70 Fun Facts About Rose

The saying 'a rose by any other name' comes from a speech by which Shakespeare heroine?

Juliet: she argues that Romeo's surname, Montague, is no part of him, since the flower would smell as sweet whatever it was called.

The Rose Parade is held each New Year in which California city?

Pasadena: members of its Valley Hunt Club began the parade to show friends back east, buried in snow, that flowers bloomed there in midwinter.

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

True love: Victorians gave each bloom a meaning so a bouquet could say what etiquette kept them from speaking aloud, and guidebooks to the code sat in many homes.

Rose hips are especially rich in which vitamin?

C: few plants hold more of the vitamin than rose hips, which is why wartime Britain leaned on wild ones, boiled into the syrup long taken to top up levels.

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

Apple: like a rose hip, most of the flesh you eat is the swollen cup from the base of the flower, grown up around the core that holds the pips.

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

Copper: the more of it in the mix, the redder the metal, and the alloy was so fashionable in 19th-century Russia that it became known as Russian gold.

In double garden roses, the extra petals are converted versions of which part of the plant?

Stamens: a wild rose has just five petals, and gardeners over centuries picked out the mutations that turn its pollen-bearing stamens into dozens more.

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

England: its emblem is a double rose, white set on red, devised to show the two warring houses joined by a royal marriage.

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

Prickles: true thorns are modified stems, but a rose's hooks grow only from the stem's outer skin, which is why they can be snapped off so cleanly.

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

York: the rivalry crossed the Atlantic, where the Pennsylvania cities of York and Lancaster long fielded baseball teams called the White Roses and the Red Roses.

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

Portland, Oregon: its test garden grew out of World War I, when breeders around the world began sending their new varieties to the city to be put on trial.

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

Chicago Bulls: his hometown team had landed him against the odds, winning the 2008 draft lottery with only a 1.7 percent chance at the first pick.

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

A childhood sled: the reporter gives up without an answer, and only the audience sees the name on the sled as workers feed Kane's unwanted belongings to a furnace.

Most wild rose species are native to which continent?

Asia: wild roses are native only to the Northern Hemisphere, so every rose growing south of the equator descends from plants that people carried there.

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

Aphrodite: in the Iliad she keeps the dogs off Hector's body night and day and anoints it with oil of roses so that his flesh will not be torn.

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

In secret: a rose hung or carved overhead at a banquet or meeting is said to have bound everyone beneath it to keep what they heard in confidence.

Which British political party adopted a red rose as its symbol in the 1980s?

Labour: under Neil Kinnock the party traded its old logo for the flower in a 1986 rebrand, borrowing an emblem that socialist parties on the Continent already used.

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

Natural materials such as flowers: the first entries were private carriages decked in blossom, and today's computer-run floats hide their machinery under petals, seeds and bark.

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

Batman Forever: Seal had written the song in 1987, felt embarrassed by it and threw the tape in a corner; after the film it won the Grammys for Record and Song of the Year.

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

Poison: singer Bret Michaels wrote it in a laundromat on tour, 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?

Umberto Eco: a university professor of semiotics, he was nearing 50 when this debut made him a best-selling novelist around the world.

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

Billie Piper: her character is trailed all series by the words 'Bad Wolf', which she herself turns out to have scattered through time and space as a message.

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

Josephine: Napoleon gave her that name, for until they met she had been known as Rose, and at Malmaison she gathered roses from around the world.

Which US president signed the law that made the rose America's national floral emblem?

Ronald Reagan: his 1986 signature settled an old contest in which Senator Everett Dirksen had campaigned for years to give the honour to the marigold instead.

After Rome's Christianisation, the rose became identified with which figure?

The Virgin Mary: the link gave the rosary its name, from the Latin for a rose garden, the cycle of prayers offered to her being pictured as a garden or garland.

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

The FIFA World Cup: Brazil beat Italy there in the first final ever settled by a penalty shoot-out, which ended when Roberto Baggio put his spot-kick over the crossbar.

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

Itching powder: the stiff hairs packed around the seeds irritate the skin, which is also why foragers take care to scoop them out before eating the fruit raw.

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

St. Olaf: Betty White told Rose's tales of the town only after a swap, having first been offered Blanche while Rue McClanahan was offered Rose.

Repeat-flowering garden roses descend from plants brought to Europe in the 18th century from which country?

