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Speaker 1: That's Rocket mortgage dot com slash history. Welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we're doing an episode that
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, selfish because something I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about for a long time, which is roses. Uh
Speaker 1: because I love roses, but I am admittedly a total
Speaker 1: amateur in the garden. Our house when we bought it
Speaker 1: came with a lot of roses, some of which are entertainingly.
Speaker 1: They have reviewed themselves to me to be poorly chosen
Speaker 1: for the spots there is whoops, but like they're lovely.
Speaker 1: We have the most beautiful red roses that bloom like
Speaker 1: crazy every spring and summer and right into fall that
Speaker 1: are right next to the steps on either side of
Speaker 1: the railings. But they're climbing roses, and so in the
Speaker 1: summer we literally have to cut them back almost every
Speaker 1: day because they just keep coming into the walkway. And
Speaker 1: it's like, these are so beautiful and they're so hearty
Speaker 1: and healthy, and I really love them. But whoever picked
Speaker 1: them maybe didn't realize what kind they were. Um, and
Speaker 1: then I add to our little collection periodically. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a lady who does not know that much about my roses,
Speaker 1: but I love them dearly. I've bought a few of
Speaker 1: the the fun hybrids of late in the past few years. So,
Speaker 1: but I also had to wait until now all of
Speaker 1: this is saying to do this episode one June is
Speaker 1: a very prolific time for roses, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: thematically right. But um, I knew that if we did
Speaker 1: this episode two early in the spring, that I would
Speaker 1: be tempted to buy a lot more this as a consequence,
Speaker 1: and I'm already kind of out of space for places
Speaker 1: to put them. So I had to wait until we
Speaker 1: were at the point when growers and nurseries won't ship
Speaker 1: to us anymore because we're out of the planting season.
Speaker 1: So you're getting this in late June so that I
Speaker 1: can manage my own online shopping problems. That seems legitimate
Speaker 1: the history of RUSS. I conversely have an episode that
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to do for a while that has
Speaker 1: just been painful to work on, and I still have
Speaker 1: not finished it and it's been weeks. So we'll surprise
Speaker 1: everyone with which episodes those are slash that is, when
Speaker 1: they come out. Yeah, sometimes Tracy and I had to
Speaker 1: be careful about how we manage our own subjects. Uh
Speaker 1: And just as a caveat, I kind of said a
Speaker 1: similar thing at the beginning of our History of Veterinary Medicine.
Speaker 1: This is, you know, definitely an overview. A lot has
Speaker 1: happened in the literal millions of years since roses have
Speaker 1: existed on this planet. Uh. So we can't cover every
Speaker 1: bit of minutia, but we're giving you the broad strokes
Speaker 1: of like the key moments. And on that note, In
Speaker 1: a history of Roses prepared for the American Rose Society,
Speaker 1: historian Jerry Haynes wrote, quote, Roses are incredibly complex and
Speaker 1: many Rosarians are opinionated. That makes for a which is
Speaker 1: brew of nonaligned thinking and some downright nasty disagreements. You
Speaker 1: may have heard the saying that I went to a
Speaker 1: fight and a rose meeting broke out. This is because
Speaker 1: there is a lot of room for conjecture, angry opinions,
Speaker 1: and wild guesses. This sort of made me laugh one
Speaker 1: because I had never heard that expression, but it's quite
Speaker 1: delightful and too. It made me think of Doubton Abbey,
Speaker 1: where there's some rose drama on the show. I actually
Speaker 1: have a Doubton Abbey rose in my garden now, which
Speaker 1: is named for violet. But this one genus of plant
Speaker 1: is perhaps the most famed in human history. I would
Speaker 1: go so far as to say it is, but I'm
Speaker 1: always a little bit reticent about superlatives. But it's the
Speaker 1: most famous. It's revered for its beauty, it's used symbolically.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's made into consumables. There is a war
Speaker 1: named after them. We'll touch on that briefly. And in
Speaker 1: President Ronald Reagan made the rose the national floral emblem
Speaker 1: of the United States. But roses predate civilization as we
Speaker 1: know it by a significant margin. Yeah, they've existed for
Speaker 1: literally millions of years, but the image of the rose
Speaker 1: that you probably think of doesn't look much like the
Speaker 1: ones blooming in Asia as far back as an estimated
Speaker 1: seventy million years ago, or in North America thirty five
Speaker 1: million years ago. Ancient wild roses were fairly simple as
Speaker 1: some wild roses still today are, but even more simple
Speaker 1: than that. Many had only five pedals that bloomed into
Speaker 1: sort of a disc like shape. And curiously, roses are
Speaker 1: Northern Hemisphere natives. It's not yet understood why they are
Speaker 1: native to more than one continent in the Northern Hemisphere
Speaker 1: but not to the Southern Hemisphere. Yeah, I think you can,
Speaker 1: probably if you're a very good gardener, transplant sum but
Speaker 1: in terms of naturally growing, they just have never sprung
Speaker 1: up there. The oldest of roses are considered the species roses,
Speaker 1: So these are varieties of roses that developed in nature
Speaker 1: without human intervention. So those ancient ancient ones as well
Speaker 1: as as more recent ones but that are still uncultivated,
Speaker 1: and those became the basis of all cultivated roses. But
Speaker 1: for a long time they did just find on their own,
Speaker 1: and there are some species rose groups that continue to
Speaker 1: grow today and that you can even purchase, as well
Speaker 1: as some that are just growing in the wild. And
Speaker 1: in addition to their simple blooms, they had some of
Speaker 1: the hallmarks of roses, so thorns, sepals, and hips, just
Speaker 1: like your modern roses, but they looked a little different.
