In Full Bloom

One rose characteristic which most people expect is fragrance. Watch someone walk by roses in full bloom. First, there'll be an exclamation over color or beauty, but, inevitably, the head will bend in expectation of that special scent we've come to expect.

Many years ago Alice Morse Earle wrote, "The fragrance of the sweetest rose is beyond an other flower scent, it is irresistible, enthralling; you cannot leave it. I have never doubted the rose has some compelling quality not shared by other flowers. I do not know whether it comes from some inherent witchery of the plant, but it certainly exists."

Elusive, mysterious, the fragrance of roses and the romance surrounding it is legendary. For instance, Cleopatra supposedly entertained Marc Anthony in a room filled with 18 inches of rose petals, and the sails of her ship were soaked with rose water so that "the very winds were lovesick." In the 1300's, Queen Elizabeth of Hungary, whose beauty ritual included quantities of rose water, was, at the age of 72, able to successfully woo the King of Poland. At a seventeenth-century Persian royal wedding, rose petals were floated on garden canals filled with rose water. Such lavishness attests to both the literal and figurative power of rose fragrance.
Some of the mystery and illusion of rose fragrance may, in part, be due to the fact that there are actually over two dozen different sorts of rose scent, with some roses having a mixture of these various perfumes. The seven basic scents that are most often found in hybrid tea roses include rose, nasturtium, orris, violet, apple, lemon, and clover. Some of the other scents are fern or moss, hyacinth, orange, bay anise, lily-of-the-valley, linseed oil, hone, wine, marigold, quince, geranium, peppers, parsley, and raspberry.

In general, the most highly scented roses are ones that are either darker in color, have more petals to the flower, or have thick, velvety petals. Another correlation is that the red and pink roses are most likely to smell like a "rose," while white and yellow ones lean to orris, nasturtium, violet, or lemon. Orange-shaded roses will usually have scents of fruit, orris, nasturtium, violet, or clover.
Rose fragrance will be strongest on warm, sunny days when the soil is moist because that is when the production of the scent ingredients increases. Often, a rose that was fragrant in the morning is no longer so by late afternoon.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/publications/roses/fragrance.html


Come out to Troon Vineyard for a unique rose sensation experience!