were the results of natural crosses or sports (mutations), carefully chosen and nurtured by gardeners and nurserymen. Dutch breeders pioneered work in Europe in the seventeenth century, working on
R. centifolia, or the Provence Rose, also known as the cabbage rose because of its “hundred-leaved” flowers. Moss roses appeared around the mid-eighteenth century as a sport (mutation) from R. centifolia.

Rose breeding was given tremendous impetus by the patronage of the Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon. Between 1803 and 1814 she commissioned botanists and nurserymen all over the world to discover and breed new rose for her garden at Malmaison near Paris, where she eventually grew over 250 varieties.

4. INTRODUCTIONS FROM THE FAR EAST.

The Chinese had been growing roses for thousand of years and these began to reach European growers in the late eighteenth century. Around 1781 a pink rose, R. chinensis, now known as ‘Old Blush’, was planted in the Netherlands and soon came to England. Some years later a captain of the British East India Company returned home with a red form of the same rose, which he had found growing in Calcutta and it was named R. semperflowers, the ‘Bengal Rose’, or ‘ Slater’s Crimson China’. Between them, these two roses are responsible for the remontant or repeat-flowering qualities in most modern roses.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the flowers known as tea roses arrived on the ships of the British East India Company – their main cargo was tea, which probably accounts for the common name of these roses. They became fashionable are tender the Victorians grew them in grand conservatories, along with other exotic flowers brought back by explorers and botanists from all parts of the British empire.

5. EAST MEETS WEST.

One of the first marriages between a rose from the West and one from the East was a cross between ‘Autumn Damask’ and a red China rose which was probably obtained from France by the second Duchess of Portland, an enthusiastic rose collector of the late eighteenth century. The Portland roses, as they became known, were very popular in the early 1800s. Though few survive today, they are ideal for growing in containers and are prized for their perfume and ability to flower throughout the summer.

Meanwhile, at around the same time in Charleston, South Carolina, a rice-grower called John Champneys crossed a musk rose, R. moschata, with a China rose, R. chinensis ‘Parson’s Pink China’ or ‘Old Blush’, which had been a gift from his friend and neighbour, Philippe Noisette. He gave the new seedling to Noisette, who made more crosses and sent both seed and plants to his brother Louis in Paris. The first seedling he called ‘Rosier de Philippe Noisette’, a long name that inevitably came to be shortened to ‘Noisette’.

‘Blush Noisette’ is still widely grown today and so too is the beautiful ‘Madame Alfred Carriere’, one of the few climbing roses that can tolerate a north-facing wall.

Bourbon roses also made their appearance during this period. These began as a cross between ‘Old Blush’ and ‘Autumn Damask’ found growing in rose hedges on the Ile de Bourbon in the Indian Ocean. Many of these shrub roses are still available, including ‘Louise Odier’, Souvenir de la Malmaison’ and the much-prized, thornless ‘Zephirine Drouhin’.

6. THE MODERN ROSE

Throughout the nineteenth century hybrid perpetuals were introduced as a result of breeding between Chinas, Portlands, Bourbons and Noisettes.

The birth of what is considered to be the first modern rose, the large-flowered or hybrid tea rose, took place in 1867 with the introduction of Jean-Baptiste Guillot’s ‘La France’. This new breed of roses satisfied gardeners’ demands for neat, repeat-flowering and truly hardy shrubs with elegant and delicate flowers.

In the mid-eighteenth century a wild rambler, R. multiflora, had been introduced from Japan. In the hands of nineteenth-century breeders, it was to become the parent of the numerous cluster-flowered or floribunda roses of today.

Most rose-breeders of the twentieth century have concentrated their efforts on floribunda and hybrid tea roses, in colours echoing current tastes in fashion. Since the late 1960s there has been a steady increase in the number of smaller shrubs for tiny gardens, patios and pots.

At the same time, a new breed of roses, evocative of Dutch old masters and the romantic paintings of Pierre-Joseph Redoute, has been introduced by the English rose-grower David Austin. He has raised roses that many be described as some of the finest reproductions, growing no more than 1.2 m tall but with all the charm and scent of classic roses of the past, crossing damasks and gallicas with modern shrub roses. Now owners of even the smallest garden may enjoy the delights of roses that the Empress Josephine would have considered for her garden Malmaison.