Speaker 1: Roses have appeared in art and Minoan crete dating back
Speaker 1: to se b C. And Egypti floral reade stated Circle
Speaker 1: one seventy CE feature a species of roses actually still
Speaker 1: living today. This is the Rosa ricardi, also known as
Speaker 1: the Rosa sancta, and it's colloquially known as the Holy
Speaker 1: rose of Abyssinia. In the fifth century b c. Herodotus
Speaker 1: wrote of a garden in Macedonia that housed roses, but
Speaker 1: what exact kinds of roses were there remains a matter
Speaker 1: of guesswork. There are also Biblical references to roses, but similarly,
Speaker 1: it's unclear if those references are correctly translated, or if
Speaker 1: the flowers in the text were actually something else, and
Speaker 1: then in translation rose kind of got subbed in for
Speaker 1: a flowering plant. Humans began cultivating roses starting roughly five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. The oldest species of rose that continues
Speaker 1: today is the Rosa gallica, which is also called a
Speaker 1: French rose, that dates back to twelve hundred BC and
Speaker 1: has been growing in Asia and parts of Europe since
Speaker 1: that time. Yeah, a lot of roses invoke French names,
Speaker 1: just f y I, they're not all the same. The
Speaker 1: Damas grows, known by its Latin name Rosa demascena and
Speaker 1: named for Damascus, is a descendant of that French rose.
Speaker 1: It has been around since at least nine Variations of
Speaker 1: the Damas groves developed through cross breeding became common eventually,
Speaker 1: and as the Roman Empire came into power, roses really
Speaker 1: really benefited. In the eastern parts of the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: roses became incredibly popular, not just for their beauty, but
Speaker 1: for a wide range of other uses. So important was
Speaker 1: the rose and Roman culture that massive public rose gardens
Speaker 1: were established, and of course, fragrant roses were used to
Speaker 1: create perfumes. Various parts of the plants were and still
Speaker 1: are commonly used as curatives, and rose petals were used
Speaker 1: in Roman times to create natural confetti, which is sort
Speaker 1: of a lovely image. Throughout the Mediterranean during the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: rose based products, as well as the plants themselves were
Speaker 1: bartered among various cultures as they traveled their usual trade routes.
Speaker 1: The first known catalog of roses in the Western world
Speaker 1: was compiled circus three BC by a Greek scientist and
Speaker 1: philosopher name Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle. Theophrastus is sometimes
Speaker 1: called the father of botany for his extensive writing on plants,
Speaker 1: and his rose related research provides some of the earliest
Speaker 1: detailed analyzes of their physical composition. And in the first
Speaker 1: century Pliny the Elder wrote about roses. He talked of
Speaker 1: them being manipulated into blooming in the off season, sometimes
Speaker 1: over and over in various locations, because those multi blooms
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about later, we're not naturally occurring.
Speaker 1: As roses have been cultivated by humans, they've also taken
Speaker 1: on various symbolic associations, including meanings based on their colors.
Speaker 1: Of course, during the War of the Roses, York was
Speaker 1: represented by white roses and Lancaster by red. The white
Speaker 1: York rose Rosa alba, dates back to the second century on.
Speaker 1: These roses continue to exist today, flourishing in naturally colder climates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they need a little winter to actually succeed. This is
Speaker 1: a thing about roses that I was completely misinformed on
Speaker 1: and understood only much more recently. Like in my head,
Speaker 1: roses were much more delicate and required pretty uh temperate
Speaker 1: climate year round. And then my first springtime in Boston
Speaker 1: and I would walk through our neighborhood and they would
Speaker 1: just be these beautiful roses flourishing everywhere. I did not
Speaker 1: know that was possible, And then I felt ignorant. If
Speaker 1: you haven't been around him, Uh yeah, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of roses are very very hearty. It's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons they've become so popular globally is that, again,
Speaker 1: if you're living in the northern hemisphere, they often do
Speaker 1: very well with very very little effort on the part
Speaker 1: of amateur gardeners. Almost anyone can grow rose. Uh. And
Speaker 1: one rose in particular that's noted in Europe in the
Speaker 1: late fift hundreds is the rosa centifolia, and santifolia means
Speaker 1: one hundred leaves, and these flowers are also known as
Speaker 1: cabbage roses because of their round, thickly petaled blooms. At
Speaker 1: that point, leaves is actually probably referring to pebbles. That
Speaker 1: nomenclature didn't really exist, but Plyby and the Aphrastus both
Speaker 1: wrote about roses with a hundred leaves, but there was
Speaker 1: no clear evidence of such roses existing until the late
Speaker 1: sixteenth century. Like, we had these two writings that referenced them,
Speaker 1: but we didn't really have anything that resembled the hundred
Speaker 1: leaf rose until we started seeing them pretty commonly in
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century. There is reference to a rose in
Speaker 1: the book herbal written by John Garrard, and that describes
Speaker 1: roses that seemed to align with these hundred leaved flowers
Speaker 1: that were described in older writings. It didn't get the
Speaker 1: nickname cabbage rose until the seventeen hundreds, though. And coming up,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the roses of seventeenth century Europe.
