Rose Constituents:Vitamin C (to 1.7%), vitamins B,E, and K, nicotinamide, organic acids, tannin, pectin

Rose Oil Description

Attar of rose is the steam-extracted essential oil from rose flowers that has been used in perfumes for centuries. It was between 1582 and 1612 that the oil or OTTO OF ROSES was discovered, as recorded in two separate histories of the Grand Moguls. Attar of rose is one of the oldest and best known of all the oils. Classic rose is the aroma of love. It is warm, intense, immensely rich and rosy.

aphrodisiac *Bath and Body *Cough *cuts *Emotional Healing *hair *menopause *Nervous tension *skin *sleep *Uplifting *

Rosa gallica officinalis, the apothecary's rose, was the official cultivars in The British Pharmacopoeia, however, there are many variations, in fact there are practically no pure R. gallica now to be had, only hybrids. The Damask rose (Rosa damascena)provides most of the fresh rose petals used to distill rose oil from. It takes about 10,000 pounds of flowers to make 1 pound of rose oil, so be aware that if you find rose oil at an unbelievably low price, it is almost certainly an adulteration. In China Rosa rugosa is grown to product Chinese Rose Oil, which has a soft, honey like note.

The rose plays a prominent role in Greek and Roman mythology, Homer's allusions to it in the Iliad and Odyssey are the earliest records, and Sappho, the Greek poetess, writing in about 600 B.C., crowned the Rose Queen of Flowers. To the Romans it was most significant when placed over the door of a public or private banquet hall. Each who passed beneath it bound himself thereby not to disclose anything said or done within; hence the expression sub rosa, common to this day. ^{Netje Blanchan Wild Flowers worth Knowing(1917)}

Roses were grown in monastery gardens in the Middle Ages in Europe and used by the monks for medicinal purposes. The French have been distilling roses since before the French revolution, these early French ottos were a byproduct of the distillation process. ^{Grieve, M.,A Modern Herbal}

The Damask rose (Rosa damascena), Provence rose (Rosa Gallica) and Eglantine(Rosa elganteraia) are the three oldest roses in cultivation and are considered to be the most fragrant roses in the world.

Wild roses: Just as many members of the lily tribe show a preference for the rule of three in the arrangements of their floral parts, so the wild roses cling to the quinary method of some primitive ancestor, a favorite one also with the buttercup and many of its kin, the geraniums, mallows, and various others.