‘Symbol of love’: roses are red but first they were yellow, Chinese and Dutch study finds
Genetic analysis discovers the flowers were ‘most likely’ originally yellow not red, as popular poetry would have us believe
While “roses are red” in a familiar poem, new evolutionary genetic analysis by Chinese and Dutch researchers has revealed that the first roses were likely yellow.
Roses are one of the most extensively cultivated ornamental flowers in the world, coming in an array of shapes, sizes and colours.
Although pink and red roses with multilayered petals have become synonymous with the flower, a new genomic study of domesticated and wild rose samples has revealed that their common ancestor was likely a yellow flower with a single row of petals.
“Roses – known as the ‘queen of flowers’ – belong to the genus Rosa in the Rosaceae family,” the team said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Plants on April 4.
“As the most successfully domesticated ancient ornamental plants, roses have been regarded as a symbol of love and beauty from antiquity to modern times,” the team, led by researchers from Beijing Forestry University, said.
“Ancestral trait reconstruction showed that the common ancestor of Rosa most likely showed single-petal flowers with yellow colour and seven leaflets.”