Garden roses and colorful rose hybrids have long been favorites to those of us who admire beautiful flowers. I daresay that a rose garden may often be characterized as the most distinguished undertaking for master gardeners. Although the wild Virginia rose deserves its position as the most colorful local wild rose, there lurks a delicate-flowered wild wood rose (Rosa carolina) inconspicuously embedded along woodland edges. From May to mid July its pale pink flowers and sharp, straight thorns confirm its identity as a true member of the rose family.
It seems appropriate for me to quote from the writings of the English philosopher Francis Bacon:
“And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that best perfume the air.”
Copyright © 2003 William T. Hathaway.