The Website Gardenista.com, features an interesting article, “10 Things Nobody Ever Told You About Roses.” The first point is that roses are very, very old.
According to the article, “We know quite a bit about where roses come from. Roses may not be the world’s oldest flower (as evidenced by fossils that date back 100 million years). But roses have been in existence for more than 35 million years, at least in central Colorado, where Swiss botanist Léo Lesquereux found fossils in the late 19th century… Of the more than 100 known species or roses (there are thousands of cultivars), most are from Asia. Other continents–including North America, Africa, and Europe–also have native rose species. Over the centuries, it has been easy to interbreed species, which makes it tricky to trace many varieties’ parentage.”
Click here to read the rest of the Gardenista article.
35 Million Year-Old Rose
