Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. We have just gotten through the winter solstice
Speaker 1: here in the Northern Hemisphere, so this Saturday's Classic is
Speaker 1: meant to bring a little light and springtime into everyone's
Speaker 1: feeds during these darkest days of the year. It's a
Speaker 1: look at the history of roses. This episode originally came
Speaker 1: out on June Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy B. Wilson.
Speaker 1: We're doing an episode that is, uh, you know, selfish
Speaker 1: because something I wanted to talk about for a long time,
Speaker 1: which is roses. Uh, because I love roses, but I
Speaker 1: am admittedly a total amateur in the garden. Our house
Speaker 1: when we bought it, came with a lot of roses,
Speaker 1: some of which are entertainingly. They have revealed themselves to
Speaker 1: me to be poorly chosen for the spots there is whoops,
Speaker 1: but like they're lovely. We have the most beautiful red
Speaker 1: roses that bloom like crazy every spring and summer and
Speaker 1: right into fall, that are right next to the steps
Speaker 1: on either side of the railings. But they're climbing roses,
Speaker 1: and so in the summer. We literally have to cut
Speaker 1: them back almost every day because they just keep coming
Speaker 1: into the walkway. And it's like, these are so beautiful
Speaker 1: and they're so hearty and healthy, and I really love them,
Speaker 1: but whoever picked them maybe didn't realize what kind they were. Um,
Speaker 1: and then I add to our little collection periodically. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a lady who does not know that much about
Speaker 1: my roses, but I love them dearly. I've bought a
Speaker 1: few of the the fun hybrids of late in the
Speaker 1: past few years. So but I also had to wait
Speaker 1: until now all of this is saying to do this
Speaker 1: episode one. June is a very prolific time for roses,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of thematically right. But um, I knew
Speaker 1: that if we did this episode two early in the spring,
Speaker 1: that I would be tempted to a lot more roses
Speaker 1: as a consequence, and I'm already kind of out of
Speaker 1: space for places to put them. So I had to
Speaker 1: wait until we were at the point when growers and
Speaker 1: nurseries won't ship to us anymore because we're out of
Speaker 1: the planting season. So you're getting this in late June
Speaker 1: so that I can manage my own online shopping problems.
Speaker 1: That seems legitimate the history of roses. I conversely have
Speaker 1: an episode that I've been wanting to do for a
Speaker 1: while that has just been painful to work on and
Speaker 1: I still have not finished it and it's been weeks.
Speaker 1: So we'll surprise everyone with which episodes those are slash,
Speaker 1: that is, when they come out. Yeah, sometimes Tracy and
Speaker 1: I had to be careful about how we manage our
Speaker 1: own subjects. Uh And just as a caveat, I kind
Speaker 1: of said a similar thing at the beginning of our
Speaker 1: history of Veterinary medicine. This is, you know, definitely an overview.
Speaker 1: A lot has happened in the literal millions of years
Speaker 1: since roses have existed on this planet. Uh. So we
Speaker 1: can't cover every bit of minutia, but we're giving you
Speaker 1: the broad strokes of like the key moments. And on
Speaker 1: that note, In a history of Roses prepared for the
Speaker 1: American Rose Society, historian Jerry Haynes wrote, quote, Roses are
Speaker 1: incredibly complex, and many rose Arians are opinionated. That makes
Speaker 1: for a which is brew of nonaligned thinking and some
Speaker 1: downright nasty disagreements. You may have heard the saying that
Speaker 1: I went to a fight and a rose meeting broke out.
Speaker 1: This is because there is a lot of room for conjecture,
Speaker 1: angry opinions, and wild guesses. This sort of made me
Speaker 1: laugh one because I had never heard that expression, but
Speaker 1: it's quite delightful and too. It made me think of
Speaker 1: Downton Abbey, where there's some rose drama on the show.
Speaker 1: I actually have a Doubton Abbey rose in my garden now,
Speaker 1: which is named for violet. But this one genus of
Speaker 1: plant is perhaps the most famed in human history. I
Speaker 1: would go so far as to say it is, but
Speaker 1: I'm always a little bit reticent about superlatives, but it's
Speaker 1: the 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
Speaker 1: can probably if you're a very good gardener, transplant sum
Speaker 1: but in terms of naturally growing, they just have never
Speaker 1: sprung up there. The oldest of roses are considered the
Speaker 1: species roses, So these are varieties of roses that developed
Speaker 1: in nature without human intervention. So those ancient ancient ones
Speaker 1: as well as as more recent ones but that are
Speaker 1: still uncultivated, and those became the basis of all cultivated roses.
