Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
Walter de la Mare, All That’s Past
When did the passion for the rose begin? Fossil studies have shown that wild roses were already blooming 40 million years ago! Simple rose images have been identified on murals and in sculptural relief forms dating from the earliest historical times. The oldest of these is depicted on the wall of the excavated Palace of Knossos in Crete, believed to be more than 4,000 years old. A rose is also stamped on one of the oldest coins which has been unearthed, a 2000 BC Hittite artefact. However, these ancient specimens are difficult to identify with botanical accuracy because of the basic nature of the design.
No such doubt exists, however, with respect to a wreath of five-petalled flowers which was discovered in an Egyptian tomb (circa AD 26) by British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie in 1888:
In the dry desert air, the wreath’s petals had shrivelled, but they still kept their colour, and when placed in warm water, the blossoms seemed to come back to life. Buds swelled, and the pink petals spread, unfolding to reveal the knot of golden threads at the centre just as they must have been on the morning of the funeral. A botanist at Cambridge had little trouble in identifying Petrie’s flowers as roses, specimens of ‘Rosa richardii’ (R. sancta), a species already known as ‘the Holy Rose of Abyssinia’ because at that time it was still a fixture of the Coptic Christian churchyards in that country.1
Similar remains have also been found in graves throughout Middle Egypt, together with frescoes and scraps of fabric portraying simple roses with five petals. It is significant that the rose was one of the flowers sacred to the Egyptian Goddess Isis, guardian of love and destiny, who has been worshipped for more than 5,000 years! Signs of an ancient rose cult have also been found in India and in Syria – even the name Syria comes from the word ‘suri’, meaning ‘land of roses’. The ‘Holy Rose’ still grows in Egypt today, and can also be found in remote areas of Northern Ethiopia (the former Abyssinia). In 1920, a monk reported finding a rose growing in an Ethiopian mountain village at an altitude of 8,000 feet!
Trade in roses also became established at a very early stage in history. The royal groves of Ur in the Euphrates–Tigris region have revealed that the Sumerian King Sargon (2648–2630 BC) returned from a campaign bringing ‘vines, figs and roses’. Caravans wandered from the rivers of Babylonia, taking their cargo with them right across Egypt to North Africa. Arab nomads played a vital role in the distribution of the rose not only throughout the Middle East, but also later by bringing it to Europe.
Botanically speaking, however, it is difficult to locate the exact origin of the first wild rose because the early records are far from complete. What is clear is that from very early times there existed several distinct species of rose which were distributed throughout the northern hemisphere, having two main centres – one in Central Asia and the other in Western Europe. These became known as the ‘Old’ rose varieties because they formed the basis of all the subsequent hybrids, or ‘New’ roses.
The historical division between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ roses is generally taken to be the year 1800, due to the influence of France’s Empress Josephine. From 1808 and 1814 the Empress, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, established a rose garden at Malmaison (outside Paris) which was unsurpassed. She obtained all the known roses of the time, including the newly arrived Asiatic and Chinese varieties. Their cultivation and propagation became an inspiration to rose-growers throughout the world, and formed the basis for the subsequent hybridization of the innumerable rose varieties.
Since then, roses have been bred as carefully as racehorses, and many new varieties have been developed. Today there are numerous books available on the cultivation of garden roses containing hundreds of lavish, glossy plates illustrating the diversity, beauty and allure of the modern (and often scentless) ‘New’ rose.
In recent years, however, there has a been a nostalgic return to the appeal of the ‘Old’ scented rose varieties. Their fragrance, which had often suffered in the pursuit of the perfect form, has also begun to be reevaluated. The most significant of these original and highly scented ‘Old’ roses, particularly regarding their subsequent cultivation and (highly successful) hybridization for the production of essential oils, are the following:
Rosa gallica (R. rubra) – the ‘Gallic Rose’
Rosa damascena – the ‘Damask Rose’
Rosa centifolia – the ‘Cabbage Rose’
The Gallic Rose
The natural habitat of the Gallic Rose is thought to have been Iran (formerly Persia) and the land between the Black and the Caspian Seas – though its real roots are lost in antiquity. Like the ‘Holy Rose’, the Gallic Rose originally blossomed in its natural wild state as a simple flower with five petals – mostly of a deep pink or ‘rosy’-red colour. Later, how-ever, R. gallica also came to exist in a whole range of different forms or sub-species, the best known being R. gallica var. officinalis – the ‘Apothecary Rose’ or the ‘Red Rose’, a shrub of 90 cm to 1.5 m (3 to 5 ft) high with very fragrant, semi-double deep crimson flowers and yellow anthers (centre). In early times, the petals of this variety were often made into a fragrant powder valued for its pharmaceutical properties. After the Middle Ages it also became known as the ‘French Rose’ or the ‘Rose of Provins’ because it was grown in high quantities in the French region of Provence, mainly for use in perfumery. Varieties of the Gallic Rose are still used for the production of essential oils, for example by the British pioneer microbiologist, Peter Wilde.
The Damask Rose
The Damask Rose (Rosa damascena) – so called because it was presumed to have been brought originally from Damascus in Syria – bears pink or red, very fragrant double flowers with up to 36 petals each, borne on arching stems reaching to 2 m (7 ft) long. This was the rose most used by the early Arab perfume makers, who introduced it to Europe. It is still used to produce a very high quality essential oil, ‘attar of rose’ (and absolute), mainly for use in perfumery. Today it is cultivated on a large scale in Bulgaria and Turkey, and to a lesser extent in Russia, India and Iran. It too has been recorded in many different forms or sub-species, notably the 30-petalled variety, ‘Trigintipetala’.
The Cabbage Rose
The Cabbage Rose or ‘Hundred-leaved Rose’ is not, strictly speaking, an ‘Old’ rose despite its long history, being a complex hybrid between the Gallic Rose, the Damask Rose, the wild ‘Dog Rose’, and the ‘Musk Rose’ (see below). Its origins are obscure, though it has been found growing wild in the forests of the Caucasus, where double-flowered specimens are common. It has been called the ‘Painter’s Rose’ because it appears in the artwork of so many of the Old Masters. It is a