The roses you buy are fake, and the scent of roses you smell is also fake!

Everyone should have used something with a rose scent. You can easily find the unique sweet scent of roses in shower gels, shampoos, and even perfumes and aromatherapy. But do you know which type of rose this so-called rose scent comes from?

If you don't know how to answer a question, use the elimination method. Let's eliminate a wrong answer first - the roses sold in flower shops. This "rose" is actually a hybrid perfume rose. If you smell it carefully, you will find that it tastes different from rose essential oil. Its floral fragrance is sweeter, more greasy and more "rose-like".

Flower shop "Rose"｜dashi30new / Tuchong Creative

So, is this the real rose (Rosa rugosa) that we imagine?

The answer is… Wrong! Although rose R. rugosa (also known as Chinese rose) is also used to make essential oils, the strong and sweet essential oil produced is of low quality and is not popular in the international market. It is mostly used to make rose jam, rose tea, etc.

True Rose｜Letartean / wikimedia

Compared with the strong sweet rose essential oil, the higher quality pure sweet essential oil is more popular in the international market, so it is also called the international fragrance. The rose fragrance that exists in most people's impression comes from this kind of rose essential oil. These essential oils come from the Turkish rose (R. × damascena), which is more commonly known as Damascus rose in the market.

Turkic rose｜Martin and Kathy Dady / flickr

From Asia Minor to the World

Rosa tamaska ​​is the love child of Rosa gallica and Rosa moschata; recent DNA evidence has also found that Rosa adenocarpa (R. fedtschenkoana) may have been involved at some point in the hybridization process, causing Rosa tamaska ​​to also have a genetic relationship with it.

French rose and musk rose｜wikimedia; Arashiyama

Rosa rugosa is a shrub that can grow to more than two meters tall. Its twigs have thick hooked prickles mixed with hairs, making it look like it is not easy to mess with. In the flowering season (mainly in summer and autumn, different varieties vary), the branches will be covered with light pink to light red flowers, with single or double petals, exuding a pleasant sweet scent. When the petals fall, pear-shaped or obovate fruits will be produced.

You can see the thorns of the Turkic rose｜wikimedia

The Turkic rose originated in Asia Minor and was widely planted in Syria, Israel and other places along the Mediterranean coast. At that time, Damascus (now the capital of Syria) was famous for roses, steel and silk, so the Turkic rose was nicknamed "Damask Rose". Later, this fragrant flower was brought back to Europe by the Crusaders and was widely planted in southern Europe. Its fragrance began to become a symbol of "rose fragrance" and spread around the world.

The whole rose plant is non-toxic and can be widely used in many aspects. The Minoan civilization (about 5,000 years ago) may be the earliest civilization to record the use of roses by humans. We can still find traces of wild roses in the murals of the Palace of Knossos on Crete. However, at that time, people's use of roses was very simple, nothing more than decorating food, using it directly after drying, etc.

Mural of roses in the Palace of Knossos｜ancientartifice

The birth of rose water and essential oil

In order to obtain the fragrance of roses, people sealed the delicate petals in animal fats, and when the fats absorbed the rose fragrance, they used this cream to apply on the face or body. However, this kind of fat has a short shelf life and can only be applied to a few places. It was not until people used distillation technology to further process rose petals and produce rose water (rose hydrosol) that roses became more prominent in human history.

The scene of rose oil dripping in the movie "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer".

Workers place flower petals into blocks of fat.

The protagonist is boiling a mixture of flower petals and water.

There is no detailed record of the exact time of the emergence of rose water. The first relevant document appeared in the period when rose water was already produced on a large scale. Around the 10th century AD, perhaps the Moors who expanded their territory brought this technology to Europe; in 961 AD, the first written record of rose water appeared in Europe.

This transparent liquid obtained by distilling a mixture of rose petals and water has the sweet fragrance of roses, but it is not too strong. It can be used to make perfumes, soaps, etc., and it can also make food more fragrant. In many Middle Eastern dishes, rose water is used as a spice and added during cooking to give food a unique aroma.

Today we can still find it in various desserts, such as rose-flavored nougat, cookies, ice cream, drinks, etc. In Malaysia and Singapore today, you can also find bandung, a pink drink made with rose water and milk. Waeil Alostoiny / wikimedia; Kyle Lam / flickr

Soon after its introduction, rose water became popular throughout the Arab world. According to records, as early as the 9th century AD, the Faristan province of Iran had already begun paying tribute of 30,000 bottles of rose water to Baghdad every year. With this as the center, rose water also traveled far and wide, bringing its fragrance to countries such as India, China, Egypt, and Yemen.

The Islamic people in the Middle Ages were crazy about rose water. In 1187, after Saladin (the first Sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt and Syria) recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders, he proudly stated that he would not enter the Omar Mosque (which was once used as a church) unless the entire Omar Mosque was washed with rose water.

In order to meet this requirement, 500 camels transported batches of rose water from Damascus day and night until the entire Omar Mosque was filled with the charming scent of roses. It is difficult to know what Saladin thought when he re-entered the Omar Mosque, perhaps a serious state affair, or just an exclamation from the bottom of his heart: What a nice smell!

Today's Omar Mosque was organized and built by Saladin's son on the basis of previous buildings｜Usmanreddy / wikimedia

Rose essential oil was discovered much later than rose water. Around the 16th century, people accidentally discovered that during the production of rose water, a layer of light golden aromatic substances was precipitated from the upper layer after cooling. It had a stronger aroma than rose water, which was the so-called rose oil. Rose oil was then subjected to subsequent extraction and other fine processing, and became the rose essential oil we are familiar with. Rose oil quickly became popular, and later production gradually focused on obtaining rose oil, while the first product, rose water, became a by-product.

Rose essential oil｜Naomi King / flickr

A fragrance that transcends thousands of mountains and rivers

Today, most of the rose essential oils we use come from Rosa damascena and Rosa × centifolia, and Bulgaria is the main producer of Damascus rose essential oil. Although the alias of Rosa damascena is named after the city of Damascus in Syria, Damascus has long abandoned this feature in the torrent of history, and Bulgaria, which came later, quietly wore the crown.

Centifolia rose｜Llez / wikimedia

As early as 1750, Bulgaria began to export fragrant rose essential oil to all parts of the world. Today, it is still a world-renowned rose essential oil manufacturing center. In the Rose Valley, the towering Balkan Mountains in the north keep the cold air from the north out, while the warm and humid Mediterranean air flows along the narrow valley, bringing abundant rainfall. In the nearly 100-kilometer-long valley, under the warm wind, the Turkic rose grows freely on the fertile soil.

People picking roses in the Tundza Valley in the 19th century | Felix Philipp Kanitz (1879)

Every morning when the sun rises, the petals are soaked with dew, and are gently picked by a pair of hands and put into a basket when the roses are about to wake up. Before the sun evaporates the last drop of dew, the roses enter the nearby essential oil processing factory and are then transformed into bottles of light golden, fragrant essential oils, which are taken to all parts of the world by people.

Roses in the Tundza Valley｜visitplovdiv

At this moment, if you happen to have a bottle of rose essential oil at hand, you might as well open it and smell the fragrance of the flower in the bottle. Can you imagine that this exotic fragrance has really traveled thousands of miles to reach you?

Author: Jerez S

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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