Speaker 1: But first we're gonna take a little break so we
Speaker 1: can hear from one of our sponsors. This episode of
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history classes brought to you by Casper.
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Speaker 1: using history Stuff as your promo code. Terms and conditions
Speaker 1: apply almost a hundred and fifty years after the conclusion
Speaker 1: of the conflict between York and Lancaster, Charles, the first
Speaker 1: of England's royal botanist, wrote of English white roses in
Speaker 1: six nine. That botanist John Parkinson described two kinds of
Speaker 1: white roses, one thicker and more abundant with flowers than
Speaker 1: the other, although he noted the differences could be caused
Speaker 1: by environmental factors, saying quote, some do judge these to
Speaker 1: be but one kind, the diversity happening by the air
Speaker 1: or ground, or both. Parkinson wrote as well, of a
Speaker 1: carnation rose, using the Latin rosa incarnata, and at this
Speaker 1: point the use of the word carnation was associated with
Speaker 1: basically the scan tone of white people, so it's likely
Speaker 1: that he was writing of a pale, pinkish bloom. Throughout
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, roses went through a massive surge in popularity,
Speaker 1: and they were so valued that roses and even rose
Speaker 1: water were sometimes used as currency in Europe, and by
Speaker 1: that time they were also very common as part of
Speaker 1: medical treatments. Paradisis terrestris, one of Parkinson's books, is the
Speaker 1: first English book to discuss roses as garden plants rather
Speaker 1: than as medicinal plants. Roses had, of course, has been
Speaker 1: grown for their beauty before that time, both in England
Speaker 1: and elsewhere, but most writing about them had a lot
Speaker 1: more to do with their practical uses instead of their
Speaker 1: visual appeal. Initially, even roses grown in the garden setting
Speaker 1: weren't really the focal point of any landscape plan. They
Speaker 1: tended to be relegated to the edges. But eventually they
Speaker 1: came into uses hedges and its accents, and then slowly
Speaker 1: kind of moved to be the center of some gardens.
Speaker 1: The writings about roses being used medicinal ng are also
Speaker 1: clouded by poor nomenclature and classification. For example, the word
Speaker 1: rose or rosa became so commonly used that it started
Speaker 1: to apply to other plants or flowers that were not
Speaker 1: actually roses. Additionally, the plants were often described with less
Speaker 1: than ideal to tail, for modern readers to figure out
Speaker 1: just what specific plant the writer might have been talking about.
Speaker 1: I know I ran into that difficulty when I was
Speaker 1: looking artwork to go with this episode, and I just, Uh,
Speaker 1: the farther that I went back in art, the more
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm not sure that's actually a rose. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some that, like you said, they just got
Speaker 1: subedright in that's a very pretty cuss of petals called
Speaker 1: rose uh. Incidentally, Parkinson was also the first writer to
Speaker 1: describe a native North American rose species being grown in Europe,
Speaker 1: so it had traveled across the Atlantic and back. In
Speaker 1: sixty he wrote Theatrum botanic Um, and he said in
Speaker 1: it quote, the Virginia briar rose hath diverse as great
Speaker 1: stems and branches as any other rose, whose young are
Speaker 1: green and the elder grayish, set with many small prickles
Speaker 1: and a few great thorns among them. The leaves are
Speaker 1: very green and shining, small and almost round, many set
Speaker 1: on a middle rib, one against the other, somewhat like
Speaker 1: unto the single yellow rose. The flower stand at the
Speaker 1: tops of the branches, consisting of five small leaves or
Speaker 1: a pale purple or deep incarnate color like unto those
Speaker 1: the sweetbriar, which fall away quickly as those and others do.
