What’s the first thing most people do when they are handed a rose? If they’re like me, they smell it. The fragrance of roses has been cherished for ages and is one of the main motivations for growing them. Fragrant rosebushes, placed under windows, along walkways, or near outdoor seating areas, fill the air with a wonderful scent that complements the beauty of the flower. If a fragrant garden is your goal or if you want fragrant roses to use in potpourris or recipes, you need to choose from the most fragrant varieties available.
Understanding Rose Fragrance
Like other sensory stimuli, fragrance is subjective. A scent that appeals to one person may repel another and be barely perceptible to a third. And a rose itself may have different degrees and types of fragrance at different times.
A rose is most fragrant when it is one-quarter to two-thirds open and has been slightly warmed by morning sun. This heating causes the rose to release droplets of fragrant oil from tiny scent emitters on its petals and, in some types of roses, from the leaves. Too much sun or wind can quickly carry these oils away and leave the rose with a faint or disagreeable odor. On a sunny day, fragrance declines by as much as 40 percent. On a cool or damp day, by contrast, a rose releases little or no fragrance, and what fragrance is released may be masked by mildew.
Rose fragrance is such an important topic, we’ve added an entire section in our Rose Growing training course on identifying and choosing the most fragrant roses. If you haven’t yet done so, get your copy of “Rose Secrets Revealed” now (click blue link to visit the site to learn more).
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