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About Roses
History:

The rose has always been valued for its beauty and fragrance and has a long history of symbolism and meaning. The ancient Greeks and Romans identified the rose with their goddesses of love Aphrodite and Venus. In Rome a wild rose would be placed on the door of a room where confidential matters were discussed. The phrase sub rosa or "under the rose", means to keep a secret—derived from this ancient Roman practice.

Early Christians identified the five petals of the rose with the five wounds of Christ their leaders were hesitant to adopt it because of its association with Roman excesses and pagan ritual. The red rose was eventually adopted as a symbol of the blood of the Christian martyrs. Roses also later came to be associated with the Virgin Mary.

Rose culture came into its own in Europe in the 1800's with the introduction of perpetual blooming roses from China. There are currently thousands of varieties of roses developed for bloom shape, size, fragrance and even for lack of thorns.

Culture:
Roses are ancient symbols of love and beauty. The rose was sacred to a number of goddesses (including Isis and Aphrodite), and is often used as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. Roses are so important that the word means pink or red in a variety of languages (such as Romance languages, Greek, and Polish).

The rose is the national flower of England and the United States, as well as being the symbol of England Rugby, and of the Rugby Football Union. It is also the provincial flower of Yorkshire in England (the white rose) and of Alberta (the wild rose), and the state flower of four US states: Iowa and North Dakota (R. arkansana), Georgia (R. laevigata), and New York (Rosa generally). Portland, Oregon counts "City of Roses" among its nicknames, and holds an annual Rose Festival.

Roses are ocassionally the basis of design for rose windows, such windows comprising five or ten segments (the five petals and five sepals of a rose) or multiples thereof; however most Gothic rose windows are much more elaborate and were probably based originally on the wheel and other symbolism.

A red rose (often held in a hand) is also a symbol of socialism or social democracy; it is also used as a symbol by the British and Irish Labour Parties, as well as by the French, Spanish (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Brazilian, Dutch (Partij van de Arbeid) and European socialist parties. This originates from the red rose used as a badge by the marchers in the May 1968 street protests in Paris.

Mythology and Superstition:
In some pagan mythologies, no undead or ghostly creatures (particularly vampires) may cross the path of a wild rose. It was thought that to place a wild rose on a coffin of a recently deceased person would prevent them from rising again.
Since the earliest times, the rose has been an emblem of silence:
In Greek Mythology, Eros presents a rose to the god of silence.
In a Celtic folk legend, a wandering, screaming spirit was silenced by presenting the spirit with a wild rose every new moon.
Roses were used in very early times as a very potent ingredient in love philters.
According to Indian mythology, one of the wives of Vishnu was found inside a rose.
In Rome it was often customary to bless roses on "Rose Sunday".
In the east it is still believed that the first rose was created from a tear of the prophet Mohammed, and it is further believed that on a certain day in the year the rose has a heart of gold.
In Scotland, if a white rose bloomed in autumn it was a token of an early marriage.
The red rose, it is believed by many religions, cannot grow over a grave.
Rose leaves thrown into a burning flame are said to give good luck.
If a young girl had more than one lover, it is believed in one mythology, she should take rose leaves and write the names of her lovers upon them before casting them into the wind. The last leaf to reach the ground would bear the name of the lover whom she should marry.
It is believed that if a rose bush were pruned on St. John's Eve, it would be guaranteed to bloom in the autumn.

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