Speaker 1: In the mid sixteen hundreds, herbalist Nicholas Culpepper wrote a
Speaker 1: book titled herbal And which he discussed the many health
Speaker 1: benefits roses had to offer. He wrote, quote, the white
Speaker 1: and red roses are cooling and drying, and yet the
Speaker 1: white is taken to exceed red in both the properties
Speaker 1: but as seldom used inwardly in any medicine. The bitterness
Speaker 1: and the roses when they are fresh, especially the juice purges,
Speaker 1: color and watery humors. But being dried and the heat
Speaker 1: which caused the bitterness being consumed, they have then a
Speaker 1: binding and a stringent quality. Culpepper was full of ideas
Speaker 1: about roses medicinal qualities. UH. He suggested that an extract
Speaker 1: made from red roses could be combined with wine to
Speaker 1: treat headaches, ear ache, soreris, sore throat, or irritated gums.
Speaker 1: I will confess that part of me is like, are
Speaker 1: you maybe just drunk and you don't feel sick anymore? Um,
Speaker 1: that's the case with so many patent men UH. For
Speaker 1: chest pain, he prescribed a similar formula, still with the
Speaker 1: roses in it uh, presumably to make something more like
Speaker 1: a poultice or a pace that you would apply on
Speaker 1: the area over your heart. That same compound could be
Speaker 1: applied to the abdomen for belly aches. And he also
Speaker 1: said that a powder made from the yellow strings from
Speaker 1: the middle of the rose quote drank in the distilled
Speaker 1: water of quinces stays the overflowing of women's courses. He
Speaker 1: really thought basically that red roses were full of uses,
Speaker 1: and he even stated quote to write at large of
Speaker 1: every one of these would make my book swell too big,
Speaker 1: it being sufficient for a volume of itself to speak
Speaker 1: fully of them. But just the same, he really did
Speaker 1: talk a lot about roses, and specifically red roses, and
Speaker 1: what you could do with them to improve your health
Speaker 1: in his book, and the late sevente century, grafting was
Speaker 1: being used as a way to manipulate roses. Was common
Speaker 1: for gardeners to graft roses onto briars to sculpt blooming plants.
Speaker 1: Multiple different roses were sometimes grafted on so one roots
Speaker 1: stock to create unique and visually spectacular garden features. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some writings where you'll see them, counting the
Speaker 1: many numbers of different kinds of roses that are blossoming
Speaker 1: on a single uh briar. Similarly, there was not much
Speaker 1: in the way of documentation of the work that had
Speaker 1: been done along the Mediterranean and then throughout Europe to
Speaker 1: cross breed and cultivate roses. It really wasn't until the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century that records of the work that was being
Speaker 1: done in greenhouses and gardens in relation to the genus
Speaker 1: Rosa started to be kind of consistent. The earliest organized
Speaker 1: breeding program that's fully documented began in Perth, Scotland. In
Speaker 1: wild Scotch roses were brought into the Dixon and Brown
Speaker 1: Nursery and one of those plants produced flowers with a
Speaker 1: hint of red in them. From that plant, a new
Speaker 1: one was bred with double flowers, and they selectively bred
Speaker 1: from that and so on until the nursery had cultivated
Speaker 1: eight different double roses. And selective breeding had most certainly
Speaker 1: been done before the including in China and the Middle East.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk a lot more about China in
Speaker 1: a minute, but this marks the first time that we
Speaker 1: know of that careful records of that process were kept
Speaker 1: and survive for us to read today. And roses from
Speaker 1: China really changed everything once they were introduced to Europe.
Speaker 1: But this aspect of rose history, like so many others,
Speaker 1: is not always clear. For one thing, as roses moved
Speaker 1: along trading routes, they would sometimes be attributed not to
Speaker 1: their place of origin, which was China, but to another
Speaker 1: stop on the trade route, which was India. And as
Speaker 1: corrections were attempted in this record. Sometimes that just meant
Speaker 1: the same plant was described as coming from China, India
Speaker 1: and Bengal, depending on whose account you read. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then like there would be roses that were traded maybe
Speaker 1: in India, and they had started in China, but then
Speaker 1: they led to different uh cultivations native to India. And
Speaker 1: because a lot of people were creating similar things or
Speaker 1: seeing similar plants but at different points on the curve,
Speaker 1: there are some roses that have multiple different names. Rose
Speaker 1: naming is a very tricky arena with a lot of duplicates,
Speaker 1: and you'll see sometimes the same exact plant given to
Speaker 1: different names, and that's part of why. But in any case,
Speaker 1: while there were some Chinese roast species in Europe by
Speaker 1: the mid eighteenth century, it wasn't until the late seventeen
Speaker 1: hundreds that trade relations were established between Britain and China,
Speaker 1: and China's horticultural expertise completely changed the Western world's knowledge
Speaker 1: of the possibilities of roses. Chinese gardeners had been working
Speaker 1: with roses for thousands of years at that point, but
Speaker 1: as we said, little record of that work that was
Speaker 1: done to breed them was preserved. While there were a
Speaker 1: number of cultivated and wild roses from China introduced into Europe.