Speaker 1: But for a long time they did just find on
Speaker 1: their own. And there are some species rose groups that
Speaker 1: continue to grow today and that you can even purchase,
Speaker 1: as well as some that are just growing in the wild.
Speaker 1: And in addition to their simple blooms, they had some
Speaker 1: of the hallmarks of roses, so thorns, sepals, and hips,
Speaker 1: just 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 Egyptian floral reads 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 b C
Speaker 1: and has been growing in Asia and parts of Europe
Speaker 1: since 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: damn As grows, known by its Latin name Rosa demascene
Speaker 1: and 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 grows 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 circuit 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,
Speaker 1: and these roses continue to exist today, flourishing in naturally
Speaker 1: colder climates. Yeah, they need a little winter to actually succeed.
Speaker 1: This is a thing about roses that I was completely
Speaker 1: misinformed on and understood only much more recently. Like in
Speaker 1: my head, roses were much more delicate and required pretty
Speaker 1: uh temperate climate. Year round, and then my first springtime
Speaker 1: in Boston and I would walk through our neighborhood and
Speaker 1: they would just be these beautiful roses flourishing everywhere. I
Speaker 1: did not know that was possible, and then I felt ignorant.
Speaker 1: If you haven't been around him, uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of roses are very very hearty. It's one
Speaker 1: of 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, and one
Speaker 1: rose in particular that's noted in Europe in the late
Speaker 1: fift hundreds is the rosa centifolia and santifolia means one
Speaker 1: hundred leaves, and these flowers are also known as cabbage
Speaker 1: roses because of their round, thickly petaled blooms. At that point,
Speaker 1: leaves is actually probably referring to pebbles. That nomenclature didn't
Speaker 1: really exist, but Plymy and Theophrastus both wrote about roses
Speaker 1: with a hundred leaves, but there was no clear evidence
Speaker 1: of such roses existing until the late sixteenth century. Like
Speaker 1: we had these two writings that referenced them, but we
Speaker 1: didn't really have anything that resembled the hundred leaf rose
Speaker 1: until we started seeing them pretty commonly in the sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: There is reference to a rose in the book herbal
Speaker 1: written by John Garrard, and that describes roses that seemed
Speaker 1: to align with these hundred leaved flowers that were described
Speaker 1: in older writings. It didn't get the nickname cabbage rose
Speaker 1: until the seventeen hundreds, though. And coming up, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the roses of seventeenth century Europe. But
Speaker 1: first we're gonna take a little break so we can
Speaker 1: hear from one of our sponsors. Almost a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years after the conclusion of the conflict between your
Speaker 1: in Lancaster, Charles, the first of England's royal botanist, wrote
Speaker 1: of English white roses in Sine that botanist John Parkinson
Speaker 1: described two kinds of white roses, one thicker and more
Speaker 1: abundant with flowers than the other, although he noted the
Speaker 1: differences could be caused by environmental factors, saying quote some
Speaker 1: do judge these to be but one kind. The diversity
Speaker 1: happening by the air or ground, or both Parkinson wrote
Speaker 1: as well, of a carnation rose, using the Latin rosa incarnata,
Speaker 1: and at this point the use of the word carnation
Speaker 1: was associated with basically the scan tone of white people,
Speaker 1: so it's likely that he was writing of a pale,
Speaker 1: pinkish bloom. Throughout the sixteen hundreds, roses went through a
Speaker 1: massive surge in popularity. They were so valued that roses
Speaker 1: and even rose water were sometimes used as currency in Europe,
Speaker 1: and by that time they were also very common as
Speaker 1: part of medical treatments. Paradisis terrestris, one of Parkinson's books,
Speaker 1: is the first English book to discuss roses as arden
Speaker 1: plants rather than as medicinal plants. Roses had of course
Speaker 1: been grown for their beauty before that time, both in
Speaker 1: England and elsewhere, but most writing about them had a
Speaker 1: lot more to do with their practical uses instead of
Speaker 1: their visual appeal. Initially, even roses grown in the garden
Speaker 1: setting weren't really the focal point of any landscape plan.
