While people learned the nature of the plant, and eventually went on to produce a multitude of different colored and fragrant roses, the flowers themselves have influenced the human psyche and even, at times, human economics and culture.
The world may owe the art of rose cultivation to the ancient Chinese, since the people of that region were cultivating rose plants about five thousand years ago. A millennium or two later, the Egyptians became aware of the rose plant and began to make wreaths that incorporated these flowers.
Remnants of such wreaths have actually been discovered buried in Egyptian tombs. The people of Crete, during the Bronze Age, represented their flower gardening in frescoes on the walls of their homes, and once again roses are featured in the paintings.
People in European nations regard rose plants almost matter-of-factly, as an ordinary fact of life. But for several centuries, the plants seemed to have been forgotten, until the knights of the Crusades brought them back from the lands in which they had fought.
Then the countries of Europe seemed to make up for lost time, adopting roses as the symbols of royal houses, and learning rose gardening with such enthusiasm that occasionally roses functioned as legal currency.
Things have settled down since then, and roses have become as much beloved by ordinary people as they have often been by the aristocracy. As companions through history, human beings and roses have had a long, eventful partnership.
To read more Our Symbiotic Relationship With Rose Plant
