By Any Other Name: A Cultural History of the Rose

by Simon Morley

‘Fascinating...I’ll never look at a rose in quite the same way again.’ Adrian Tinniswood

The rose is bursting with meaning. Over the centuries it has come to represent love and sensuality, deceit, death and the mystical unknown. Today the rose enjoys unrivalled popularity across the globe, ever present at life’s seminal moments.

Grown in the Middle East two thousand years ago for its pleasing scent and medicinal properties, it has become one of the most adored flowers across cultures, no longer selected by nature, but by us. The rose is well-versed at enchanting human hearts. From Shakespeare’s sonnets to Bulgaria’s Rose Valley to the thriving rose trade in Africa and the Far East, via museums, high fashion, Victorian England and Belle Epoque France, we meet an astonishing array of species and hybrids of remarkably different provenance.

This is the story of a hardy, thorny flower and how, by beauty and charm, it came to seduce the world.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Gardening, Microhistory, Plants, Audiobook

304 pages, Hardcover

Published November 9, 2021

Reviews

[Petra X]

Growing up, I was close to my grandfather and he had a huge, almost circular rose garden in front of the house. I learned all about the different sorts of roses, the floribundas, hybrid teas, bourbons, shrub, miniature etc and how to care for them, mulching, pruning, hybridising, budding on root stock - I love to be with my grandfather and I learned so much. The rose garden was featured on the cover of Homes & Gardens magazine, so it was really special. A book I read years ago, Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening was interesting, but I've never found another rose book I wanted to read. This one has just been published and I'm looking forward to it.

[Kathleen Garber · Rating 4 out of 5]

First I want to clarify my rating of 4 stars. I found the book dry and a little boring and would personally rate it a 2 or 3 stars for my enjoyment, HOWEVER the book does a great job of what it set out to do which is give a history of the rose. In that it succeeded. I didn’t want to rate it low for doing a good job. It was just a bit more scientific and historic than what I was expecting.

This is a very thorough history of the rose. It starts out with the scientific explanation of how the rose evolved and the different types of roses there are. Did you know the rose used to only flower for a few weeks a year? You’ll never guess how old the oldest rose bush is!

After that there are chapters on the following: Pagan Roses, Monotheistic Roses, Love and the Rose, Death and the Rose, Mystical Roses, Poetic Roses (of 19th century), Painted Roses, Eastern Roses and Modern Roses. I had never thought of the Rose in these contexts so it was interesting in some parts. Although I’m not a history lover, I do like microhistories which this book is.

What could have made the book better? Photos! There wasn’t one photo or even illustration in a book about Roses and Art.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Wim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gives a nice overview of everything connected to roses.

Especially interesting were the sections on the different types of roses and the historical development of the gardening of roses all over the world

Sometimes. It felt too much of a listening of facts. Especially the use of roses. Roses In art: paintings, literature, mythology,… here I felt that a lot depth could be reached in stead of a rather dry enumeration of facts

But definitely it whetted my appetite for this flower in reality as a symbol. I will be in search for more books on this subject in art

[Elsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up because I appreciate the effort. If you know me irl you know I LOVE roses and this love to learn more about them. This book wasn’t bad I just struggled to understand the ordering of it, which is an editing issue imo. Felt like a bunch of fun facts put together more than story with trajectory. Some of the religious facts were a bit too generalized for my taste (I am probably biased since I do study religious iconography) and a few facts weren’t quite correct (eg Baker-Miller pink has been disproven to actually be calming beyond initial glimpses of it). But overall enjoyable and definitely worth a read if you are a rose-lover (there’s really little else like this out on the market as well)!

[Adrienne Cullen-Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book from start to finish even though I do not have green fingers. As a lover of roses, this book appealed to me as there was so much wonderful information about the rose throughout history, literature and music. I really couldn't put this book down. It was captivating and beautifully written.

[cypher · Rating 5 out of 5]

somewhere in the world there's a rose which is 700 years old...a bit unexpected.
lots of interesting details about...roses, just roses. very detailed.
even if roses are not a favourite flower, microhistory can be quite interesting...and they are in every garden, the classic of the english garden...and England's national flower...and the United State's national flower...and New York's specifically...and Luxembourg's national flower...and Bulgaria's national flower...and Czechia...and Slovakia...and Maldives...and Morocco's national flower...people do like the rose a lot, apparently. it has a long history as a symbol, in art, in politics, in medicine, in landscape design...in culture, in general.
like anything particularly beautiful, or particularly ugly, or particularly rare, or particularly particular, it stood out, it got associated with various things across time, from the beauty of women, to the design of hell (Dante)...it was a symbol of love, peace, war, death, friendship, purity, based on the colour, it was associated with softness, strength, and envy, based on its powerful smell, velvety petals and prickly thorns...it has been many, many things in the imagination, and it has been just a few steps away in a local garden, very accessible for the artist or thinker to consider...which explains a lot.
a very popular flower.

[Lia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably worth more than 3 stars for the sheer amount of curious and random cultural information, this book wasn’t easy to read.

First, some things I liked. There was a lot about the history of roses in art. It’s easy to look at art simply from the point of view of colors and shapes, but knowing what flowers, plants, and other symbols meant can deepen our appreciation of the complexity and multi-layered connotations in art. Using symbols may be a sort of intellectual game, but one that has been played for centuries by our predecessors.

I also loved that the author included the history of some of the still-living rose bushes, like the Hildesheim Cathedral Rose which is said to be over one thousand years old, or the Shady Lady of Tombstone, Arizona, which is considered the largest rose currently in existence.

It was also interesting to find out how we got the modern rose that looks so different from wild roses, as well as the brief overviews of the different medieval roses that grew in European gardens before the introduction of varieties from the East.

The main part that I didn’t like was the book’s muddled structure – some themes would begin in one chapter, then be forgotten, and then taken up again in several more chapters. This made for some chaotic reading.

[Wilhelmina · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

The author has a tendency to simplify topics outside his expertise to the point of inaccuracy, but the book is still a solid cultural history of the rose. I especially enjoyed the last chapter exploring the rose's place and our continued relationship to it in contemporary culture.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've grown many roses in my lifetime, but that was when I was younger. I am now solidly in the rewilding, perennial camp.

[Amanda Witt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the author is not a rose expert or gardener, this book is interesting, discussing the history of the rose plant through the ages, its uses in medical settings and cultural, literature terms.

[Elena Cherubin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Piuttosto lungo senza essere veramente approfondito ma spaziando in qualsiasi direzione purché si parli di rose.
Barboso