Speaker 1: They tended to be relegated to the edges, but eventually
Speaker 1: they came into uses hedges and its accents, and then
Speaker 1: slowly 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 for artwork to go with this episode, and I just, Uh,
Speaker 1: the farther that I went back in are 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 I said, they just got
Speaker 1: sub dright in. That's a very pretty cuss of petals
Speaker 1: colored rose. Uh. Incidentally, Parkinson was also the first writer
Speaker 1: to describe a native North American rose species being grown
Speaker 1: in Europe, so it had traveled across the Atlantic and back.
Speaker 1: In sixty he wrote Theatrum botanic Um, and he said
Speaker 1: in it quote, the Virginia briar rose hath diverse as
Speaker 1: great stems and branches as any other rose, whose young
Speaker 1: are green and the elder grayish set with many small
Speaker 1: prickles and a few great thorns among them. The leaves
Speaker 1: are very green and shining, small and almost round, many
Speaker 1: set on a middle rib, one against the other, somewhat
Speaker 1: like unto the single yellow rose. The flower stand at
Speaker 1: the tops of the branches, consisting of five small leaves
Speaker 1: or a pale, purple or deep incarnate color like, unto
Speaker 1: those the sweet briar, which fall away quickly, as though
Speaker 1: and others do. In the mid sixteen hundreds, herbalist Nicholas
Speaker 1: Culpepper wrote a book titled herbal And which he discussed
Speaker 1: the many health benefits roses had to offer. He wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: the white and red roses are cooling and drying, and
Speaker 1: yet the white is taken to exceed red in both
Speaker 1: the properties, but as seldom used inwardly in any medicine.
Speaker 1: The bitterness and the roses when they are fresh, especially
Speaker 1: the juice purges, color and watery humors. But being dried,
Speaker 1: and the heat which caused the bitterness being consumed, they
Speaker 1: have then a binding and a stringent quality. Culpepper was
Speaker 1: full of ideas about roses medicinal qualities. Uh He suggested
Speaker 1: that an extract made from red roses could be combined
Speaker 1: with wine to treat headaches, ear ache, sore eyes, sore throat,
Speaker 1: or irritated gums. I will confess that part of me
Speaker 1: is like, are you maybe just drunk and you don't
Speaker 1: feel sick anymore? Um, that's the case with so many
Speaker 1: patent medicines UH. For chest pain, he prescribed a similar
Speaker 1: her formula, still with the roses in it, uh, presumably
Speaker 1: to make something more like a poultice or a pace
Speaker 1: that you would apply on the area over your heart.
Speaker 1: That same compound could be applied to the abdomen for
Speaker 1: belly aches. And he also said that a powder made
Speaker 1: from the yellow strings from the middle of the rose
Speaker 1: quote drank in the distilled water of quinces, stays the
Speaker 1: overflowing of women's courses. He really thought, basically that red
Speaker 1: roses were full of uses, and he even stated quote
Speaker 1: to write at large of every one of these would
Speaker 1: make my book swell too big, it being sufficient for
Speaker 1: a volume of itself to speak fully of them. But
Speaker 1: just the same, he really did talk a lot about roses,
Speaker 1: and specifically red roses, and what you could do with
Speaker 1: them to improve your health in his book and the
Speaker 1: Late seventeenth century, grafting was being used as a way
Speaker 1: to manipulate roses. Was common for gardeners to graft roses
Speaker 1: onto briars to sculpt blooming plants. Multiple different roses were
Speaker 1: sometimes grafted onto one root stock to create unique and
Speaker 1: visually spectacular garden teachers, Yeah, there are some writings where
Speaker 1: you'll see them counting the many numbers of different kinds
Speaker 1: of roses that are blossoming on a single uh brier. Similarly,
Speaker 1: there was not much in the way of documentation of
Speaker 1: the work that had been done along the Mediterranean and
Speaker 1: then throughout Europe to cross breed and cultivate roses. It
Speaker 1: really wasn't until the nineteenth century that records of the
Speaker 1: work that was being done in greenhouses and gardens in
Speaker 1: relation to the genus Rosa started to be kind of consistent.
