People love roses for different reasons, and there's something for everyone in genus Rosa. The rose family has 2830 species, ranging from tough Rugosas that grow near salty beaches to Hybrid Teas which are susceptible to every disease and pest known to flowers. The florist roses we love in February (mostly field-grown in Columbia) are extravagant eye candy-- for fragrance nothing compares to the old garden varieties.
I wish you could plunge your nose in this picture! We have some beautiful old roses, but none have the spicy, sweet, unique scent of English Garden. Maybe it was the rain, because this is the most beautiful bloom in the 15 years since we planted it. Each flower has hundreds of individual, delicate petals. The fragrance is described as "old rose, musk and myrrh." And we think a hint of something like cloves.
The Perfume MakerErnst Rodolphe
Rose perfumes are made from the oil or "attar" of roses. Flowers are harvested by hand before sunrise and the oil is steam-distilled from the crushed petals. The technique originated in Persia and then spread through India and Arabia. It's a labor intensive process and the oil content of roses is low, so attar of roses is extremely valuable. It takes about 2,000 flowers to produce just one gram of rose oil. I wish I could distill English Garden and open that vial on a cold morning in January...
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