Tag Archive | roses for valentines

Roses ~ How Supply and Demand Adds to the higher pricing

Feb5

Why Roses Are Sometimes More Expensive on Valentine’s Day

dozen red rosesA simple case of supply and demand –  Valentine’s Day inspires the heaviest demand for long-stemmed roses, and several rosebuds must be sacrificed to create a single long-stemmed rose. After the Christmas season demand for red roses is filled, growers need 50-70 days to produce enough roses for Valentine’s Day. Winter’s shorter daylight hours and higher energy costs hamper efforts to grow large rose crops. Inclement weather often requires extreme measures to ensure that flowers are delivered in time. To fulfill the tremendous number of orders for Valentine’s Day flowers, florists have to hire additional help, work longer hours and acquire extra delivery vehicles and drivers. In order to meet the heavy consumer demand for Valentine’s Day roses, imports have played a much bigger role in recent years. 

In short, roses in February are every bit as special as you would expect.

Be sure to order Roses for Your Someone Special this week. Don’t wait until Valentine’s Day to send your Valentine a dozen roses, a romantic vase arrangement and more!

My Mistress’ Eyes

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, white and red,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes there is more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet by heaven I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Shakespeare, sonnet CXXX

History of Roses

Jan21

"history of roses"

Roses have a long and colorful history. They have been symbols of love, beauty, war, and politics. The rose is, according to fossil evidence, 35 million years old. In nature, the genus Rosa has some 150 species spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from Alaska to Mexico and including northern Africa .

Garden cultivation of roses began some 5,000 years ago, probably in China . During the Roman period, roses were grown extensively in the Middle East . They were used as confetti at celebrations, for medicinal purposes, and as a source of perfume. Roman nobility established large public rose gardens in the south of Rome . After the fall of the Roman Empire , the popularity of roses seemed to rise and fall depending on gardening trends of the time.  

During the fifteenth century, the rose was used as a symbol for the factions fighting to control England . The white rose symbolized York , and the red rose symbolized Lancaster , as a result, the conflict became known as the “War of the Roses.”  Roses were in such high demand during the seventeenth century that royalty considered roses or rose water as legal tender, and they were often used as barter and for payments.

Napoleon’s wife Josephine established an extensive collection of roses at Chateau de Malmaison, an estate seven miles west of Paris in the 1800s. This garden became the setting for Pierre Joseph Redoute’s work as a botanical illustrator. In 1824, he completed his watercolor collection “Les Rose,” which is still considered one of the finest records of botanical illustration.  

It wasn’t until the late eighteenth century that cultivated roses were introduced into Europe from China.

Most modern-day roses can be traced back to this ancestry.