Some Interesting Facts about World’s Best Roses

When it comes to planting flowers, rose is the most favorite flower in the world that every gardener wants to plant in his/her garden. So today before beginning the beautiful journey of growing roses, I would like to share some interesting facts about world’s best roses. This is for all rose lovers around the world.

Rose Hall of Fame: It is perhaps the highest honor for a particular rose variety. The World Federation of Rose Societies decided this honor for particular varieties that have shown an outstanding performance over a long period of time and unsurpassed popularity.

To decide this performance, a variety has to be commercially available in the market for at least 15 years. Roses are evaluated on different parameters like color, shape, size, fragrance, flowering capacity, disease resistance, etc. Total points are 10.

Thousands of rose varieties have been introduced in the market in the last 100 years. New introductions are adorned by many adjectives but only a few are able to fulfill rose buyer’s expectations and only they can sustain in the market and rest are lost into anonymity.

So far “Peace” is the world’s best rose even today which was introduced back in 1945 and achieved near about 10 points.

Even today, it scores more than 8.5 points. After “Peace”, only a few rose varieties have achieved “The Hall of Fame” status and some of them are Pascali, Ingrid Bergman, Iceberg, Bonica, Elina, Papa Meilland, Double Delight, and latest one is Graham Thomas which was introduced most recently in 2009. Interestingly, all these varieties are available worldwide.

As an interesting fact, until middle of 18^th century, there were limited colors in roses. The first variety of hybrid tea rose was bred in France which had a different shape and it was dull red. Its real good red color was introduced after 30 years.

Interestingly in 1960s, first bright yellow rose “Summer Sunshine” was inducted by Jackson Perkins from USA. So far it has been the brightest yellow rose ever seen in the world.

A variety called “Independence” is thought to have brought the Vermilion orange color of roses. Now this color is very common in all types of roses. Super Star rose is the variety which has a light orange vermillion color with an extra ordinary brilliance. Till now, it is one of the most sought after rose. Now, there are many color changing roses like Double Delight which is very popular around the world.

Another interesting fact is that a cross of Charles Mallerin and Chrysler Imperial rose produced a fruit containing two seeds which later on sprouted into two outstanding red roses known as Oklahoma and Mister Lincoln rose. In the same year in other country, this crossbreeding produced one more outstanding rose named Papa Meilland which is known as world’s most fragrant rose.

When the Rosa Peace variety was created, the breeder Francis Meilland was very young and he had no formal training of breeding roses. At that time, the colors of roses were very limited. The Persian species Rosa Foetida was also included into the crossbreed .The variety received its yellow color almost directly from Persian species. This variety was confidentially shifted to America in order to save it from the destruction of Second World War. After the war when the peace treaty was being signed, every delegate was given this flower and it was renamed as “Peace”. Before this, it was known by different names like Madame Meilland rose, Gloria Dei rose, etc. Since that time, this rose has been maintaining its popularity as “world’s best rose”.