Rose
Rose names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Rose a thorny, flowering shrub
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a thorny, flowering shrub, giving name to a large family, including many orchard and garden fruits. Wild roses have five petals, numerous stamens, and numerous pistils, one for each of the seeds, finally enclosed in the fleshy rose hip or calyx. A rose hip (it should never be called a rosebud, which is an unopened flower) is the very opposite of its cousin, the strawberry. If the end of the strawberry were pushed inward like the end of the finger of a glove until the naked seeds of the strawberry were on the inside instead of the outside, we should have the rose-hip style of fruiting. Or if the inside of the rose hip were to swell out and upward, as a boy pulls his pocket inside out, the rose hip would be constructed then on the plan of a strawberry. All wild roses are single. The double roses of cultivation have been made so by the gardener's skill in changing stamens back to leaves, that is to say, into petals. It is difficult to say how many species there are. One authority says thirty, another describes over 4,000. One story, too good not to be true, runs to the effect that an English authority made several species out of a number of American specimens sent him from the same bush. Great Britain recognizes about a score. Wild roses are found throughout the north temperate zone northward to Lapland and Hudson Bay . Some kinds are dwarf, shoe-high, others are prodigious climbers, making twenty to forty feet in a season. Various classifications of the cultivated roses have been made. Gardeners recognize over fifty desirable species. Florists group roses into, first of all, summer flowering roses that bloom once each season, and perpetual roses that bloom the year around if conditions permit; and these again are divided in Bailey's monumental Cyclopedia into nineteen classes, which we can take space only to name: Provence, damask, and French, alba (white), Ayrshire, briers, multiflora (many-flowered), evergreen, and pompon are summer flowering groups. The perpetuals include hybrid perpetuals, hybrid tea, moss, Bourbon, Bourbon perpetual, China, musk, Ayrshire, polyantha, perpetual briers, and evergreen groups. Eglantine or sweet brier is a wild hedge rose. The rose is by common consent the queen of flowers. Wild or tame, its beauty cannot be gainsaid. Whatever his favorite flower may be, everyone is fond of the rose. In English history the white rose was the badge of York, and the red rose that of Lancaster. Edward III impressed a rose on his coinage of gold. The rose and the rosette had their place in architecture. A rose window surrounded by delicate tracery was worked out in stained glass. "No rose without thorns," expresses the philosophy of the common people. "The rose is red, the violet blue," may be found scribbled on many an old school book. A "bed of roses" is the utmost expression of elegant luxury. The "Last Rose of Summer" voices regret for pleasures nearly over. An allusion to the rose, if delicately made, is particularly appropriate to feminine beauty, as when Byron says: And her face so fair Stirred with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air. Tennyson calls his Princess, A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, As sweet as English air could make her. and his Maud, Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls. The value of good associations is suggested well in the line: I am not a rose, but I have lived near the rose. "Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered," a grave bit of advice from the wisdom of Solomon, points out the propriety of appreciating our opportunities before it is too late. Shakespeare may be right in saying, "That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet," but certainly to substitute a new word would be a serious loss to our literature. See Attar; Perfume; Oil Liberty roses. Rose
Rose From the earliest times the rose has been an emblem of silence
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
From the earliest times the rose has been an emblem of silence. Eros, in the Greek mythology, presents a rose to the god of silence, and to this day sub rosa, or " under the rose," means the keeping of a secret. Roses were used, in very early times as a potent ingredient in love philters. Rosen, Paul In Greece it was customary to leave bequests for the maintenance of rose gardens, a custom which has come down to recent times. Rose gardens were common during the middle ages . According to Indian mythology, one of the wives of Vishnu was found in a rose. In Rome it was the custom to bless the rose on a certain Sunday, called Rose Sunday. The custom of blessing the golden rose came into vogue about the eleventh century. The golden rose thus consecrated was given to princes as a mark of the Roman Pontiffs' favour. In the east it is still believed that the first rose was generated by a tear of the prophet Mohammed, and it is further believed that on a certain day in the year the rose has a heart of gold. In the west of Scotland if a white rose bloomed in autumn it was a token of an early marriage. The red rose, it was said, would not bloom over a grave. If a young girl had several lovers, and wished to know which of them would be her husband, she would take a rose leaf for each of her sweethearts, and naming each leaf after the name of one of her lovers, she would watch them till one after another they sank, and the last to sink would be her future husband. Rose leaves thrown upon a fire gave good luck. If a rose bush were pruned on St. John's eve, it would bloom again in the autumn. Superstitions respecting the rose are more numerous in England than in Scotland.
Rose JOHN HOLLAND, an English historian
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN HOLLAND, an English historian, born at Bedford, England, in 1855. He was educated at Owens College, Manchester, and at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating from the latter in 1879. He was lecturer on modern history to the Cambridge and London Societies for University Extension, in 1911, after which he was reader of modern history at Cambridge. His historical writings include "The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era" (1894); "The Reign of Queen Victoria" (1897); "The Rise of Democracy" (1897); "William Pitt and the Great War" (1911); "Origins of the War" (1914); and "The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914" (1915). He was one of the contributors to the Cambridge Modern History. ROSE ACACIA (Robinia hispida, natural order Leguminosa), a highly ornamental flowering shrub inhabiting the S. parts of the Alleghany Mountains, and now frequently seen in gardens in Europe. It is a species of locust; the flowers are large, rose-colored, and inodorous; the pods are glandular-hispid.
Rose the beautiful and fragrant flower which has given name
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the beautiful and fragrant flower which has given name to the large natural order Rosaceæ, seems to be confined to the cooler parts of the Northern Hemisphere. The species are numerous and are extremely difficult to distinguish. The rose is easily cultivated, and its varieties are almost endless. Nature, almost unaided, will perform wonders in bringing forth new roses; but man, properly conversant with her secrets, can do much to help. Crossing, grafting, and bud variation are the methods practiced by growers. Of these of one variety to the stigma of another. The American Beauty rose had its birth in an almost neglected corner of the Washington garden garden of the late George Bancroft. Amid a tangle of roses of common varieties suddenly blossomed this new and wonderful rose. Slips were at once experimented with, and American Beauty has been steadily improved in size and fragrance.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 editor threw up his hands over how many species there are — "One authority says thirty, another describes over 4,000" — and modern botany has largely explained why: the genus Rosa is riddled with polyploidy and apomictic seed-setting, which blurs species lines, and most current floras settle on roughly 100 to 150 species. The nineteen garden classes listed from Bailey have been overtaken by the hybrid teas, floribundas and shrub roses that dominate nurseries today, the single most famous of them the 'Peace' rose released in 1945; the note about wartime "Liberty roses" is a period detail no catalogue now carries. In 2018 a research consortium published a high-quality genome sequence of Rosa chinensis, the China rose that stands behind almost every repeat-flowering garden variety. The folklore entry of 1920 still stands as folklore — sub rosa is alive in English, and the papal Golden Rose is still occasionally conferred — while the John Holland Rose of Collier's 1921 went on to die in 1942, his life of Napoleon still cited by historians.
Written for this edition, 2026.