The history of roses begins far in the past. Dried specimens have been found in Egyptian tombs.
Roses are mentioned in the oldest known writings. Fossilized remnants dug in Oregon prove that a rose bloomed 50 million years ago.
Native rose species grow throughout the United States and in many foreign countries.
What comes to mind first when you think of a rose? Delightful fragrance? A thorn bush adorned with exquisite blossoms? A bush of prickly thorns?
Your answer to this could reveal your disposition!
Surprises In The Family
Even those who have little interest in gardening recognize a rose.
But anyone not acquainted with other members of the important rose family, Rosaceae, may be in for surprises.
Like the rose, many display beautiful blossoms, single or double, with white and shades of pink predominating. Some are fragrant and some have thorns.
Consider The Strawberry
As a rule, members of the rose family with single blossoms have five petals. Stamens are set in a circle around the edge of a sunken cup.
In a wild rose, as the season advances, this cup becomes a rose hip containing the seeds.
The strawberry is a member of this family. This spring, when plants bloom, count the petals and note that the center cup becomes the berry.
Strawberry’s Botanical Name
Note also the fragrance of the ripe fruit. The strawberry’s botanical name is Fragaria, the Latin word for fragrance.
The rose family supplies many well-known fruits. The apple, pear, and crab are known as the pome fruits. Peach, plum, apricot, cherry, and almond are stone fruits.
The blossoms are mostly fine-petalled, and the ring of stamens surrounds what will later develop into an apple, a peach, or whatever fruit that particular tree bears.
The Almond And The Crab
Is the almond a stone fruit and not a nut? Yes. What appears to be a thin-shelled nut is really the pit of a peach-like fruit.
The thin-fleshed pulp is hard and inedible. It splits when mature. The kernel inside the pit is the “nutmeat” used in cooking or to eat out of hand.
Flavoring comes from the almond, which makes cherry pie something special.
Flowering almonds with double pink or white blossoms are early spring ornamentals that grew in grandmother’s garden, and without which, no spring seems complete even now.
Best Of The Crabs
The best of the crabs are planted for their blossoms, single or double, as well as for the colorful fruits.
Flowering forms of cherries, plums, and peaches are available for garden charm. Some have double blossoms.
It is not surprising to find that the bramble fruits belong to the rose family, for some are as prickly as the rose.
The raspberry, blackberry, dewberry, and loganberry are among these thorny relatives.
Shrub Rise Relatives
The rose claims many shrub’s rose relatives, such as the spiraeas, kerrias (single and double-flowered with yellow blossoms), and pyracantha.
The latter and also hawthorn have diminutive apple-like fruits. Some varieties of Amelanchier develop small edible purple-black fruits.
The rose and apple have family marks in common—the five petals of the rose are mirrored in the cross-sectioned apple, where the parts appear again around the seeds.
Good Herbaceous Garden Perennials
The family contains few good herbaceous garden perennials, but at a rose family reunion, you would recognize geum with yellow blossoms, potentilla, and filipendula, the meadow-sweet.
The white meadow-sweet with fern-like foliage (a non-conformist with usually six-petalled flowers) has a dainty double form.
A taller one, Filipendula rubra var. venvsta, with coarser leaves and pink plumes is often mistaken for astilbe of the saxifrage family.
44659 by Olga Rolf Tiemann