The Spherical Muse

A Vitamin of a Different Sort

Question: Estimate the number of people you expect to die in the United States from the following causes over the course of the following year:

If you’re like most people you will rate the number of deaths from homicides, floods and tornadoes as being higher than suicides, tuberculosis and asthma, but this is wrong. In fact, the numbers for the latter have been consistently higher than each of the former since records have been kept.

The above test, courtesy of unlearning101.com, is a vitamin of a different sort. It should serve as something of an antidote, or vaccination, an inoculation against all the misleading information out there, particularly on the internet, but beyond that web as well, on vitamins, diet and nutrition, and not only those related subjects but information in the health field in general.

Nothing New

Vitamins, as vitamins, as they are known these days, are relatively new to the scene, at least in the grand scheme of things. They have their origins around the turn of the last century and since then have become a major health trend and resource. Still the idea of vitamins is perhaps nothing new, that there are factors in our diet, beyond food as we normally think of food, important to our health, without which we will suffer in some way from their deficiencies.

Stark

William Stark was a pioneer, a reckless pioneer, but a pioneer nonetheless. A physician and friend of Benjamin Franklin, and Sir John Pringle, he decided to use himself as a guinea pig in a series of experiments relating to nutrition. Perhaps a comment by Franklin that concerned his living on bread and water for two weeks suggested the experiments.

He began a series of 24 experiments, to investigate scurvy as well as the benefits of proper nutrition, and lived on bread and water, with a little sugar, for 31 days. He became ‘dull & listless’ with this regimen, spent some time recovering from his first experiment, and continued the series, adding one food at a time.

He added, among other things, olive oil, milk, and roast goose; two months of this and his gums were bleeding with pressure applied, a symptom of scurvy.

He died in February of 1770, considering fruits and vegetables, but continuing tests with honey pudding and Cheshire cheese. Scurvy, if not the cause of death, was plainly contributory and his legacy pointed to the importance of Vitamin C in the diet.

(More in Wikipedia here and here.)

Nyktalopia

Nyktalopia, or night blindness, is mentioned by Hippocrates. The Egyptians are said to have had a cure in the form of powdered liver. Night blindness is the result of a Vitamin A deficiency. The identification of this factor in the liver, that it was indeed Vitamin A, took place around the time of World War I. The Egyptians, though they had never identified the factor itself, were still aware of the link.

(More here.)

Casimir Funk

There are 13 known vitamins. There are no good vitamins or bad vitamins; they all have a role to play in our metabolism. Most of them cannot be manufactured by the body, vitamins D & K are the exceptions, so must be ingested through our diet in some way or else. Prior to the identification of these substances it was a hit or miss thing. Nowadays we have more alternatives. The so-called third world doesn’t have the luxuries available to the ‘developed’ nations and the deficiencies we are talking about can still present as major problems.

Vitamins are normally categorized as fat or water soluble. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are the former and all the eight B vitamins and C the latter. The body stores fat-soluble vitamins for longer periods of time. The water-soluble variety (B12 is something of an exception) must be replenished more often.

Casimir Funk coined the term ‘vitamine’, from vital and amine, for amine of life. At the time, in 1912, it was thought the organic micro-nutrient food factors preventing beriberi and similar deficiency conditions brought about by diet might be chemical amines. Of course this has sense proved not to be the case and ‘vitamine’ was shortened to vitamin.

In short a vitamin is a nutrient essential to health, but required by the organism in only small amounts, and without which the organism will eventually die.

High Seas

Another trend that brought the subject closer to hand, historically speaking, was the advent of long ocean voyages during the Renaissance. Without access to fresh fruits and vegetables for prolonged periods the illnesses that might result from vitamin deficiencies became common on ship’s crews.

James Lind, a British Navy physician, in 1753 published his Treatise on the Scurvy, a summary of a controlled clinical nutrition study of the disease. The Treatise recommended using lemons and limes to prevent scurvy, a strategy that was eventually adopted by the British Royal Navy.

Commenting on the results Lind had said:

… it is indeed not probable, that a remedy for the scurvy will ever be discovered, from a preconceived hypothesis; or by speculative men in the closet, who have never seen the disease, or…. at most, only a few cases of it.

(More here.)

A Skewed Perspective

The most strident viewpoints about vitamins divide them into two groups, so-called natural vitamins, and the synthetic variety. The natural versions of these vitamins are supposed to include additional substances the ‘vitamin’ needs to support its full use by the body. This encompasses the idea that true vitamins are not single substances but complexes. Without the support of these additional substances the vitamin’s effect is rendered less effective, perhaps even neutralized.

Synthetic vitamins, the bare essentials of the vitamin, from this angle are useless. Your body will not incorporate them in the same way as their so-called natural cousins. Just as the viewpoint about natural vitamins is not the whole truth this also is a half-truth.

The bottom line to this argument is really very simple. There is no substitute for a good diet! Vitamins are solutions to deficiencies when they exist but are not going to, by themselves, bring you everything you need.