Speaker 1: The earliest organized breeding program that's fully documented began in Perth,
Speaker 1: Scotland in sevente Wild Scotch roses were brought into the
Speaker 1: Dixon and Brown Nursery and one of those plants produced
Speaker 1: flowers with a hint of red in them. From that plant,
Speaker 1: a new one was bred with double flowers, and they
Speaker 1: selectively bred from that and so on until the nursery
Speaker 1: had cultivated eight different double roses. And selective breeding had
Speaker 1: most certainly been done before this, including in China and
Speaker 1: the Middle East, and we're gonna talk a lot more
Speaker 1: about China and the min it, but this marks the
Speaker 1: first time that we know of that careful records of
Speaker 1: that process were kept and survive for us to read today.
Speaker 1: And roses from China really changed everything once they were
Speaker 1: introduced to Europe. But this aspect of rose history, like
Speaker 1: so many others, is not always clear. For one thing,
Speaker 1: as roses moved along trading routes, they would sometimes be
Speaker 1: attributed not to their place of origin, which was China,
Speaker 1: but to another stop on the trade route, which was India.
Speaker 1: And as corrections were attempted in this record, sometimes that
Speaker 1: just meant 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 stead 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 Parks 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
Speaker 1: up we're going to talk about how Empress Josephine Bonaparte
Speaker 1: helped the cause of roses in Europe. But before we
Speaker 1: do list pause, we'll have a little sponsor break. Once
Speaker 1: the four stud China roses were incorporated into breeding programs
Speaker 1: in Europe and North America, rose varieties almost literally exploded
Speaker 1: in number. Like you just could not keep up with
Speaker 1: all of the cross breeding that people were doing. As
Speaker 1: these exciting new plants were making their collective debut in
Speaker 1: the Western world, Napoleon Bonaparte's wife became one of the
Speaker 1: roses greatest champions. West of Paris. At her chateau New
Speaker 1: mademoisean Empress Josephine Bonaparte had a massive rose garden planted.
Speaker 1: She was so enamored of roses and so dedicated to
Speaker 1: them that she wanted a sample of freek known rose
Speaker 1: in the world in her collection. She hired expert gardeners
Speaker 1: to tend and develop them, and she amassed more than
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty species in her garden. Knowing that the
Speaker 1: winters would be hard on some of her beloved plants,
Speaker 1: she had greenhouses built with their own coal burning heat sources,
Speaker 1: which is amazing and horticulturally really cool because at that
Speaker 1: point plenty of humans are not living as well as
Speaker 1: her plants. Yeah, it's cool from a horticultural standpoint, but
Speaker 1: from a human one exactly. I have this like mental image,
Speaker 1: and I have no like historical documentation to back this up,
Speaker 1: but I just had this mental image of like impoverished
Speaker 1: people staring at these greenhouses, like where the plants are
Speaker 1: being heated in winter, and thinking, are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: That 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 Gillo,
Speaker 1: and it was called La France, which tickles me. What
Speaker 1: was part of a contest? It still tickles me. T
Speaker 1: Roses refers to plants that had been bread using humes
Speaker 1: blush and parks double yellow, and the tea scent vanished
Speaker 1: in the breeding, but this name has remained. I didn't
Speaker 1: 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 one.
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: going to look for him uh and find a place
Speaker 1: in the yard. I will make a place, will make
Speaker 1: it happen. The La France rose, which as I just said,
Speaker 1: is still produced today, was a massive step forward in
Speaker 1: rose breeding. So up to that point there had been
Speaker 1: many efforts to create a repeat flowering rose instead of
Speaker 1: one that just bloomed once to ring its blooming season
Speaker 1: and then not again. But La France was the first
Speaker 1: success in this. Not only are it soft pink flowers
Speaker 1: which look very creamy and beautiful, lush and full, but
Speaker 1: it produces them over and over in its blooming season
Speaker 1: instead of just one time and then done. And it
Speaker 1: was initially difficult to breed La France because it had
Speaker 1: a chromosomal abnormality, so when other people try to use
Speaker 1: it to create their own they had some problems, but
Speaker 1: it inspired a great deal of additional breeding work and
Speaker 1: research to create similarly prolific bloomers. The moment of la
Speaker 1: frances unveiling is commonly used as the dividing line between
Speaker 1: what are known as old garden roses and modern roses.
