20th April: Roses

Another French Revolutionary Calendar observance today - the rose. A collection of facts about roses.

1. There are about 100-150 different species of rose. They belong to the genus Rosa.
2. Roses are associated with Harpocrates, god of silence, secrets and confidentiality. Roses would be painted or plastered around the ceilings of rooms intended for the receiving of guests, to show that topics discussed within were not to be repeated outside the room. In ancient Rome, a wild rose was placed on the door of a room when secret or confidential matters were being discussed. This is where the phrase sub rosa, or "under the rose", comes from.
3. Roses are also associated with the Egyptian goddess Isis, the Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus. In Christianity, the five petals of a rose are used to represent the five wounds of Christ. Roses are also associated with the Virgin Mary and red rose petals symbolise the Christian martyrs. In churches, a round window is often called a rose window as they often have five or ten segments (the five petals and five sepals of a rose) or multiples thereof.
4. Napoleon used to give his officers bags of rose petals which they could boil with white wine to cure themselves from lead poison from bullet or shot wounds.
5. A number of places have adopted the rose as their flower. It is the national flower of England and the USA. It is the state flower of four US states: Iowa, North Dakota, Georgia and New York. Portland, Oregon counts "City of Roses" among its nicknames. The rose is the emblem of Islamabad Capital Territory in Pakistan and an unofficial emblem of Catalonia.
6. Roses do not have thorns. Although the sharp things on the stems are usually referred to as thorns, in technical botanical terms, they are prickles. True thorns are modified stems, which always originate at a node, rather than outgrowths of the epidermis on the stem.
7. It takes two thousand rose flowers to make one gram of rose oil.
8. The symbolism of roses in the language of flowers depends on the colour. Red means love, hence red roses are often given on Valentine's Day. Yellow means friendship, white means purity or spirituality, Pink is joy gratitude and admiration, orange is enthusiasm pride, favour and intense desire, lavender is love at first sight.
9. Black roses mean death or the end of a relationship - although black roses don't really exist. There are some which are such a deep shade of red or purple that they appear black, and black Roses can be produced using dyes.
10. A fossil of a rose was found in Colorado, thought to be 35 million years old. The oldest living rose bush grows on the side of Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany. It measures at 69ft high and 30ft wide. It is about 700 years old.