Rose
The rose has always been valued for its beauty and has a long history of symbolism. The ancient Greeks and
Romans identified the rose with their goddesses of love referred to as Aphrodite and Venus. In Rome a wild rose
would be placed on the door of a room where secret or confidential matters were discussed. The phrase sub rosa,
or "under the rose", means to keep a secret that derived from this ancient Roman practice.
Early Christians identified the five petals of the rose with the five wounds of Christ. Despite this interpretation, their leaders
were hesitant to adopt it because of its association with Roman excesses and pagan ritual. The red rose was eventually
adopted as a symbol of the blood of the Christian martyrs. Roses also later came to be associated with the Virgin Mary.
Rose culture came into its own in Europe in the 1800s with the introduction of perpetual blooming roses from China.
There are currently thousands of varieties of roses developed for bloom shape, size, fragrance and even for lack of prickles.
Roses are ancient symbols of love and beauty. The rose was sacred to a number of goddesses (including Isis and Aphrodite),
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 and the United States, as well as being the symbol of England Rugby, and
of the Rugby Football Union. It is also the provincial flower of Yorkshire and Lancashire in England (the white rose and
red rose respectively) and 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.
Roses are occasionally the basis of design for rose windows, such windows comprising five or ten segments (the five petals
and five sepals of a rose) or multiples thereof; however most Gothic rose windows are much more elaborate and were probably
based originally on the wheel and other symbolism.
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 British
and Irish Labour Parties, as well as by the French, Spanish (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish,
Swedish, Finnish, Brazilian, Dutch (Partij van de Arbeid) and European socialist parties. This originates from the red rose used
as a badge by the marchers in the May 1968 street protests in Paris. White Rose was a World War II non-violent resistance group in Germany.
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