Roses and Culture

Roses are ancient symbols of love and beauty. The rose was sacred to a number of goddesses, 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, the provincial flower 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.


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 United Kingdom Labour Party, as well as by the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Brazilian, Dutch (Partij van de Arbeid) and European socialist parties.



Symbolism
Roses come in a variety of hues, each with a different symbolic meaning:
Red: love
Pink: grace
Dark Pink: gratitude
Light Pink: admiration, sympathy
White: innocence, purity, secrecy (see also: White Rose German resistance movement),"You're heavenly...", "I'm worthy of you...", reverence and humility.
Yellow: dying love or platonic love
Orange: passion
Burgundy: beauty
Blue: mystery
The symbol of a rose can also refer to the red rose of Lancaster, and the white rose of York, from the Wars of the Roses period.


Perfume
Rose perfumes are made from attar of roses or rose oil, which is a mixture of volatile essential oils obtained by steam-distilling the crushed petals of roses. The technique originated in Persia (the word Rose itself is from Persian) then spread through Arabia and India, but nowadays about 70% to 80% of production is in the Rose Valley near Kazanluk in Bulgaria, with some production in Qamsar in Iran and Germany. The Kaaba in Mecca is annually washed by the Iranian rose water from Qamsar. In Bulgaria, Iran and Germany, damask roses (Rosa damascena 'Trigintipetala') are used. In the French rose oil industry Rosa centifolia is used. The oil, pale yellow or yellow-grey in color, is sometimes called 'Rose Absolute' oil to distinguish it from diluted versions. The weight of oil extracted is about one three-thousandth to one six-thousandth of the weight of the flowers - for example, about 2,000 flowers are required to produce one gramme of oil.
The main constituents of attar of roses are the fragrant alcohols geraniol, which has the empirical formula C10H18O and the structural formula CH3.C[CH3]:CH.CH2.CH2.C[CH3]:CH.CH2OH and l-citronellol; and rose camphor, an odourless paraffin.