The question and thrust of optimizing health from a micronutrient and macronutrient stand point needs to focus more on food distribution, safety, and quality rather than on non food supplementation.

(See wandering primate here for some intelligent observations.)

Of course a well-balanced diet should, ideally, include all vitamins needed so supplements, in the forms of vitamins or minerals, are not something your body would need if your diet was perfectly designed.

Of course there is the rub; even if we have the perfect diet following that diet will still be our prerogative. There is still the question as to amount; would a larger dose of vitamins increase their effectiveness in some way? If we were getting from our diet what we needed would more be better?

Fat-soluble vitamins are kept in the body longer and taking them in excess can result in side-effects. For example an excess in Vitamin A can bring about nausea, headache, dry itchy skin in children, weight loss, sometimes diarrhea in adults. An excess of water-soluble vitamins is less risky and side-effects from them practically nil.

(See here.)

In short most of the dialogue re vitamins is skewed, if not beside the point. The focus should never be on supplements in the first place but what constitutes a proper diet. What constitutes a proper diet is the more basic question.

The Future of Vitamins

Jack Uldrich, a futurist, makes a point about Lind and his study, and the eventual adoption by the British Navy of a program to eradicate the disease:

A variety of factors were at work but prominent officials and the sailors alike had different ideas for the best way to prevent scurvy and these erroneous ideas prevented them from being receptive to new knowledge. In short, before they could fully assimilate the new information they first had to unlearn their old knowledge.

(His post is here.)

Really it is similar erroneous ideas, the counter-productive division of natural vs. synthetic being but one of these ideas, that characterize the entire discourse on vitamins, on-line and elsewhere.

Our so-called knowledge is sometimes our greatest enemy, when it is based on assumption and attitude, as opposed to experience and wisdom.

The latest record for static apnea, ‘holding your breath’, set by Stephane Mifsud in 2009, a freediver from France, is 11 minutes and 35 seconds.  That seems like a very long time indeed to hold one’s breath!  Without clothing or shelter of some kind surviving in extreme ranges of temperature is a matter of hours only.

The crash of a B-17 into the Pacific Ocean in World War II left several of its inhabitants adrift on a life raft for 8 days and for that time they were without water.  It’s a long time to survive without water…  Survival without food is measured in weeks or months. 

Not unlike traveling to another planet, the ascent of K2 taxes all these limits. One must assure oneself of enough food and water, clothing, and other essentials for the climb to be successful and the summit to be reached. For every 4 people to have attempted climbing K2, one has died trying.

 The so-called ‘rule-of-three’ summarizes the above: 

1.  Humans cant survive more than 3 hours in extreme ranges of temperature without clothing or shelter.

2.  We cant survive more than 3 days without water.

3.  And three weeks without food is pushing the envelope.

Our basic necessities from one perspective are few: air, water, food, shelter, clothing.  Without these things we wouldn’t last very long at all.  Still in a more general sense we need a world to survive; the continuum of needs to support and nourish our being indeed encompasses a world.

An beyond our physiology our imagination needs to be challenged and our spiritual hunger must find nourishment. 

We couldn’t survive on another planet, for example, unless we took all these things with us in some form or fashion, and things that may be plentiful here, such as air, we would need to provide as a continuous supply;  here air is still free, part of our world, but there, unless the atmosphere was rich in oxygen, we would have to either transport from our home planet, or have a way of regenerating enough to keep us alive.  The same thing would hold true for our other needs.  

Beyond our world all these elements may have to be rationed and the rationing would tell us how long we have to live, how long we could exist in that environment before replenishing our supplies, or death would overtake us.  Here we know they are available and though we may have to re-stock, our provisions of food for example, our needs our ordinarily not based on the same rationale that would govern us on another planet where the rationale would stem from lack not plenty. 

This brief inventory of our basic survival needs leaves out sleep.  Also something we cannot do without for very long.  More difficult to determine is just exactly how long we can go deprived of sleep.  Several years ago a record set by Randy Gardner, a 17 year old high school student, of 264 hours, a little over 11 days, has stood the test of time.  Still the possibility of ‘microsleeps’ having invaded, undetected, his time awake seems to make this record questionable.

Fatal Familial Insomnia, an autosomal inherited prion disease, where the patient suffers increasing insomnia, finally becoming totally unable to sleep, and ending in death anywhere from 7-18 months after onset, reminds us of the importance of sleep to our lives.

Still there are other elements as well we must have to survive and without those elements there are limits placed on our survival we would otherwise transcend.  Vitamins are examples of other elements necessary to our survival beyond the obvious needs referred to above.  Without trace amounts of these vitamins our survival would also be in jeopardy.

The Recipe

Take one ounce of the sawdust or shavings of cypress-wood, as green as you can find, six ounces of Florentine violet-root, three ounces of cloves, three drams of sweet calamus, and six drams of aloes-wood.

Reduce the whole to powder before it spoils.

Next, take three or four hundred in-folded red roses, fresh and perfectly clean, and gathered before dewfall.

Pound them vigorously in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle.