Speaker 1: Four eventually arrived that caused a huge shift in the
Speaker 1: genetic possibilities that were open to cultivators. These are referred
Speaker 1: to as the four stud China's. This reminds me of
Speaker 1: like the foundation sires from horse breeding that we talked
Speaker 1: about in the Kentucky Derby episode. It's exactly the same idea,
Speaker 1: except what's interesting is that since like we talk or
Speaker 1: if you read any books about roses in their their
Speaker 1: historical cultivation, they talk about the four stud China's, like,
Speaker 1: you know, with great reverence and import but we don't
Speaker 1: know exactly how those were even developed. So there's it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny to me that this whole foundation is
Speaker 1: built on a thing we can't quite identify. The lineage
Speaker 1: of the first though of the four stud China's as
Speaker 1: a pink rose called Old Blessed China. It also had
Speaker 1: an older nickname, which was Parsons Pink China, and it
Speaker 1: was described by one English writer as quote the most
Speaker 1: elegant rose and also quote justly considered as one of
Speaker 1: the greatest ornaments ever introduced to this country. The second
Speaker 1: of the four stud China's to arrive in Europe was
Speaker 1: called Slater's Crimson and was, as you might surmise read,
Speaker 1: had large flowers and bloomed year round. It didn't require
Speaker 1: much care, and it was described in Curtis's Botanical Magazine
Speaker 1: has a plant which quote maybe reared almost in a
Speaker 1: coffee cup, is kept with the least possible trouble, and
Speaker 1: propagated without difficulty. Both it and the Parsons pink China
Speaker 1: were being grown in European gardens by the end of
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds. In the early eighteen hundreds, humes blushed
Speaker 1: tea scented China joined the stud China's and it was
Speaker 1: alleged as that name indicates, to have a fragrance of tea,
Speaker 1: although there is a bit of debate that goes on
Speaker 1: and on as to whether or not that characterization of
Speaker 1: scent is accurate. That rose initially traveled to Europe via
Speaker 1: the East India Company, and there are sums that have
Speaker 1: speculated that it may have taken on the scent of
Speaker 1: the teas that were imported at the same time, and
Speaker 1: that that's what people were smelling and not a pleasant
Speaker 1: odor produced by the bloom. The fourth of the Stud
Speaker 1: China's was the Park of Yellow, which people were extremely
Speaker 1: excited about because it was yellow. Yeah, there had been
Speaker 1: a lot of effort to cultivate healthy yellow roses for
Speaker 1: quite some time, but it was really tricky to get
Speaker 1: like a really true saturated color with it. So this
Speaker 1: like opened up the genetic possibilities in a huge way
Speaker 1: and people were very excited about it. Uh. And next up,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how Empress Josephine Bonaparte helped
Speaker 1: the cause of roses in Europe. But before we do
Speaker 1: list pause, we'll have a little sponsor break. Once the
Speaker 1: four Stud China roses were incorporated into breeding programs in
Speaker 1: Europe and North America, rose varieties almost literally exploded in number.
Speaker 1: Like you just could not keep up with all of
Speaker 1: the cross breeding that people were doing. As these exciting
Speaker 1: new plants were making their collective debut in the Western world,
Speaker 1: Napoleon Bonaparte's wife became one of the roses greatest champions
Speaker 1: west of Paris. At her chateau New mademoisean Empress Josephine
Speaker 1: Bonaparte had a massive rose garden planted. She was so
Speaker 1: enamored of roses and so dedicated to them that she
Speaker 1: wanted a sample of every known rose in the world
Speaker 1: in her collection. She hired expert gardeners to tend and
Speaker 1: develop them, and she amassed more than two hundred fifty
Speaker 1: species in her garden. Knowing that the winters would be
Speaker 1: hard on some of her beloved plants, she had greenhouses
Speaker 1: built with their own coal burning heat sources, which is
Speaker 1: amazing and horticulturally really cool because at that point plenty
Speaker 1: of humans are not living as well as her plants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool from a horticultural standpoint, but from a human
Speaker 1: one exactly. I have this like mental image and I
Speaker 1: have no like historical documentation to back this up, but
Speaker 1: I just had this mental image of like impoverished people
Speaker 1: staring at these greenhouses, like where the plants are being
Speaker 1: heated in winter, and thinking, are you kidding me? That
Speaker 1: would be really nice for us to not be cold.
Speaker 1: Botanical illustrator Peter Joseph Dot who was an artist who
Speaker 1: served in the court of Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette,
Speaker 1: and also managed to continue to be successful throughout the
Speaker 1: French Revolution. He did not become victimized by his associations
Speaker 1: published a collection of watercolor simply titled Rose in three
Speaker 1: volumes over the course of eighteen seventeen to eighteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: and the illustrations that he included in that collection are
Speaker 1: generally seen as his finest work. Many continue to be
Speaker 1: reprinted today, both in books and as just prints that
Speaker 1: you can purchase. And his research for that art was
Speaker 1: conducted in the garden planted by Empress Josephine. Napoleon's wife
Speaker 1: had been re Dute's patron for years, but unfortunately she
Speaker 1: did not live to see his work in her garden
Speaker 1: come to fruition. He started publishing a few years after
Speaker 1: her death. In eighteen sixty seven. The first hybrid tea
Speaker 1: rose was introduced by a French nurseryman named John Baptiste
Speaker 1: Yo and it was called La France, which tickles me,
Speaker 1: but it was part of a contest. It still tickles me.
