70 Fun Facts About Rose

What is the fruit of a rose plant called?

Many tightly petalled garden roses never form one because pollinators cannot reach inside the flower, so they are propagated from cuttings instead.

The Rose Parade is held every New Year's Day in which California city?

It runs mostly along a boulevard that was once part of Route 66, and has followed roughly the same route for decades.

In the traditional language of flowers, a red rose stands for what?

Yellow is friendship, white innocence, orange passion and blue mystery, which is convenient given that a truly blue rose does not exist.

Rose hips are especially rich in which vitamin?

Wild hips can contain around 426 mg per 100 g, several times the concentration in an orange, which is why they are made into syrup, tea and jam.

Which of these fruits belongs to the rose family, Rosaceae?

The family also includes pears, plums, cherries, peaches, strawberries and almonds, which is why an apple blossom looks so much like a wild rose.

Rose gold gets its pink tint from alloying gold with which metal?

It was so fashionable in early 19th-century Russia that it was known as Russian gold; the more copper, the redder the alloy.

A wild rose flower, such as the dog rose, normally has how many petals?

The lush, many-petalled look of garden roses comes from centuries of breeding; the ancestral flower is a simple five-petal disc.

The rose is the national flower of which European country, a tradition from its 15th-century civil wars?

The badge is a Tudor rose, red outside and white inside, and it still appears on the national rugby team's shirts.

The sharp growths along a rose stem are commonly called thorns, but botanically they are what?

True thorns are modified stems, whereas a rose's hooks are outgrowths of the skin of the stem, which is why they snap off cleanly with a sideways push.

During the Wars of the Roses, a white rose was the badge of which royal house?

The rival red rose barely existed at the time; historians note the pairing was largely invented afterwards by the Tudor victor to sell himself as a peacemaker.

Which US city with a June Rose Festival has been called the City of Roses for over a century?

The nickname was unofficial from 1888 and made official only in 2003; the city's rainy climate happens to suit roses perfectly.

Derrick Rose became the youngest MVP in NBA history in 2011 while playing for which team?

He was 22 years and 7 months old, and had been drafted first overall by his hometown club after one season at Memphis.

In Citizen Kane, the dying word 'Rosebud' turns out to be the name of what?

The reporter never finds out; the audience alone sees the object tossed into a furnace in the film's final shot.

Most wild rose species are native to which continent?

Only a handful of species are found wild in Europe and North America, and the group as a whole ranges right across the northern hemisphere.

In ancient Greece the rose was most closely associated with which goddess?

In the Iliad she anoints Hector's body with the immortal oil of the rose, and later writers said the flower turned red when she pricked herself on its thorns.

The Latin phrase 'sub rosa', literally 'under the rose', means what?

Roman banquet rooms were carved with roses as a reminder that what was said there stayed there; its opposite is sub vino, loose-lipped under the vine.

Which British political party has used a red rose as its symbol since the late 1980s?

The red rose has stood for socialism since the 1880s, and the party swapped its old red flag for the flower under Neil Kinnock's rebrand.

Every surface of a Rose Parade float must be covered in what?

Volunteers glue on petals, bark, seaweed, seeds and even vegetables in the final days before New Year's, one reason the floats smell as good as they look.

Seal's 'Kiss from a Rose' finally topped the US charts in 1995 after appearing in which film?

Seal wrote it in 1987 and was so embarrassed by it that he threw the tape in a corner; it went on to win Record and Song of the Year at the Grammys.

'Every Rose Has Its Thorn' was the only US number-one single for which glam metal band?

Bret Michaels wrote it in a Dallas laundromat after phoning his girlfriend and hearing a man's voice in the background.

Who wrote the 1980 medieval murder mystery The Name of the Rose?

It was his debut novel; the 1986 film cast Sean Connery as the Franciscan detective William of Baskerville.

Which actress played Rose Tyler when Doctor Who returned in 2005?

The former pop singer's character was haunted for a whole series by the words 'Bad Wolf', which she herself turns out to have scattered through time.

Which French empress sponsored rose breeding at her gardens at Malmaison in the early 19th century?

Napoleon's first wife assembled the most famous rose collection of the age and had her plants recorded by the finest botanical painter of the day.

Which US president signed the 1986 law making the rose the national floral emblem?

The proclamation was signed in the White House Rose Garden, ending a decades-long tussle in which the marigold had been the main rival candidate.

