The rose has been celebrated in the art, music, literature, and religions of numerous civilization since ancient times, and garden
roses were cultivated by Egyptians are early as 4000 BC. Today roses are grown commercially and in home gardens, and gybrids are developed with much planning and great care. The genus
Rosa, comprising 150 species as well as numerous hybrids and cultivars, belongs to the family Roacease and is related to the apple, the strawberry, the cherry, and the aimond. Indigenous to the Northern Hemisphere, rose species are distributed from China to Europe and temperature North America. A few occur north and the Arctic Circle and at high elevations in the tropics.
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| Red Rose |
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| White Rose |
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| Blue Rose |
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| Pink Rose |
Roses grow on erect, climbing or trailing shrubs, the stem of which are covered with thorms. The leaves, which alternate along a branch, have 3 to 11 toothed leaflets. Solitary flowers or loose clusters bloom at the tips of stems. The ovary, known as the hip, turns bright red, yellow, or black at maturity. At the rim of the hip grow 5 sepals, stamens are arranged in concentric whorls; in many rose cultivars, the stamens have become petallike, giving rise to the ful double flowers prized by gardeners. Most species impart a distinctive
fragrance.
Most roses that are cultivated today are hybrids of early species, the tea rose.
R. odorata, the cabbage rose,
T. centifolia, and the damask rose,
R. damascena, which yields attar of roses, an essential oil used in perfumes. Other important parrents of modern cultivars include the climbing Cathay rose,
R. cathayensis, the trailing memorial rose,
R. wichuraiana, the China rose,
R. chinensis, and a Japanese rose,
R. multiflora.
The most popular cultivars are the hybrid tea roses, having a wide color range, a unique fragrance, and continuous bloom throughout the growing season. Other commonly grown types include floribundas, which produce numerous petals, polyanthas, which have large clusters of flowers, miniatures, the entire plant of which ranges from 7 to 30 cm (3 to 12 in) in height and rambling or climbing roses.