Speaker 1: He Roses refers to plants that had been bred using
Speaker 1: humes blush and parks double yellow, and the tea set
Speaker 1: vanished in the breeding, but this name has remained. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that that was where the name came from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people and I certainly did
Speaker 1: this for a long time. You kind of make up
Speaker 1: associations in your head, like, oh, that would be lovely
Speaker 1: on a tea table. That must be why these are called.
Speaker 1: I thought they are small and delicate like teacups. That's why.
Speaker 1: See it's the same thing. Uh. Incidentally, I poked around online.
Speaker 1: Like I said at the top of this show, I
Speaker 1: have a bad habit of getting excited about things we
Speaker 1: talked about, wanting to purchase them. So I looked around
Speaker 1: for La France and I did find a nursery that
Speaker 1: claims to have them, but they're not in season right
Speaker 1: now to sell. But you better believe next year, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna look for him uh and find a place in
Speaker 1: the yard. I will make a place, will make it happen.
Speaker 1: The La France rose, which as I just said, is
Speaker 1: still produced today, was a massive step forward in rose breeding.
Speaker 1: So up to that point, there had been many efforts
Speaker 1: to create a repeat flowering rose instead of one that
Speaker 1: just bloomed once during its blooming season and then not again.
Speaker 1: But La France was the first success in this. Not
Speaker 1: only are it soft pink flowers which look very creamy
Speaker 1: and beautiful, lush and full, but it produces them over
Speaker 1: and over in its blooming season instead of just one
Speaker 1: time and then done. And it was initially difficult to
Speaker 1: breed La France because it had a chromosomal abnormality, so
Speaker 1: when other people try to use it to create their own,
Speaker 1: they had some problems, but it inspired a great deal
Speaker 1: of additional breeding work and research to create similarly prolific bloomers.
Speaker 1: The moment of La Frances unveiling is commonly used as
Speaker 1: the dividing line between what are known as old garden
Speaker 1: roses and modern roses. The American Rose Society uses these
Speaker 1: two groups plus species roses to sort out all of
Speaker 1: the many, many varieties of rose. And that's tricky, anybody
Speaker 1: will tell you. Even the lines of those groups are
Speaker 1: not always consistent. Uh, there are some fuzzy spots in
Speaker 1: the middle, or some overlap each other a little bit.
Speaker 1: And as we mentioned when discussing roses ancient origins, species
Speaker 1: roses are those that existed naturally. Old garden roses are,
Speaker 1: in very basic terms, hybrids developed through cross pollinating species roses.
Speaker 1: The old garden group includes white alba roses, which can
Speaker 1: include shades of creamy whites that also have some hints
Speaker 1: of soft pink damask roses and China roses, and then
Speaker 1: modern roses include hybrid tea roses, Flora bundas, and grande flora's,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about those types in just
Speaker 1: a moment. Gio made another significant contribution to rose history
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy five when he introduced a polyantha rose,
Speaker 1: which was a small compact plant that produced very tightly
Speaker 1: packed blooms. The Guillo family, by the way, continues to
Speaker 1: grow roses from their families history, as well as breed
Speaker 1: new roses in their nursery in France. Yeah, they're in
Speaker 1: Urche's near the Belgian border. And all of this work
Speaker 1: done to create new plants with lush, multi layered blooms
Speaker 1: also resulted in plants that needed less shaping through pruning.
