It is not called the "Queen of Flowers" for nothing: the beauty of the rose has fascinated people for thousands of years. Depending on how you count, there are between 100 and 250 different types of roses in the world, which are botanically classified into wild and cultivated roses. The diversity of varieties, on the other hand, is unmanageable.
Whether white, pink or red - roses are among the most popular flowers for the garden
The rose at a glance
- Genus: Roses (Rosa)
- Family: Rose family (Rosaceae)
- Species: between 100 and 250 different wild and cultivated forms
- Origin and distribution: depending on the species, temperate and subtropical zones, especially Persia
- Growth height: between a few centimeters (dwarf roses) to several meters (climbing roses and ramblers)
- Typical features: deciduous, fivefold pinnate leaves, thorns on trunk, branches and twigs, flowers often fragrant
- Location: sunny to semi-shady, airy
- Soil: nutrient-rich-humic, permeable, preferably loamy
- Flower: many different colors, shapes and sizes
- Flower colors: mostly red, pink, white, yellow or salmon-colored or apricot; some varieties are bicolored
- Flower sizes: large individual flowers (e.g. hybrid tea roses) or smaller flowers in clusters (e.g. bed roses)
- Flower shapes: single, semi-double, double or very double
- Flowering time: most cultivars flower in June / July, wild roses mostly in May
- Duration of flowering: a distinction is made between once-flowering and multiple-flowering varieties
- Fruits: some roses (especially wild roses) develop rose hips
- Leaves: Fivefold pinnate leaves
- Use: for ornamental gardens and tubs, as a medicinal and scented plant
- Toxicity: no
- Hardiness: very different depending on the species and variety
The Story of the Rose
There is evidence that roses were already cultivated by the Sumerians - one of the first advanced human cultures: the oldest known depiction of a rose is on a 4000-year-old Sumerian clay tablet. In any case, the land between the Euphrates and Tigris is considered the cradle of the rose, because this is where the first garden roses were probably bred and finally spread to the rest of Europe via ancient Greece. From the 1780s, merchant marine boats also began bringing roses home from Chinese gardens. These roses descended from two wild species: the "giant rose," a gigantic climber with large yellow flowers, and the rosa chinensis (Chinese rose), which was found in the Ichang Gorge of the Yangtze River. Since that time, European and Chinese roses have been bred and crossed, resulting in a huge variety of old and new types of roses.
tips
Because of their diversity, roses can be used for very different purposes. You can not only plant the shrubs in garden beds or tubs, but also use them as ground cover or to green pergolas or similar.