Speaker 1: The American Rose Society uses these two groups plus species
Speaker 1: roses to sort out all of the many, many varieties
Speaker 1: of rose. And that's tricky, anybody will tell you. Even
Speaker 1: the lines of those groups are not always consistent. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are some fuzzy spots in the middle, or some
Speaker 1: that overlap each other a little bit. And as we
Speaker 1: mentioned when discussing roses ancient origins, species roses or those
Speaker 1: that existed naturally, old garden roses are in very basic terms,
Speaker 1: hybrids developed through cross pollinating species roses. The old garden
Speaker 1: group includes white Alba roses, which can include shades of
Speaker 1: creamy whites that also have some hints of soft pink,
Speaker 1: Demas roses and China roses. And then modern roses include
Speaker 1: hybrid tea roses, Flora bundas, and Grande Flora's, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about those types in just a moment.
Speaker 1: Gio made another significant contribution to rose history in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy five when he introduced a Polyantha rose, which was
Speaker 1: a small compact plant that produced very tightly packed blooms.
Speaker 1: The Guillo family, by the way, continues to go roses
Speaker 1: from their families history as well as breed new roses
Speaker 1: in their nursery in France. Yeah they're in Urche's near
Speaker 1: the Belgian border. And all of this work done to
Speaker 1: create new plants with lush, multi layered blooms also resulted
Speaker 1: in plants that needed less shaping through pruning. Old garden
Speaker 1: roses were generally very hardy. They could survive in a
Speaker 1: lot of different soil conditions, and they could resist many
Speaker 1: pests and fungus, but newer roses continued to improve on
Speaker 1: those qualities, and as we just mentioned, modern roses also
Speaker 1: produced more flowers, whereas most old garden roses only bloomed
Speaker 1: in one season per year. The modern era of hybridization
Speaker 1: also led to advancements in color variation, so whereas shades
Speaker 1: in the spectrum of white to red where the most
Speaker 1: common and the rose population, hybridization leads to more and
Speaker 1: more colors. Yellow roses had been sought after in Europe
Speaker 1: for centuries, and there was some success in developing through
Speaker 1: grafting and improving a species from Turkey to produce double flowers.
Speaker 1: Today For example, you can find roses and shades of
Speaker 1: orange and apricot, dark purple's, multicolor varieties, and some that
Speaker 1: even approached black, although no true black rose has been
Speaker 1: created yet. No, they're definitely Nursery is hard at work
Speaker 1: on it. I guarantee you right this minute, because it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that people want. We all want
Speaker 1: a little gothic garden. I do. I have some very
Speaker 1: dark purples that I love, love, love, but they don't
Speaker 1: quite get black. Old garden roses really did have one
Speaker 1: particular area where they outpaced their hybridized modern cousins for
Speaker 1: quite some time, though, and that was with their aromatic sense.
Speaker 1: While the modern breeding of roses has produced flowers that
Speaker 1: smell like the seven scents that are normally associated with
Speaker 1: roses that include citrus, clove tea, violet apple, and nastritium,
Speaker 1: the classic rose scent of old garden roses, in particular
Speaker 1: was stronger than what you would smell necessarily in most
Speaker 1: rose scented flowers today, like that smell that you associate
Speaker 1: with roses, Although there is ongoing work to produce more
Speaker 1: and more fragrant roses. For a while in breeding beautiful
Speaker 1: things a roma was less important, but a lot of
Speaker 1: home gardeners have made it known that they would really
Speaker 1: like to have beautiful smelling flowers as well as beautiful
Speaker 1: looking flowers, so there is more breeding work going on
Speaker 1: to produce more fragrant blooms. Today, it is unknown how
Speaker 1: many different species of rose exists. Wild roses are difficult
Speaker 1: to track, and we don't know how many have survived
Speaker 1: through time, how many naturally hybridized and created new species, etcetera. Additionally,
Speaker 1: some species change genetically over time without hybridization, and some
Speaker 1: varieties raise a great deal of debate because they are
Speaker 1: so close to others, and people argue about whether they
Speaker 1: should be considered separate species. And walking back to the
Speaker 1: passage we read at the beginning of the episode, things
Speaker 1: can get incredibly contentious in the rose expert community. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even I'm sure there are people
Speaker 1: that do such things, but I don't even know how
Speaker 1: you would begin to try to catalog all of the
Speaker 1: existing roses on Earth. Hybrid tea roses make up the
Speaker 1: majority of roses that are grown in gardens today. The
Speaker 1: other groups of rose are the Flora bunda roses, which