Speaker 1: Old garden roses were generally very hardy. They could survive
Speaker 1: in a lot of different soil conditions, and they could
Speaker 1: resist many pests and fungus, but newer roses continued to
Speaker 1: improve on those qualities, and as we just mentioned, modern
Speaker 1: roses also produced more flowers, whereas most old garden roses
Speaker 1: only bloomed in one season per year. The modern era
Speaker 1: of hybridization also led to advancements in color variation, so
Speaker 1: whereas shades in the spectrum of white to red where
Speaker 1: the most common, and the rose population hybridization leads to
Speaker 1: more and more colors. Yellow roses had been sought after
Speaker 1: in Europe for centuries, and there was some success in
Speaker 1: developing through grafting and improving a species from Turkey to
Speaker 1: produce double flowers. Today, for example, you can find roses
Speaker 1: and shades of orange and apricot, dark purples, multicolor varieties,
Speaker 1: and some that even approached black, although no true black
Speaker 1: rose has and created yet. Now they're definitely nursery is
Speaker 1: hard at work on it. I guarantee you right this minute,
Speaker 1: because it's one of those things that people want. We
Speaker 1: all want a little gothic garden. I do. I have
Speaker 1: some very dark purples that I love, love, love, but
Speaker 1: they don't quite get black. Old garden roses really did
Speaker 1: have one particular area where they outpaced their hybridized modern
Speaker 1: cousins for quite some time, though, and that was with
Speaker 1: their aromatic sense. While the modern breeding of roses has
Speaker 1: produced flowers that smell like the seven scents that are
Speaker 1: normally associated with roses that include citrus, clove tea, violet apple,
Speaker 1: and nasturtium. The classic rose scent of old garden roses,
Speaker 1: in particular, was stronger than what you would smell necessarily
Speaker 1: in most rose scented flowers today like that smell that
Speaker 1: you associate with roses, although there is ongoing work to
Speaker 1: produce more and more fragrant roses. For a while in
Speaker 1: breeding beautiful things, a roma was less important, but a
Speaker 1: lot of home gardeners have made it known that they
Speaker 1: would really like to have beautiful smelling flowers as well
Speaker 1: as beautiful looking flowers, so there is more breeding work
Speaker 1: going on to produce more fragrant blooms. Today, it is
Speaker 1: unknown how many different species of rose exist. Wild roses
Speaker 1: are difficult to track, and we don't know how many
Speaker 1: have survived through time, how many naturally hybridized and created
Speaker 1: new species, etcetera. Additionally, some species change genetically over time
Speaker 1: without hybridization, and some varieties raise a great deal of
Speaker 1: debate because they are so close to others, and people
Speaker 1: argue about whether they should be considered separate species. And
Speaker 1: working back to the passage we read at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the episode, things can get incredibly contentious in the
Speaker 1: rose expert community. Yeah. Also, I mean, I don't even
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are people that do such things, but
Speaker 1: I don't even know how you would begin to try
Speaker 1: to catalog all of the existing roses on Earth. Hybrid
Speaker 1: t roses make up the majority of roses that are
Speaker 1: grown in gardens today. The other groups of rose are
Speaker 1: the Flora bunda roses, which are crosses of ybrid tea
Speaker 1: roses and pollyanthus, and Granda flora roses, which are crossbreeds
Speaker 1: of hybrid tea roses and Flora bundus. Roses. Of course
Speaker 1: also come in climbing varieties and shrubs and miniatures, but
Speaker 1: hybrid tea roses are the hardy ones that most gardens
Speaker 1: are going to have a lot of. If you have
Speaker 1: a home garden, you probably have that if you have roses.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk a bit about roses and food and
Speaker 1: medicine today. Rose Hips have been used as an edible
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years across many cultures. The hips are
Speaker 1: those bulbous, fruit like bumps that form at the end
Speaker 1: of a bloom after the petals have fallen off, and
Speaker 1: that's where the seeds develop. They start off green and
Speaker 1: they usually turn red as they make sure. Rose hips
Speaker 1: are used to make tea, jelly and other foods, and
Speaker 1: then rose syrups are usually made from the oil distilled
Speaker 1: from the rose petals. Yeah, I'm gonna make rose jelly
Speaker 1: this year. I decided, Oh, that sounds because I have
Speaker 1: a lot of rose bushes at this pot, and I
Speaker 1: might as well. But I had to do more research
Speaker 1: because like the the seeds you want to pull out
Speaker 1: one of the things that will come up if you
Speaker 1: look up whether or not roses or poisonous. They're generally not.
Speaker 1: Some people will mention that there is a minute amount
Speaker 1: of cyanide and the seeds, similar to the way there
Speaker 1: is a minute amount of cyanide in an apple seed.
Speaker 1: It's very scary when you see the word cyanide, but
Speaker 1: really there they're one. You are not eating the seeds
Speaker 1: theoretically too, if you did, it's a very tiny, tiny amount,
Speaker 1: but even so, be careful and take care of you.
Speaker 1: But I'm totally making rose jelly. But the other thing
Speaker 1: it's interesting about rose hips is that they are naturally
Speaker 1: very high in vitamin C, and so they are often
Speaker 1: used in cold and flu remedies. But there is a
Speaker 1: trick here because the process of drying the hips to
Speaker 1: produce medicine destroys a lot of their vitamin C content.
Speaker 1: So if you're purchasing like a rose hip based vitamin
Speaker 1: C item, a lot of the time they're supplemented with
Speaker 1: other sources because even after they're dried and made into
Speaker 1: a thing, the vitamin C that comes from the rose
Speaker 1: hips degrades pretty rapidly. It's also unclear how beneficial vitamin
Speaker 1: C really is, right, Uh. I know when I was
Speaker 1: in massage school slash working as a massage therapist, there
Speaker 1: were lots of complimentary and alternative medicine uses for roses
Speaker 1: and for rose oil and for rose water, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them had to do with like your menstrual
Speaker 1: cycle or childbirth. Uh. Yeah. I find rose things also
Speaker 1: just very very delicious, Like a good rose syrup in
Speaker 1: a cocktail is heaven to me. Heaven. I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the fragrance of roses a lot, uh and
Speaker 1: it I find it to be very calming. It is.