China: its long-cultivated garden roses flowered again and again, and once they reached Europe, where roses mostly bloomed once a year, breeders crossed them into most modern varieties.

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

Henry VII: he had won the crown at Bosworth the year before, and marrying Elizabeth, daughter of the rival house, let him fuse the two claims in one badge.

For rose oil, when are the flowers traditionally picked?

In the morning before sunrise: the blooms are cut one by one by hand, laid in baskets and hurried to the stills, because they have to be distilled the same day.

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

Germany: the Hildesheim rose seemed lost when Allied bombs wrecked the cathedral in 1945, but its roots survived under the rubble and sent up new shoots.

The Tournament of Roses once replaced football with which Roman-style contest?

Chariot races: Michigan had routed Stanford 49-0 in the first game in 1902, so the organisers dropped football and did not bring it back for good until 1916.

Which emblem traditionally marks north on a compass rose?

A fleur-de-lis: the chartmaker Pedro Reinel introduced it around 1500, and it caught on so widely that Baden-Powell later took the north mark as the Scouts' badge.

Pete Rose became baseball's all-time hits leader in 1985 by passing which player?

Ty Cobb: Rose went on to 4,256 hits, but in 1989, three years after his last game as a player, he was ruled permanently ineligible amid accusations that he had bet on baseball.

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

Danny DeVito: he reunited his Romancing the Stone co-stars Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, the adventure film's sweethearts now cast as bitter enemies.

Roughly what weight of rose flowers goes into a single kilogram of rose oil?

About 3,000 kg: the blooms hold so little oil that three tonnes or more are distilled for each kilogram, which is why genuine attar of roses commands such a high price.

Rose windows, great circles of stone tracery and stained glass, are a hallmark of which style of architecture?

Gothic: when fire tore through Paris's great cathedral in 2019, bringing down the roof and spire, its famous rose windows came through almost unharmed.

Rose water is thought to have originated in which present-day country?

Iran: medieval chemists there and across the Islamic world, the physician Avicenna among them, refined the steam distilling by which perfumers draw the scent from rose petals.

The Rosicrucians, an esoteric brotherhood of 17th-century legend, take their name from a rose joined to what?

A cross: the founder the name honours, Christian Rosenkreuz or Rose-cross, was said to have lived in the 1400s, yet no word of him is older than the order's own pamphlets, first printed in 1614.

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

Munich: Hans and Sophie Scholl were betrayed by a university janitor who saw them with leaflets, and months after their execution Allied planes dropped copies of their last one across the Reich.

The Roman writer Pliny said the root of the wild dog rose could cure what?

A mad dog's bite: Pliny tells of a soldier's mother who was warned in a dream to send her son the root, just as he began to dread water after being bitten.

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

Indiana: he grew up there as William Bailey, under his stepfather's surname, and only at 17, reading old insurance papers, did he discover that he had been born a Rose.

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

Gloria Stuart: a 1930s Hollywood star who had given up acting for three decades to work as an artist, she was 86 when she was cast as the 100-year-old Rose.

The 'Peace' rose was launched under that name in 1945 by growers in which country?

The United States: its French breeder had sent budwood abroad before the 1940 invasion, and American growers trialled it through the war before launching it on 29 April 1945.

Guinness lists the world's largest rosebush, planted in 1885, in which Arizona town?

Tombstone: a homesick Scottish bride's family sent her the cuttings, and the single Lady Banks rose she planted has spread into a canopy of several thousand square feet.

Long a byword for the unattainable, a rose of which colour did Suntory's scientists finally engineer with a pansy gene?

Blue: the pansy gene gave the petals blue pigment after years of work, but rose petals are more acidic, so the flower sold in Japan came out closer to lavender.

Why has the Rose Parade avoided Sundays since 1893?

So as not to disturb horses hitched outside churches: organisers feared the parade would spook them and disrupt the services, so when New Year's Day falls on a Sunday everything moves to Monday 2 January.

Rose Kennedy, mother of President Kennedy, was the daughter of a mayor of which city?

Boston: her father, John 'Honey Fitz' Fitzgerald, was its mayor twice and refused to let her go to Wellesley College; she lived to 104, outliving four of her nine children.

Which artist painted the roses of the Malmaison garden for the celebrated book Les Roses?

Pierre-Joseph Redouté: nicknamed the Raphael of flowers, he had been a royal court artist and still kept painting through the Revolution and the Terror.

The Rose Valley around Kazanlak, a centuries-old centre of rose oil, lies in which country?

