Rose

Rose is one of the most beautiful of all flowers. It is a symbol of fragrance and loveliness. Its name calls to mind pictures of the sweetbrier, or wild rose, the loveliest wild flower of the country roadsides. No other flower has been mentioned so often by the poets of all ages and all countries. In the language of flowers its blossoms have always
been the symbol of love. The rose has even played its part in history. In England, when the Houses of York and Lancaster were fighting for power, they chose white and red roses respec-tively for their emblems. The flowers gave their name to the War of the Roses. Today the rose is the national flower of England. It is also the state flower of several states in the United States. The rose is not limited to any one country, however. Its many species and varieties can be found throughout the Northern Hemi-sphere. They will even grow in the mountain districts of the tropics. All present-day roses are descendants of wild roses. We may doubt this if we compare a full-flowered cultivated bloom with a five-petaled swamp or prairie rose. But many wild-rose species tend to bear double blooms—flowers with more than five petals. A skillful gardener can select a wild rose plant that shows an occasional double blossom, give it and its descendants expert care for several years, and produce plants that consistently bear handsome double flowers.
Until the 19th century all rose culture was of this type. Many species were popular for cultivation, including cabbage, damask, and French roses. The cabbage (Rom centifolia) is a large pink rose that grows wild in the Caucasus. It was cultivated in ancient Greece and Rome. Later the French called it Flower experts recognize three main classes of cultivated roses. Members of the first class, sometimes called old roses, bloom once a year, usually in early summer. They include the yellow briers, damask roses, moss roses, and many climbers. The second kind of roses bloom in early summer and again in fall. The best-known members of this class— called perpetual roses or summer-and-autumn roses— are the hybrid perpetuals. Members of the third main class, the everblooming hybrids, flower almost constantly during the growing season. These roses include floribundas, grandifloras, hybrid teas, and polyanthas.


Roses come in many colors, including various shades of pink, red, yellow, and white. Rose growers have not developed a blue rose, but they do grow lavender varieties. Some roses, such as the teas and hybrid teas, smell like tea or fruit. Others have a fragrant "rose" scent, and still others have little odor.
The most popular garden roses are hybrid that is, they were bred from two different varieties. For example, hybrid teas were developed from the everblooming hybrid teas and the hardier hybrid perpetuals. Floribundas were bred from the hybrid teas and polyanthas. Grandifloras, one of the newer kinds of roses, resulted from crossing hybrid teas with floribundas.
The climbing and rambler roses can be trained on trellises and fences. Others creep over the ground and may cover steep banks. Some climbers have large flowers, but true ramblers have clusters of small flowers. Climbers have to be hardy. Those with the small flowers are usually the hardiest.
Another important group is the shrub roses. The ru-gosas grow large bushes, 6 to 15 feet (1.8 to 4.6 meters) tall, with thorny stems. They usually have fragrant flowers. The sweetbrier and its cultivated forms are tall, graceful bushes, with fragrant leaves.
Miniature roses, another popular group, range in height from 4 to 18 inches (10 to 46 centimeters). Some have flowers no larger than a nickel.
Cabbage roses have flowers with many petals. the Provence rose.The fragrant rose-pink damask (R. damascena) may have grown in ancient Babylon. The French rose (R. gallica), a dwarf with pink to crimson flowers, was native in Europe.
Early cultivated species had one blooming period usually in June. Only the damask broke this rule, by occasionally blooming again in autumn. China roses (R. chinensis) appeared in Europe in 1789. These bloomed several times, often monthly. This habi earned them the name "everblooming." The French term remontant ("repeating") is more accurate. The tea rose (R. odorata), a remontant rose with a tealike fragrance, came from China in 1810.
The possibility of having roses in flower through-out the garden season stimulated interest in rose culture. Rose growers also learned how to crossbreed species and produce desirable hybrids.. Rose breeding had become commercially successful in most countries by the early 1900's.