Speaker 1: I like all of the cookie smelling roses, Like we
Speaker 1: have one that smells very heavily of clove and one
Speaker 1: that smells very heavily of sit dress and I just
Speaker 1: love them because they're so sort of I had not
Speaker 1: known prior to owning this house and those plants, one
Speaker 1: of which came with the house, that I was like, rose,
Speaker 1: This rose smells like oranges. What is that? I had
Speaker 1: never been exposed to a roses smell like oranges before
Speaker 1: seven years ago. I need to somehow make a chip
Speaker 1: to Atlanta. When your roses are blooming, then uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that one, we're right in the middle, like it hit
Speaker 1: threw a bunch of blooms, and then you know, I
Speaker 1: deadhead them because you pull the the bloomed bits off
Speaker 1: because if you have read I need to do the
Speaker 1: science to back this up, but this is what I've
Speaker 1: read that if you let them develop their hips, they
Speaker 1: will stop blooming as much. So we pull the heads
Speaker 1: off and they're not. The plant is is getting the
Speaker 1: message that it should continue to bloom because it you know,
Speaker 1: plants want to produce fruit. That's what it's doing. Wants
Speaker 1: to to seed and propagate. But if all of this
Speaker 1: talk has inspired you to create your own rose, that
Speaker 1: is actually a thing that you can do. U amateur
Speaker 1: gardeners can cross breed. The San Francisco Gate actually has
Speaker 1: a really nice guide for amateur hybrid breeders that walks
Speaker 1: you through the whole process, and we're going to include
Speaker 1: that in the show notes. So if you think you
Speaker 1: would like to develop your own rooms, you can. Although
Speaker 1: there are lots and lots of expert gardeners and nurseries
Speaker 1: around the world constantly coming up with new and really
Speaker 1: beautiful and amazing roses, so probably you will not be
Speaker 1: competing with them, but you can make your own unique
Speaker 1: hybrid at home if you are patient. It's not a
Speaker 1: quickie deal. Do you have some listener mail for us?
Speaker 1: I do. It's also about flowers. I just figured i'd
Speaker 1: theme the whole thing. This is actually in reference to
Speaker 1: our Maria Sibuya Marian episode uh, And it is from
Speaker 1: our listener Tofur, who does a science podcast, and he
Speaker 1: was saying that we accidentally gave him a through line
Speaker 1: for his episodes. He is doing one on caterpillar metamorphosis,
Speaker 1: and then wasp that parasities caterpillars, etcetera, etcetera. He kind
Speaker 1: of goes through all of these. But what he was
Speaker 1: righting to tell us about is the tulips that I
Speaker 1: mentioned that Jacob Morrell painted that had the stripes in
Speaker 1: them with the peppermint stripes, and he says, those tulips
Speaker 1: you like that Morrell painted with the peppermint stripes actually
Speaker 1: looked like that and were caused by the tulip breaking virus.
Speaker 1: The one you described was the simper Augustus tulip. And
Speaker 1: in my research I found that some of the early
Speaker 1: illustrations of caterpillars that I'd seen were done by Maria
Speaker 1: Sibilia Marian. She had also done some of the illustrations
Speaker 1: of broken tulips that I had found. Anyway, I had
Speaker 1: to share I love that I didn't know that that
Speaker 1: was because of a tulip virus, but it sure made
Speaker 1: beautiful things happen. And I also wanted to follow up
Speaker 1: and read this one because I thought that I should
Speaker 1: mention for sure that I had said, like, one of
Speaker 1: the things I really love about Jacob Morrell's paintings is
Speaker 1: that he painted a lot of those peppermint stripe tulips.
Speaker 1: He is certainly not the only Dutch Golden Age painter
Speaker 1: that was doing that. They show up in a lot
Speaker 1: of Dutch Golden Age paintings the future flowers. So I
Speaker 1: just just for clarity, uh, they were very popular in
Speaker 1: that time and paintings because they are very unique and
Speaker 1: pretty looking. But he's not the only one that did them.
Speaker 1: So thank you tofur because I didn't realize that was
Speaker 1: a virus now I know. Uh. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to us, you can do so at History
Speaker 1: Podcast at house to works dot com. You can also
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Speaker 1: You can also visit me and Tracy at missed in
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Speaker 1: of the show ever from way before we were involved,
Speaker 1: as well as show notes on any of the episodes
Speaker 1: that we have worked on together. Those are now consolidated
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Speaker 1: us at missed in history dot com and stop works
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Speaker 1: Is it how staff works dot com. Hi, I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: vocal Bam. I'm Annie Reese. We are the co host
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