Is there any flower as beloved as the rose ? Or one that has
been featured more often in song, poem, and verse than the
luscious rose ? Demure in soft shades of apricot, peach, pink,
yellow and white, and bold and blazing in deepest red, roses,
from miniature to voluptuous, are a joy to behold, and a summer
favorite. According to the website www.herbs2000.com the rose
most likely originated in Central Asia about 60 to 70 million
years ago, during the Eocene epoch, and spread over the entire
Northern Hemisphere. Early civilizations, including the Chinese,
the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans,
appreciated roses and grew them widely as long as five thousand
years ago. About 500 B.C. Confucius wrote of roses growing in
the Imperial Gardens and noted that the library of the Chinese
emperor contained hundreds of books about roses. It is said that
the rose gardeners of the Han dynasty (207 B.C.-A.D. 220) were
so obsessed with these flowers that their parks threatened to
engulf land needed for p