After Rome's Christianisation, the rose became identified with which figure, an association that produced the rosary?

Dürer's 1506 painting The Feast of the Rosary shows her handing out garlands of roses, and rosary literally means a rose garden.

Which soccer tournament staged its final at the Rose Bowl stadium in 1994?

Brazil beat Italy on penalties there; the stadium later hosted the 1999 Women's World Cup Final and will stage the 2028 Olympic soccer finals.

The fine irritant hairs inside the fruit of a rose have long been used as what?

Hips are perfectly edible once the hairs are removed, and are best picked after a first frost has softened and sweetened them.

Rose Nylund of The Golden Girls came from which fictional Minnesota farming town?

Betty White was originally meant to play Blanche and Rue McClanahan Rose, but the two swapped parts to avoid being typecast.

Repeat-flowering roses descend from Rosa chinensis, an 18th-century import from where?

European roses mostly bloomed once a year until these imports arrived; crossing them with tea roses eventually produced the modern hybrid tea.

Which king adopted the Tudor rose, combining red and white petals, after his marriage in 1486?

He had taken the crown at Bosworth the year before and married Elizabeth, daughter of the rival house, to fuse the two claims into one badge.

For rose oil, when are the flowers traditionally picked?

Heat drives off the volatile scent, so the harvest is done by hand in the dark and distilled the same day.

The plant thought to be the world's oldest living rose climbs a cathedral wall in which country?

The Hildesheim rose is a wild dog rose whose roots survived the Allied bombing of 1945 and sent up new shoots through the rubble.

The Tournament of Roses Parade was first staged in which year?

The Valley Hunt Club wanted to show snowbound Easterners that flowers bloomed in California in January; the football game was added in 1902 to pay for it.

A traditional mariner's compass rose used for 'boxing the compass' has how many points?

Medieval sailors had to recite all of them in order, and Arab navigators in the Indian Ocean were using a 32-point star compass before the year 1000.

Pete Rose holds baseball's all-time record with how many career hits?

'Charlie Hustle' passed Ty Cobb in September 1985 and was banned from baseball for life in 1989 over gambling on games.

Who directed the 1989 black comedy The War of the Roses, about a divorcing couple destroying their house?

He also co-starred as the lawyer telling the tale, opposite Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in their third film together.

Roughly how many rose flowers does it take to produce a single gram of rose oil?

The oil weighs about one three-thousandth to one six-thousandth of the petals that went into it, which is why attar of roses is among the most expensive essential oils in the world.

In 1945, "Peace" roses were handed to every delegation at the founding meeting of which body in San Francisco?

Each came with a note hoping the rose would influence men's thoughts toward everlasting peace; by 1992 more than 100 million plants had been sold.

Which country supplies roughly 90 percent of the world's rose water?

The Persian word golab simply joins gul (rose) and ab (water), and central Iran throws an annual Golabgiri festival for the spring harvest.

Which esoteric order takes its name from an emblem that sets a rose at the centre of a cross?

The Rose Cross gave the 17th-century movement its name, and Martin Luther's earlier personal seal also set a cross inside a rose.

The White Rose, a non-violent student resistance group in the Third Reich, was based in which city?

Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested on 18 February 1943 while scattering leaflets at the university and executed by guillotine four days later.

Pliny the Elder said the dog rose got its name from a belief that its root could cure what?

The wild climber's hips were planted in American victory gardens during World War II for their vitamin content.

Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose was born William Bruce Rose Jr. in which state?

He grew up as Bill Bailey under his stepfather's surname and only learned about his birth father as a teenager before moving to Los Angeles.

Which actress played the elderly Rose who narrates the 1997 film Titanic?

She was 87 when the film was released and became the oldest person ever nominated for an acting Oscar at that point.

The 'Peace' rose got its US trade name on 29 April 1945, the day which city fell to the Allies?

Breeder Francis Meilland had smuggled cuttings out of France before the German invasion; the rose was propagated in America under his mother's name during the war.

According to Guinness, the world's largest rosebush, planted in 1885, still grows in which Arizona town?

It is a Lady Banks rose grown from cuttings a homesick Scottish bride's family mailed to her; by 2014 its canopy covered more than 8,000 square feet.

Suntory's genetically engineered 'blue' rose, sold in Japan from 2010, is really what colour?

The pigment was borrowed from a pansy, but rose petals are too acidic for it, so the colour fades toward mauve.

