Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: Garden Rose

(Please scroll down to see 4 more pictures!:D) Just outside our house we have a bunch of rose bushes which were planted before we moved here. The flowers are beautiful and care-free. I don't even water them and it doesn't matter. Every year we have bunches of glorious blossoms, some with lovely fragrances, others without a smell. These golden yellow roses have a wonderful, deep fragrance which is amazing to smell on a warm day! Since these flowers are right outside, I took an embarrassing number of pictures. I hope you like the 5 that I've picked for this little show! Garden roses are usually cultivated hybrids and are the most popular flower in the world for their beauty, fragrance, and versatilty. They are most often grown for their blossoms, but sometimes favored for other uses, such as a hedge plant or for the rosehips it produces. Roses have been cultivated for over 5,000 years and were grown in ancient Babylon, Egypt, and in ancient China and Greek gardens as well. There are over 6,500 cultivated species in the world, a number that grows every year as more hybrids are created! There are many fantastic sources for information about cultivated roses. Wiki has a very thorough introduction here: Wiki: Garden Roses . The American Rose Society is vast and wonderful! There's also the World Federation of Rose Societies , which will lead you to societies in 41 different countries! Enjoy! Explored on August 13, 2012. Highest placement at #204.

Yesterday I posted pictures of the yellow roses in our front yard. At the same time, the deep pink ones were blooming, so here are a pair of images to see! These flowers have very little scent, though they are quite showy. My husband and I have always wondered: "What is the point of a rose that has no fragrance?" This is something that has always perplexed me. So, I did some research! In nature, only some wild roses are scented. The use of fragrant roses in Europe's past was important for medicinal purposes, flavoring food, and for masking unpleasant smells. This is why old-fashioned European roses are some of the most fragrant in the world. When roses were first being cultivated in Europe, beautiful species and hybrids from China were introduced, and these flowers usually have no scent or just a light fragrance. With the blending of the many species and hybrids, a great many roses now have less scent than in the past, but breeders are working to reverse this. The characteristic of a rose's scent is recessive. Just like brown hair and brown eyes in people, "scentlessness" is dominent. When a scentless rose is hybridized to a scented rose, the resulting hybrid will have little or no scent. Even hybridizing two strongly scented roses will often produce a rose with less scent than the original roses. So, most of the most fragrant roses are old-style species and hybrids from Europe. However, climate can also be a factor in the fragrance of a rose. In fact, two identical rose bushes can be grown in two different climates, and in some cases, one plant will produce fragrant roses and the other will have no scent whatsoever! Also, a rose is most fragrant on a warm, sunny morning when the soil is moist, because the production of scent ingredients is strongest then. As the day advances into the afternoon, a rose's scent will diminish, and will sometimes vanish altogether until the next day! And finally, did you know that there are many different types of rose scents? The seven basic scents that are most often found in hybrid roses include rose, nasturtium, orris (iris root), violet, apple, lemon, and clover. Some of the other scents are fern or moss, hyacinth, orange, bay anise, lily-of-the-valley, linseed oil, hone, wine, marigold, quince, geranium, peppers, parsley, and raspberry. For more information about a rose's fragrance, I found a couple of pages to help in my research: Rose Fragrance A Nose To The Rose If you find yourself interested in growing fragrant roses, here is a list of hybrids specially awarded for their extremely fragrant blossoms! The James Alexander Gamble Fragrance Award