How Roses Evolved To Become The Flower Of Valentine’s Day

How roses evolved to go nan flower of Valentine’s Day

Roses are red—but their ancestors looked alternatively different

By Jackie Flynn Mogensen edited by Claire Cameron

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Roses are nan “queen of flowers,” and they’ve earned nan title: from Romeo and Juliet to Beauty and nan Beast and ABC’s The Bachelor franchise, roses are nan enduring awesome of passion, romance and love. It’s estimated that much than 250 cardinal roses are produced for Valentine’s Day each year, and florists waste much connected that time than connected immoderate different holiday. It’s besides nan charismatic flower of nan U.S. (thank erstwhile president Ronald Reagan). But nan roseate wasn’t ever truthful regal, reddish and plump—in fact, its origins are overmuch much humble and much ancient than you mightiness think.

Roses first emerged immoderate 35 cardinal years agone during nan Eocene epoch, which was erstwhile early horses and canids first appeared. And nan flowers apt looked very different from nan bunches we prime retired today: one 2025 analysis of roses collected crossed China recovered that nan ancestors of modern roses were astir apt yellow, not red. Their petals were besides alternatively flat, and location were apt conscionable 5 of them, explains Peter Kukielski, an master connected roses and writer of nan book Rosa: The Story of nan Rose.

Thankfully for roses, speech from their beauty, they besides person important medicinal properties—rose hips are afloat of vitamin C—and that helped gain nan flower a precocious position among rulers passim history who “brought nan roseate to prominence,” Kukielski says. Cleopatra, for example, is said to person doused her boat’s sails successful roseate perfume erstwhile she visited nan Roman wide Mark Antony.

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Modern roses, arsenic we cognize them, day to 1867, erstwhile enthusiasts successful Europe bred a “hybrid perpetual” roseate pinch a “tea rose.” The product, a “hybrid tea” rose, had nan classical roseate shape—a pointed bud centered precocious connected a azygous stem.

After that, nan roseate manufacture really bloomed. “This flower shape became each nan rage,” Kukielski says. Indeed, if you’re fortunate capable to person a bouquet of roses for Valentines Day this year, chances are that it’s a hybrid rose, though hybrid beverage roses are conscionable 1 of more than 40 classes of nan flower.

But hybridization had its broadside effects. By breeding roses for their shape, Kukielski says, nan hearty flower that’d survived successful nan chaotic for tens of millions of years became weakened, losing immoderate of its illness resistance. “People were producing roses astatine specified a fever for this flower shape that, genetically, things sewage lost,” he says. The flowers person besides mislaid astir of their scent.

Roses are still changing today. Biologists are moving to make roses much disease-resistant truthful that they tin turn without harsh aliases toxic chemicals and to undo immoderate of humans’ evolutionary meddling. Some growers person besides started to attraction much connected roses that are due to their local climates, Kukielski says.

The flowers could morph moreover further, too: In 2024 research published successful Science suggested that nan type of “thorns” recovered connected roses and different plants stem from mutations successful a azygous gene. The findings could “pave nan way” for scientists to create roses without specified thorns (which are technically considered “prickles” alternatively than existent thorns) utilizing cistron editing, nan authors wrote.

At slightest for now, nary different flower has travel adjacent to unseating nan roseate from its throne. And that’s really it should be, arsenic acold arsenic Kukielski is concerned.

“This 1 works has nan expertise to transcend each of our generations,” he says. “And I conscionable deliberation that's special.”