Bulgaria: sheltered between two mountain ranges, the valley gives the oil rose the mild, moist spring and light sandy soil it needs, and its oil won EU protected status in 2014.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the gardeners are painting white roses red for fear of whom?

The Queen of Hearts: the gardeners, three playing cards, had planted a white rose-tree where a red one was ordered, and expect to lose their heads if she finds out.

'La France', bred by Jean-Baptiste Guillot in 1867, is generally credited as the first rose of which class?

Hybrid tea: breeders crossed tough hybrid perpetuals with delicate tea roses, and the long-stemmed, high-centred bloom that resulted became the florist's standard.

Amanda McBroom's ballad 'The Rose' became a hit for which star of the 1979 film of the same name?

Bette Midler: she played a self-destructive rock star loosely based on Janis Joplin, though the ballad was not written for the film; its author had been singing it in clubs.

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

Sir Walter Scott: his Anne of Geierstein took the image from a Shakespeare scene in which quarrelling nobles each pick a red or a white rose in a garden to show their side.

Which author wrote The Little Prince, in which a boy tends a vain rose on his tiny planet?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: the proud, fragile flower his prince shelters under glass is widely thought to be a portrait of his wife, Consuelo, with whom he had a stormy marriage.

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

Madame A. Meilland: with growers cut off from one another by the war, the same rose was also launched as 'Gioia' in Italy and 'Gloria Dei' across the Rhine before 'Peace' won out.

For centuries the Golden Rose, a gold ornament, has been sent to favoured rulers and churches by whom?

The Pope: he blesses the ornament on the fourth Sunday of Lent, often called Rose Sunday, then has it put away until he finds a recipient worthy of it.

The 1961 rose 'Constance Spry' was the first commercial release of which breeder?

David Austin: he named it for the society florist who arranged the flowers for Elizabeth II's coronation and, for the lunch that followed, helped devise coronation chicken.

On Sant Jordi's Day in Catalonia, red roses are traditionally exchanged for which other gift?

Books: by tradition a man gave a rose and a woman gave a book, and the day, 23 April, long kept as the anniversary of Cervantes's death, became Spain's day for celebrating books as well.

The Brothers Grimm gave which fairy-tale heroine the name Briar Rose?

Sleeping Beauty: in the Grimms' telling a hedge of thorns grows up to hide the palace, and for years it defeats every king's son who tries to break through to her.

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

Old Persian: the Greeks borrowed their word rhodon from the East, which is why Armenian vard and Aramaic warda sound like distant cousins of 'rose'.

Which Best Picture winner shares its name with a rose that appears all through the film?

American Beauty: the rose behind the title, which fills the film's suburban vases and daydreams, was in fact bred in France in 1875 and first named 'Madame Ferdinand Jamin'.

Which American writer coined the much-quoted line 'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose'?

Gertrude Stein: in her 1913 poem 'Sacred Emily' the first Rose is a person's name, and she later claimed that in the line 'the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years'.

The Rose Revolution of 2003, named for the flowers protesters carried into parliament, toppled the president of which country?

Georgia: demonstrators led by Mikheil Saakashvili walked into the chamber holding red roses, and President Eduard Shevardnadze, a holdover of the Soviet era, resigned.

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

Geraniol and citronellol are the oil's main ingredients, yet a ketone called damascenone, present only in traces, does much of the work of making it smell like a rose.

Rooh Afza, a rose syrup loved across India and Pakistan, is a traditional drink of which religious observance?

Ramadan: stirred into cold milk or water, it is a favourite way to break the day's fast, and when Partition split the family firm that makes it, the syrup ended up produced in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Bourbon roses are named for Île Bourbon, the old name of which Indian Ocean island?

Réunion: French settlers there fenced their fields with two kinds of rose, 'Old Blush' and the Autumn Damask, and the first Bourbon is thought to be a chance seedling between the hedges.

The first Noisette rose was raised by rice planter John Champneys in his garden outside which Southern port city?

Charleston: Champneys gave seedlings to his neighbour Philippe Noisette, whose brother sold their offspring from a Paris nursery, so the class carries the nurseryman's name instead of its breeder's.

Rosa foetida, crossed into garden roses by French breeder Joseph Pernet-Ducher, gave modern roses which strong colour?

Deep yellow: his 'Soleil d'Or' of 1900 opened a new range of yellows and oranges, but the species also passed its weakness for black spot disease to its descendants.