Roses are one of the most sought-after flowers in the world. They exude romantic vigour and have a sweet, supple, intoxicating scent. Though many know their beauty, few know how roses are grown and how we cultivate the different colours of roses.
How are Roses Grown?
Growing roses in different colours is not a simple task. Pink roses are the most common rose found in the wild. Pink is, without a doubt, the most classic and original colour for roses. The red colouring we associate with romance only came about due to breeding flowers for their colours.
Plants evolve in nature through pollination when bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and insects suckle on the nectar that a flower produces and accidentally brush against the stigma of a flower covered in pollen.
Pollen is similar to spores; they contain the plant's reproductive information. As a pollinator visits a nearby flower to drink more nectar or flies away to another patch of flowers, they ensure the plant will continue to spread and evolve.
We have developed techniques to manipulate this process over the centuries and create the various colours of roses we are so used to.
How does the Cultivation Process Work?
Just like the paint on a wall or a piece of paper is a different colour because of pigments, so are the pigments of a rose petal that can be manipulated. This has occurred naturally through evolution in plants and through human intervention.
The traditional way to change the colour of a rose would happen like so. First, a cultivator would look through a patch of roses and try to find the most desirable colour of petals amongst the thousands of flowers. Sometimes, they would get lucky and find many of them, but a handful would do.
Next, a cultivator must find a similarly coloured rose and breed the two flowers by taking a small brush or cotton bud, rubbing it against the pollen of the best flowers, and then pollinating each. The roses are then covered with small bags to ensure no insect or the wind is cross-pollinating. This procedure ensures that the only characteristics that will be traded are the desirable ones we want.
Over time, these roses will breed more and more desirable characteristics. Not just better colours but new varieties of roses, better resistance to disease and sharper thorns.
This is how we have the many variations of roses and even how we got modern versions of fruits or vegetables. For example, bananas were inedible before this kind of selective breeding made them the soft, seedless fruit we know.
Why are Rose Colours so Different?
Colour is a difficult concept to pin down scientifically. In a way, there's no real difference between the colours; merely a matter of perspective.
Colour is simply the reaction of our eyes to visible light. Visible light is a form of electromagnetic radiation perceptible to our eyes. Other electromagnetic waves of radiation exist. These are either smaller waves with far more energy output (UV rays, X-Rays & gamma rays) or larger waves with less energy output (Infrared, Microwave, Radio, TV, etc.).
The high energy output is what makes X-Rays and Gamma rays dangerous, and the low energy of radio waves is what makes them so good for heating food or transferring energy safely for humans!
Light is the spectrum of radiation that our eyes can detect and translate into images, and this is why some animals and people who are colourblind see the world in different shades of colours. It's all about how our eyes perceive the light bouncing against our corneas and cones.
How do you Cultivate Black Roses?
Technically speaking, black roses do not exist and are merely extremely darkly shaded colours. Black roses usually originate from a red rose that has been bred with darker-coloured flowers to create the perception of "Black".
So does the Colour Black Really Exist?
Black, as a colour, does not technically exist at all. It is the absence of colour: literally, "Nothing" is black. Instead, the colour we call black is obtained by shading or darkening the colours we can see on the light spectrum.
Thus, we have black roses, that are not technically black, but the darkest shade we can breed them to be.
A World Full of Colour
Today, black roses and roses of all colours are artificially designed. Often you can feed a growing rose flower a food colouring to encourage it to be a certain colour. However, this is not a perfect science and is not always guaranteed to get the colour you're looking for.
Whenever a specific colour is needed, a red or white rose is often dried and dyed to achieve the right tone and hue, giving a perfect uniformity that makes roses in a hatbox so beautiful.
Drying roses to be dyed also preserves them, ensuring that their scent and beauty will last for years, not days. And it's that wonderful world of beautiful flowers that Amaranté is dedicated to seeing bloom and grow.
Cultivation & Sustainability
With so much waste and discarded natural wonder in the world, it's always comforting to know that there's a way to keep beauty in your home beautiful for longer without harming the planet along the way.
That's why we guarantee that every rose we cultivate is done so using ethical, sustainable methods. We work closely with Fairtrade rose farmers to ensure that, from farm to delivery, every aspect of rose cultivation is eco-friendly.
To us, nothing is more important than the duty to protect the world from environmental disasters. Every day, we're taking steps to extend our efforts and give back to the beautiful world we all live in.