Rose
- For a village and township in New York, see Rose. For a type of polar graph, see Rose (mathematics).
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 Rosa arvensis | ||||||||||||||
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| U. of Illinois 2002-05-29 |
A rose is a flowering shrub of the genus Rosa and the flower of this shrub. There are more than a hundred species of wild roses, mostly from the temperate northern hemisphere. The species form a group of generally thorny shrubs or climbers, and sometimes trailing plants.
There are a great variety of cultivated roses. Twentieth-century rose breeders generally emphasized size and color, producing large, attractive blooms with little or no scent. Many wild and "old-fashioned" roses, by contrast, have a strong sweet scent.
Roses are among the most common flowers sold by florists, as well as one of the most popular garden shrubs. Roses are of great economic importance both as a crop for florists' use and for use in perfume.
The fruits of some species, especially Rosa canina or the Dog Rose, called rose hips, have been used as a source of Vitamin C, (rose hip syrup). They can also be used to make an herbal tea.
Most roses have thornss. Some species of roses have thorns that are so fine as to be called spines, and some others have vestigial thorns that have no points. Some cultivated forms, such as the Lady Banks rose have no thorns at all.
| Table of contents |
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2 Roses and culture 3 Quote 4 Perfume |
Dog Rose (Rosa canina) Rosa rubiginosa Rosa rugosa
Roses are ancient symbols of love and beauty. The rose was sacred to a number of goddesses, and is often used as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. Roses are so important that the word means pink or red in a variety of languages (such as Romance languages and Greek).
Roses come in a variety of colors, each with a different symbolic meaning:
Species
Roses and culture
 Sarah van Fleet rose |  Renoir painting of roses |  Red Rose |
Quote
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. – Romeo and Juliet act II, sc. ii
Perfume
Rose perfumes are made from attar (or otto) of roses or rose oil, which is a mixture of volatile essential oils obtained by steam-distilling the crushed petals of roses. The technique originated in Arabia (the word attar is from Arabic), then spread through Persia (now Iran) and India, but nowadays about 70% to 80% of production is in the 'Valley of Roses' near Kazanluk in Bulgaria, with some production in Germany. In these two countries, damask roses (R. damascena trigintipetala, Miller) are used. In the French rose oil industry Rosa centifolia, L. is used. The oil, pale yellow or yellow-grey in colour, is sometimes called 'Rose Absolute' oil to distinguish it from diluted versions. The weight of oil extracted is about one three-thousandth to one six-thousandth of the weight of the flowers - for example, about 2,000 flowers are required to produce one gram of oil.
The main constituents of attar of roses are the fragrant alcohols geraniol, which has the empirical formula C10H18O and the structural formula CH3.C[CH3]:CH.CH2.CH2.C[CH3]:CH.CH2OH and l-citronellol; and rose camphor, an odourless paraffin.