There are two major divisions among modern roses —bush roses and climbing roses. About 90 per cent a roses listed in catalogues are bush roses and about 1 per cent climbers. Each division has a number classes, and each class has hundreds of varieties pro-duced by crossbreeding. The first class of bush rosed to become important was the hybrid perpetual. Rose growers produced it by crossing the everblooming China rose with hardier cabbage, damask, and French roses. This class reigned in garden and greenhouse from about 1860 through the 1890's.
Fruits in the Rose Family.
Roses form the genus Rosa of the large rose family, or family Rosaceae. This family includes many of the commonest fruits, such as the apple peach, and cherry; some of the berries, such as the strawberry and blackberry; and many of the ornamental plants, such as the mountain ash and hawthorn. All members of the rose family have the characteristic five-petaled flowers, which can be seen in the common wild rose. In many of the cultivated varieties of roses, however, the usual five petals have been increased in number. Roses have been cultivated for many hundreds of years. So many varieties have been produced that it is impossible to tell just how many species are included in the genus. The estimate runs from 30 to more than 200. The colors of roses vary from white, through all the shades of pink, yellow, and orange, to deep crimson and scarlet. The blossoms vary in size from the tiny buttonlike blooms of the ramblers, to the widespreading blossoms of the highly cultivated varieties. In all cases, however, the flowers are borne on sturdy bushes or rambling vines, and the leaves are divided into rougnedged leaflets. The stems are generally provided with thorns. The fruits are swollen, red nlargements of the flower stalks.One can understand in part why apples and similar fruits are related to the rose if one con-pares the unripe fruits.Cultivated roses may be divided into two general classes: summer roses, which bloom only once, usually in the early summer; and perpetual roses, which bloom several times during the season, even until late fall. Summer roses include most of the hardy, old-fashioned roses, such as the damasks, moss roses, climbers, and yellow brier roses. The perpetual roses are usually less hardy. They include the musk, Chinese, and evergreen roses, as well as the beautiful hybrid tea roses, with their pointed buds and tealike fragrance, and the hybrid perpetual roses which have flatter, fuller buds. There are also many other classes of hybrids. The wild roses grow all through the United States and Canada. Among them are included the trailing prairie rose of the central states; the pasture rose of the eastern states and Canada; and the Cherokee rose. The last named is native to China and Japan but is common in the south-ern states. European wild roses include the Scotch rose, the sweetbrier, and the rare eg-lantine of Switzerland.
How to grow roses. Most roses are grown from slips—that is, cuttings. But almost all new varieties start as seedlings. Most cultivated varieties seldom bear seeds, and, if there are seeds, only a few are good.In double roses, the parts of the flower that produce seeds have changed to extra petals and, as a result, few seeds are possible.
The plot for a rose garden should be protected from cold winds and open to sunlight several hours a day. A deep, rich loam is usually the best soil for roses. But hy-brid roses will grow in sandy and gravelly soil. Any soil must be well drained. Roses do not grow well in wet ground. Sometimes they need artificial drainage.
A few weeks before planting, the soil should be mixed with about one-third its bulk of well-rotted ma-nure to a depth of 2 feet (61 centimeters). Fresh manure should not be used as it may injure rose roots.
The time for planting depends on the kind of rose and on the location. Some hardy roses can be planted in autumn, but the general rule is to plant in the spring. After the plants are received from the nursery, do not let the wind dry out the roots before they are planted. If necessary, cover them with burlap or similar material, and keep them damp. The holes should be deep enough to let the roots point downward and slant out-ward. The roots must not lie flat. Arrange the plants so that the beds are easy to water and weed. A good rule is to have the beds not over 5 feel (1.5 meters) wide. Theplants should be from 1.5 to 2.5 feet (46 to 76 centime-Ms) apart. The exact distance depends on their spreading habits. A garden tine and a sharp steel rake should be used to keep the soil loose and the weeds out However, plants should not be cultivated deeply.
The rose is the national flower of the United States and Iran. Several states and a Canadian province have also chosen the rose as their official flower. The District of Columbia has taken the American beauty rose Georgia has chosen the Cherokee rose This variety is a white Chinese rose. The wild rose is the official flower of Iowa, North Dakota, and Alberta. A series of battles in English history are called the Wars of the Roses (see Wars of the Roses In addition, the rose is the flower for the month of June.
In The rose family is one of the largest and most important families of flowering plants. There are about 3,400 species of trees, shrubs, and herbs in the rose
family. Members of the family include plants that produce such fruits as apples, pears,berries,peaches,apricots, plums, and cherries. The rose family s many orna-
mental plants include the meadowsweet mountain ash,rowan tree, and hawthorn. Plants of this family also giveus many useful products. Several fine woods are used in cabinetmaking. Attar, an oil from rose petals, is used to make toilet water and perfumes.The fruits of some rose plants, called hips, are some times used in jellies and other toods Hants of the rose family have regular flowers. Each flower has five petals, a calyx with five lobes, many sta-mens, and one or more carpels. These plants bear seeds, and so they are classed as angiosperms. When the seeds germinate (begin to develop ),they have two seed leaves, called cotyledons. Rose plants and otherangiosperms that bear two cotyledons are classified as dicotyledons, or dicots.