July 05, 2008

Text and photos by Zahrah Nasir
 

“Hello people. A little bird just told me the most amazing piece of news and, as a result, I figured that I better take centre stage this week and make myself known as, incredible as this may sound, it appears that some little boys and girls living in inner cities and other such concrete jungles, have absolutely no idea what I look like let alone what I am called! Shocking isn’t it! To make matters even worse, I’m also told that many school text books don’t even include a single picture for children to identify me and, in my opinion, this is very wrong. How on earth can children learn all about the environment and how to safeguard it for future generations if they don’t know anything about the world’s natural inhabitants like me? Ridiculous isn’t it!

To put matters straight and my very flustered petals back in order, I am ‘Rosa otherwise simply called Rose and my family has been around just about for ever. True to say that the ever busy plant improvement guys have had a whale of a time with our genes over the years and have bred literally thousands, if not millions, of different rose species with which to tickle your fancy and, if you’re lucky your nose too as those of us who are perfumed can be fantastically overpowering to say the least.

We can be found as tiddly little miniature bushes, medium sized ones, tall and extremely tall ones and as ramblers and climbers too. In fact, in the wilds of the Himalayan forests one of our naturally wild cousins can scramble over 80 feet high into the trees, have a trunk up to two feet in diameter and put on the most spectacular flower show of blooms up to six inches and more across and all of this combined makes for a mighty big rose. Close your eyes and think of Jack’s bean stalk and you get the picture!

We can be grown, not huge ones of course, in plant pots, on balconies, verandas, in gardens and parks and, although sometimes a little shy to bloom, we give everyone a treat when we do. Our flowers, sometimes single and sometimes double, come in so many colours and bi-colours that your own particular favourite has to be there somewhere even if this is blue or, hold your breath… green. Yes. Picture a green rose… they do exist and have become quite a collectors’ item in some parts of the world.

Then there are those of us with an unforgettable perfume, many of which are ‘Damask roses’ — one of the oldest, if not the most ancient family of roses around and with which, so the archaeological experts claim, the Garden of Babylon was planted. The fragrance is extracted from our delicate petals through a process of distillation and the ‘essence’ or ‘oil’ thus harvested was traditionally used in perfumes, attars, rose water, soap making, baking, sweet making and lots of other goodies but, somewhere along the line some spoilsport came up with a very inferior chemical concoction with which to replace us, the result being that very little natural rose essence is used today as the real thing is far more expensive than cheap imitations.

Depending on climatic conditions and the type of soil compost available, we flourish almost everywhere in Pakistan, much preferring cooler areas to distinctly hot ones so, if you can, why not give at least one of us a chance to grow so that we can get on real friendly terms. Know what I mean?!