February: the Rose
Bulgaria's National Flower: The Rose
Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and what better flower to highlight than the rose! This year, I will be picking a new flower based on a different country each month.This month’s flower is the National flower of Bulgaria, a country in southeast Europe. This feels like the best country to begin our national flower journey since I myself am half Bulgarian and spent a large portion of my childhood there. The rose has a rich history in Bulgaria’s culture and economy, and is also the best known flower across the globe.Bulgaria and the Rose
To celebrate the rose, an annual Rose Festival is held in June in Kazanlak in the Rose Valley. Parades, contests, and ceremonial rose picking highlight and honor their importance. I can only imagine how wonderful it must all smell.
Mythology and Religion
In Greek mythology, the goddess of flowers is named Chloris. She creates new flowers by breathing life into inanimate things. One day, Chloris breathed life into a woodland nymph who had passed. Dionysus, the god of wine, gifted the new flower with a lovely aroma, and Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, gave the rose its name by rearranging her son’s name (Eros). Later in the story, Eros, who is the god of love, gave a rose as a bribe to another god to ensure his indiscretion. That act is what gave the rose it’s symbolism of secrecy, silence, and love.
That association led the rose to be a visual symbol of discretion which is often used to adorn government council buildings dating back to the Middle Ages. And in modern quasi-legal terms, “sub rosa” is used to denote something that is best kept under wraps.
In Christian mythology and Pagan tradition, the rose is related to the idea of resurrection and rebirth, which is why it became tradition to lay roses at graves. As the Virgin Mary became more central in Christian worship, she became associated with the rose as well.
There are a myriad of nuances to the types of roses and their emotional or intentional symbolism. As humans began cultivating different colors of roses, their symbolism became even more complex.
Evolution and Cultivation
The first domesticated roses might have been cultivated as early as 3,000 BCE in China. The ancient Egyptians have records of nobles bathing in rose water and scattering petals to help scent rooms.
The first species of rose had five single petals as seen on the flowers of Rosa hilliae.
These are the species that formed the genetic building blocks for our modern-day roses. Nowadays, there are around 150 species of roses. Roses are classified into three types: the familiar 'wild rose', Old World roses (introduced before 1867), and modern roses. Each type has a slightly different temperament and blooming window.
The continuous cutting and raising of roses through thousands of years is what has taken the wild breed and transformed it into the world’s favorite garden flower.
Roses raised from seed do not retain the characteristics of their parents, so cuttings have to be taken to maintain a variety. To propogate a cutting, you can insert the stem of your rose into a potato and plant the whole thing to promote rooting.
It’s quite miraculous to thing that the old rose in your local greenhouse could be a living link to a rose that once grew in a medieval garden.