Speaker 1: are crosses of hybrid tea roses and polyantha and grand
Speaker 1: of Flora roses, which are crossbreeds of hybrid tea roses
Speaker 1: and Flora Bundus. Roses of course also come in climbing
Speaker 1: varieties and shrubs and miniatures, but hybrid tea roses are
Speaker 1: the hardy ones that most gardens are going to have
Speaker 1: a lot of. If you have a home garden, you
Speaker 1: probably have that. If you have roses, We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a bit about roses and food and medicine today. Rose
Speaker 1: Hips have been used as an edible for hundreds of
Speaker 1: years across many cultures. The hips are those bulbous, fruit
Speaker 1: like bumps that form at the end of a bloom
Speaker 1: after the petals have fallen off, and that's where the
Speaker 1: seeds develop. They start off green and they usually turn
Speaker 1: red as they make sure. Rose Hips are used to
Speaker 1: make tea, jelly and other foods, and then rose syrups
Speaker 1: are usually made from the oil distilled from the rose petals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make rose jelly this year. I decided, Oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds because I have a lot of rose bushes
Speaker 1: at this point, and I might as well. But I
Speaker 1: had to do more research because like the the seeds,
Speaker 1: you want to hold out. One of the things that
Speaker 1: will come up if you look up whether or not
Speaker 1: roses or poisonous, they're generally not. Some people will mention
Speaker 1: that there is a minute amount of cyanide in the seeds,
Speaker 1: similar to the way there is a minute amount of
Speaker 1: cyanide in an apple seed. It's very scary when you
Speaker 1: see the word cyanide, but really there they're one. You
Speaker 1: are not eating the seeds. Theoretically too, if you did,
Speaker 1: it's a very tiny, tiny amount, but even so, be
Speaker 1: careful and take care of you. But I'm totally making
Speaker 1: rose jelly. But the other thing it's interesting about rose
Speaker 1: hips is that they are naturally very high in vitamin C,
Speaker 1: and so they are often used in cold and flute remedies.
Speaker 1: But there is a trick here because the process of
Speaker 1: drying the hips to produce medicine destroys a lot of
Speaker 1: their vitamin C content. So if you're purchasing like a
Speaker 1: rose hip based vitamin C item, a lot of the
Speaker 1: time they're supplemented with other sources because even after they're
Speaker 1: dried and made into a thing, the vitamin C that
Speaker 1: comes from the rose hips degrades pretty rapidly. It's also
Speaker 1: unclear how beneficial vitamin C really is, right, Uh. I
Speaker 1: know when I was in massage school slash working as
Speaker 1: a massage therapist, there were lots of complimentary and alternative
Speaker 1: medicine uses for roses and for rose oil and for
Speaker 1: rose water, and a lot of them had to do
Speaker 1: with like your minstrel cycle or childbirth. Uh. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: find rose things also just very very delicious, Like a
Speaker 1: good rose syrup in a cocktail is heaven to me? Heaven?
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah. I love the fragrance of roses
Speaker 1: a lot. Uh, and it I find it to be
Speaker 1: very calming. It is. I like all of the cookie
Speaker 1: smelling roses, Like we have one that smells very heavily
Speaker 1: of clove and one that smells very heavily of citrus,
Speaker 1: And I just love them because they're so sort of
Speaker 1: I had not known prior to owning this house and
Speaker 1: those plants, one of which came with the house, that
Speaker 1: I was like, rose, this rose smells like oranges? What
Speaker 1: is that? I had never been exposed to a roses
Speaker 1: smell like oranges before seven years ago. Somehow make a
Speaker 1: chip 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: through 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. Amateur gardeners
Speaker 1: can cross breed this. San Francisco Gate actually has a
Speaker 1: really nice guide for amateur hybrid breeders that walks you
Speaker 1: through the whole process, and we're going to include that
Speaker 1: in the show notes. So if you think you would
Speaker 1: like to develop your own rooms, you can. Although there
Speaker 1: are lots and lots of expert gardeners and nurseries around
Speaker 1: the world constantly coming up with new and really beautiful
Speaker 1: and amazing roses, so probably you will not be competing
Speaker 1: with them, but you can make your own unique hybrid
Speaker 1: at home if you are patient. Hey so much for
Speaker 1: joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out
Speaker 1: of the archive, if you heard an email address or
Speaker 1: Facebook U r L or something similar over the course
Speaker 1: of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
Speaker 1: email address is History Podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Our old house stuff works email address no longer works,
Speaker 1: and you can find us all over social media at
Speaker 1: missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show
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