Rose - Prize of all Time!

Prized for centuries for their beauty and as a source of perfume,
roses are probably the world's most widely cultivated ornamental
plants.

Many traditions tell of the first Rose. The Arabs believed the first
Rose to have sprung from a drop of sweat from the brow of Mohamet. In
Christian tradition, the original Rose grew in the Garden of Eden. It
had no thorns. A flower of pure beauty, it gave only pleasure and never
hurt. The thorns were added after man's fall.

The Persian poets tell us that the first Rose bloomed in Gulistan at
the time the flowers demanded from Allah a new sovereign, because the
drowsy lotus would slumber at night.

The old Greeks, fabled the Rose to have once been a nymph, who, roused
from sleep by a kiss from Apollo, transformed herself into the flower.
For the Greeks, the Rose symbolized love, and beauty and they dedicated
it to Aphrodite.

One legend tells how, at first the beautiful Rose was snowy white,
until the nightingale, falling into such ecstasy of love over her
charms, and disregarding the thorns that tore his breast, pressed his
beating heart against her soft petals, from the crimson flood of his
wounds, dyed her white bosom red.

As a heaven sent flower, the Rose is the most frequently mentioned
flower in legend of the saints. One of these tells how a maiden,
unjustly accused of wrong doing, was condemned to be burned to death.
As the flames were about to be lit, she called to God to deliver her
and make her innocence clear to all men. As soon as the flames leapt
around her, they were suddenly extinquished, the wood turning into
freshly sprouting Rose bushes. Those pieces not yet alight showing pure
white blooms, those already kindled glowing with crimson blooms. Since
then the Rose has been the emblem of christian martyrdom.

The stories, both romantic, and mystical, must number in the thousands,
yet the Rose retains the secret of her mysterious origin, just like
love! No wonder this flower is the flower of St. Valentine.

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