A Sea of Pink Roses

A Sea Of Pink Roses, by Sage Lucinda BugBug

My favorite flowers are miniature pink roses.

The rose has a long and lovely history. The earliest normal size roses have been dated back to 35 million years ago in the fossil records of Montana and Oregon. Roses are indigenous to North America. Roses have been known in recorded history for 5000 years in China.

They were first brought to Europe from China in the 18th Century, and became very popular in France and Switzerland. Roses came back to the United States in the 1800’s, and quickly spread across the continent with the pioneers.

They have represented everything from love and beauty to war and politics. In the language of flowers, roses most often stand for love. Different colors of roses have different meanings. Red roses mean love, yellow roses stand for jealousy, and pink roses stand for grace.

Roses have been popularized in literature and in song. No doubt you have read the fairy tale, Snow White and Rose Red. And in the book “Beauty and the Beast”, the heroine is named Rose.

There have been written over 4000 songs about roses. One of my favorites is the old Irish song, The Rose of Tralee. And of course, for all of you Texas kitties, there is The Yellow Rose of Texas. I am sure you can think of many other lovely songs about roses.

Roses are popular as subjects in art. The prints of Pierre Joseph Redoute, a French painter of the early 18th Century are quite famous. He has a whole book of roses, called Les Roses.

As I have said, my favorite rose is the miniature pink rose. When my beloved sister, BabyCat, crossed the Rainbow Bridge, Mommy planted a miniature pink rose in the front yard as a living remembrance to her. Pink roses stand for grace, joy, gentility, thankfulness, and the glow of the beloved’s smile. The rose she planted is a beautiful light pink rose, which is the exact color of BabyCat’s nose. And certainly there was no kitty who ever displayed the virtues of the pink rose as much as our sweet BabyCat. Although I am not positive, I believe the name of that rose is the Dresden Doll.

Miniature roses were first found growing wild on the island of Mauritius in 1810. They were brought to Europe around 1817, and made thier way to the United States around 1840. Miss Mary Lawrence, a renowned artist of the time painted at least one picture of a miniature rose in the 1840’s, and the rose was then named after her, the Rosa lawranceana. With all that was happening in Europe and the U.S., the miniature rose seems to have become lost. It was rediscovered in Switzerland around 1917 in the gardens of one Colonel Roulet. This rose was then named Rosa Roulet.

Mr. Roger Moore is known as the King of Miniature Roses, and he wrote a lovely book called “All About Miniature Roses”, in 1966. You can read it online at http://www.rdrop.com/~paul/ralphmoore/contents/chapter1.html. Mr. Moore is still living, and still cultivating miniature roses.

I hope you have enjoyed my essay on miniature roses, and that you will be inspired to plant at least one of these lovely plants in your garden.

Purrs
Sage Lucinda BugBug
Catuary by the Sea