„Rose“

A Note on the Flower:

The rose has a great depth to it's history. Rose fossils unearthed in Montana date back 35 million years.

The rose has been at the heart of myth and legend, symbolism and literature throughout human history. The Egyptians cultivated roses as early as 3000BC. In the reign of Cleopatra the rose replaced the lotus as Egypt's ceremonial flower.

To the Greeks the rose first appeared with the birth of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. When Aphrodite first emerged from the sea, the earth produced the rose to show that it could match the gods in the creation of perfect beauty.

The delicate beauty of it's bloom set against the sharpness of it's thorns has made the rose a perfect metaphor for stories of good and evil, loss and redemption. Christian lore relates that the rose became thorny only when man had been driven from the Garden of Eden.

In classical Europe, the rose became a sign of secrecy. The legal term sub-rosa means literally, 'under the rose'.    The rose is course most famously the symbol of love and affection. A dozen red roses is perhaps the most renowned way in which we might express our love without words.