Why is the Rose Parade never held on a Sunday, a rule dating from 1893?

When New Year's Day lands on a Sunday the whole event moves to Monday 2 January, which is why the Rose Bowl game occasionally does too.

Rose Kennedy, matriarch of the Kennedy family, died in 1995 at what age?

Pope Pius XII had made her a papal countess in 1951, only the sixth American woman to receive the rank.

Which Belgian botanical artist is famous above all for his watercolours of roses?

Born in Luxembourg, he worked at Malmaison and published Les Roses between 1817 and 1824, still the best-known flower book ever printed.

Bulgaria's Rose Valley, source of nearly half the world's rose oil, is centred on which town?

Picking runs from May to June, and the region's oil won EU Protected Geographical Indication status as Bulgarian rose oil in 2014.

The oldest rose fossils ever found come from the Florissant Formation in which US state?

Those Late Eocene remains are roughly 35 million years old, and roses had spread to Europe by the early Oligocene.

Which rose, introduced by Jean-Baptiste Guillot in 1867, is credited as the first hybrid tea?

Hybrid teas crossed the big-flowered hybrid perpetuals with elegant tea roses, and their high-centred bloom became the florist's standard rose.

Bette Midler's hit 'The Rose', from her 1979 film of the same name, was written by whom?

The songwriter had performed it in clubs for a couple of years before it was picked up; Midler won a Grammy for her recording.

The name 'Wars of the Roses' only came into common use after an 1829 novel by which author?

Anne of Geierstein borrowed the image from a Shakespeare scene in which nobles pick red or white roses in the Temple gardens; contemporaries just called it the civil wars.

The blue pigment engineered into Suntory's rose, borrowed from a pansy, is called what?

Researchers cloned the gene from a pansy and inserted it into an old garden rose called 'Cardinal de Richelieu' after 13 years of trying.

The 'Peace' rose was originally registered under which name, honouring its breeder's mother?

Because cuttings were scattered across Europe as war broke out, the same rose was also sold as 'Gioia' in Italy and 'Gloria Dei' across the Rhine.

Legend ties Hildesheim's thousand-year rose to which emperor, founder of the diocese in 815?

The story goes that while the rose bush flourishes, the town will prosper, and the cathedral was deliberately built around the spot where it grew.

David Austin's first commercial rose, launched in 1961, was named after which flower arranger?

It bloomed only once a season; the repeat-flowering 'English Roses' that made his name did not appear until 1969.

The Damask rose, grown for perfume, is a hybrid of R. moschata and which other species?

A Crusader named Robert de Brie is often credited with bringing it from Syria after the 1148 siege of the city it is named for.

In myth, Cupid gave a rose to which god of silence so he would keep Venus's secrets?

The Hellenistic god of silence, shown with a finger to his lips, is why the rose became a symbol of confidentiality in the first place.

The word 'rose' traces back through Latin and Greek to a word in which ancient language?

Greek rhodon came from Old Persian wurdi, which is related to words in Avestan, Sogdian and Parthian.

Which two rose species are unusual in normally having only four petals rather than five?

Each petal is divided into two lobes, and beneath them sit five sepals.

Which subgenus holds the only two roses without compound leaves or stipules, both from Southwest Asia?

It contains Rosa persica and Rosa berberifolia; Platyrhodon holds the flaky-barked chestnut rose.

Which nursery planted a rosarium of over a thousand rose cultivars at Abney Park Cemetery in 1840?

Abney Park was an early Victorian garden cemetery and arboretum in England.

Which two fragrant alcohols are the main constituents of attar of roses?

Rose camphor, an odourless solid, separates from the oil, and beta-damascenone adds significantly to the scent.

In which region is Rooh Afza, a concentrated rose squash, especially popular?

Rose water also flavours sweets such as gulab jamun, barfi and Turkish delight across the region.

A class of old garden roses named for an Indian Ocean island, now Réunion, was known by what former name?

They are thought to be a cross between the Autumn Damask and the 'Old Blush' China rose, both used as hedging there.

Which South Carolina rice planter raised the first Noisette rose?

He crossed the China rose 'Parson's Pink' with the autumn-flowering musk rose to get a vigorous climber.

'Soleil d'Or' (1900) brought genes from which species into roses, adding deep yellows and oranges?

The old Austrian briar rose gave an entirely new colour range to the Pernetiana class.