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EARLY RECORDS |
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The rose is the first flower whose perfume has been recorded. Undoubtedly many other scented flowers existed before those records were made, but, being inferior, they were disregarded. The historians of perfumery tell us also that the rose was the first flower from which any form of perfume was made, and that Avicenna, an illustrious Arabian doctor, discovered the art of extracting perfume from flowers by distillation. He made his first experiments on R. centifolia (the Cabbage Rose), and so invented rose-water. The sweetness of rose scent is mentioned by the earliest Greek and Roman writers.
Nature provides a plant with blossoms as part of its reproductive system. These flowers must attract insects, and in order that they may do so they have perfume and showy petals. Many sweetly scented roses have less attractive colouring; perhaps they do not need both, or perhaps they inherit the defect from some ancestor. Fragrance is expected of roses, and it is one of their greatest attractions. A rose with only faint perfume is no less beautiful, but it is certainly less alluring. The truest, simplest, and least complex love of flowers is found in the man or woman who grows just a few plants of this and that, in a purely unscientific way, and does not know the names of more than two or three of them. Hand him or her a rose. There will be little caring for form. Size and colour will be admired, but before there will be time to express an opinion that bloom will have been smelt. Does that happen with a daisy, a dahlia, a hibiscus, a chrysanthemum, a camellia, or a gladiolus? Perfume is expected of a rose. |
