Roses are ancient, with fossils dating back 35-40 million years, making them one of the oldest known flowers.
After flowering, they produce a berry-like fruit called a rose hip, which is edible and exceptionally rich in vitamin C
What makes the rose special botanically is its resilience: thorns protect it, yet it thrives in varied climates, symbolizing endurance amid beauty
often representing love, beauty, purity, and the duality of joy and suffering. In ancient Greek mythology, it was linked to Aphrodite, goddess of love, emerging from sea foam tinged with her blood, blending allure with pain (thorns). In Islam, the rose signifies divine beauty and the Prophet Muhammad's spiritual essence, with its fragrance evoking paradise. Hinduism and Buddhism view it as a mandala-like symbol of unfolding enlightenment, petals revealing inner truths layer by layer. In broader mysticism, the rose's blooming process mirrors spiritual awakening: from tight bud (ignorance) to open flower (illumination), with thorns representing earthly trials that guard sacred wisdom. Its colors add layers—red for passion and sacrifice, white for purity and transcendence
Medieval mystics like St. Bernard of Clairvaux and later figures in the Rosary devotion (named after rose garlands) saw it as embodying Christ's passion: red petals for blood, thorns for the crown of thorns, and the bloom for resurrection and eternal love.
Dante's Divine Comedy, the celestial rose depicts paradise as layered petals of saints, illustrating hierarchical divine order and unity.
its beauty and fragrance evoke divine perfection and sensory transcendence, while thorns represent the pain of material existence and the trials of spiritual growth. Its unfolding petals symbolize progressive revelation—layers of hidden knowledge peeled back in initiation rites. It captures duality: earthly impermanence (wilting) versus eternal spirit (reblooming). Special attributes include its universality—found in diverse cultures, adaptable yet resilient
In ancient Greece, the rose was closely associated with the goddess Aphrodite.[37][38] In the Iliad, Aphrodite protects the body of Hector using the "immortal oil of the rose"[39][37] and the archaic Greek lyric poet Ibycus praises a beautiful youth saying that Aphrodite nursed him "among rose blossoms".[40][37] The second-century AD Greek travel writer Pausanias associates the rose with the story of Adonis and states that the rose is red because Aphrodite wounded herself on one of its thorns and stained the flower red with her blood.[41][37] Book Eleven of the ancient Roman novel The Golden Ass by Apuleius contains a scene in which the goddess Isis, who is identified with Venus, instructs the main character, Lucius, who has been transformed into a donkey, to eat rose petals from a crown of roses worn by a priest as part of a religious procession in order to regain his humanity.[38] French writer René Rapin invented a myth in which a beautiful Corinthian queen named Rhodanthe ("she with rose flowers") was besieged inside a temple of Artemis by three ardent suitors who wished to worship her as a goddess; the god Apollo then transformed her into a rosebush.
Ever since the 1400s, the Franciscans have had a Crown Rosary of the Seven Joys of the Blessed Virgin Mary.[38] In the 1400s and 1500s, the Carthusians promoted the idea of sacred mysteries associated with the rose symbol and rose gardens.[38] Albrecht Dürer's painting The Feast of the Rosary (1506) depicts the Virgin Mary distributing garlands of roses to her devotees.
"The RING — a serpent curled into a circle upon itself — Is a Hieroglyph denoting eternity. And the ROSE, born of a perishable body, Perishes on the same day on which it was born. Thus, because I consist of a mortal body, And an eternal soul: let this be my symbol."
“The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms, It pays no attention to itself, asks not whether it is seen.” (Angelus Silesius, Cherubinischer Wandersmann)
“The rose had undoubted symbolic, alchemical associations with, for example, the alchemical Pleroma and with Christ; with the womb of the Virgin (wherein the Christ-Lapis=Stone is born) and above all with the lapis philosophorum, the philosopher's Stone itself. Furthermore, there is the red-and-white rose, the “golden flower” of alchemy and birthplace of the filius philosophorum - the regenerated human-being - which appears in the English alchemical Ripley Scrowle of 158830. The “rose-garden of the philosophers” is one of the favourite images of alchemy, with a many-layered matrix of appropriate meanings. The Rose might have indicated an eloquent and simple password for those seeking the Stone - at whatever level (for the Stone is polyvalent) : including the Stone of political and religious unity.” - The Golden Builders. Tobias Churton
The name rose comes from Latin rosa, which was perhaps borrowed from Oscan, from Greek ῥόδον rhódon (Aeolic βρόδον wródon), itself borrowed from Old Persian wrd- (wurdi), related to Avestan varəδa, Sogdian ward, Parthian wâr.