When you are half through pounding them, add to them the above mentioned powder and immediately pound it all vigorously, while sprinkling on it a little rose-juice.

When everything is well mixed together, form it into little flat lozenges, as you would pills, and let them dry in the shade, for they will smell good…

And in order to make the mixture even more excellent, add as much musk and ambergris as you either can or wish.

If these two are added I do not doubt that you will produce a superbly pleasant perfume.

Pulverise the said musk and ambergris, dissolving it with rose-juice, then mix it in and dry in the shade.

Quite apart from the goodness and scent that this mixture lends to the items and mixtures mentioned above, you only have to keep it in the mouth a little to make your breath smell wonderful all day…

And in time of Plague, keep it often in the mouth, for there is no smell better for keeping away the bad and pestiferous air.

A recipe from Nostradamus’ Traité des fardemens et confitures or Treatise of Cosmetics and Preserves. See here and here for more detail re his recipes.

Michel de Nostradame- or Nostradamus as he is usually known today-  is famous for the inscrutable prophecies recorded in his 10 volume mystical work The Prophecies.  He was born on December 14th of 1503 in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, in the south of France.

Nostradamus paraphrased a range of older prophecies, never before available in the French language; this was often done, authors at that time would frequently copy and paraphrase passages, not acknowledging their origin.  The 16 century was out of step with our modern views on plagairism.  The Mirabilis Liber was a major source, the Bible as well.  More here.

The Prediction

Of course he is also known now, a bit notoriously, for his part in ‘predicting’ the 911 disaster:

In a sign of the hunger to explain the inexplicable, ”Nostradamus” has joined ”sex” and ”mp3” on the list of terms most frequently entered on Internet search engines, as people scramble to learn more about the French astrologer who wrote that ”the third big war will begin when the big city is burning” after ”two brothers” are ”torn apart by Chaos.” Others are stampeding to sites like www.snopes2.com, which rates current rumors green, red and yellow depending on whether they are deemed to be true, false or undetermined.

Still, the incessant blending of fact and fantasy on the Web looks a lot like a venerable response to tragedy in a slightly new form, according to people who have studied the origin of rumors and urban legends. The need to arrive at a common understanding of a disaster — and to forge a united front to deal with it — often leads to an outpouring of theories that may or may not be true.

The above quote comes from the article in the New York Times, by Amy Harmon, The Search for Intelligent Life on the Internet. See the full article here.

Here is the quatrain referred to above:

In the City of God there will be a great thunder
Two brothers torn apart by Chaos
While the fortress endures
The great leader will succumb.

In actual fact it is not part of Nostradamus’ Centuries at all but made up by a modern day ‘disciple’.  The trail to this so-called prediction is curious. From an ‘urban legends‘ website:

Not as widely known is that he was an apothecary, and treated the plague, it seems with some success, with a concoction of rose petals, as described in the recipe above.

On completion of his studies he took to the countryside with his medical and astrological books and assisted in the care of victims of the Bubonic Plague. His approach was to prescribe fresh, unpolluted air and water and clean bedding. He also would have all the corpses removed and the streets cleaned. Each morning before sunrise, Nostradamus would go into the fields to oversee the harvest of rose petals which he then would dry and crush into fine powder. From this he made “rose pills” which patients were advised to keep under their tongues at all times without swallowing them. He was reputed to have saved thousands from plague in Narbonne, Carcassone, Toulouse and Bordeaux. See here for more details.

The Little Ice Age

The widespread famines throughout Europe in the 14th century were at least in part due to a cooling trend, often referred to now as ‘the little ice age’, that caused one crop failure after another.  A subsistence crisis, a so-called classic Malthusian one, materialized in the wake of these crop failures.  The stage was being set for changes that would alter the face of society and prepare it for its slow metamorphosis into the beginnings of the modern era.  The Black Death was one of those changes ushered in by the subsistence crisis. Much more than simply keeping the population in check the Black Death was, in retrospect, an ecological catastrophe.

Was vitamin C, in the form of the rose lozenges Nostradamus had created, sufficient in some cases to guard against Yersinia pestis (the bacteria responsible for the plague)?

From Bioterrorism: Beyond Anthrax and Smallpox:

... vitamin C would be an excellent adjunct therapy for the plague. Both oral and intravenous administrations of vitamin C would result in a significant bolstering of the immune system. While a high enough dose of vitamin C could logically be completely effective as a monotherapy treatment for the plague, there is certainly no reason not to take both the appropriate antibiotics along with the vitamin C. Furthermore, since no specific reference could be found in the literature on vitamin C and plague, it would be inappropriate to try to treat the plague with only vitamin C, even though it’s effect on other bacterial diseases would predict a high likelihood of complete clinical success in the treatment of plague.

Avicenna & Pestilence

Of course there was no real treatment for the plague in his time.  Avicenna, in section 877 of The Canon of Medicine has this to say about times of pestilence:

When the atmosphere becomes pestilential in character, the body should be given a desiccant regimen, and the dwelling-house should be constructed so as to be able to be kept cool and dry.  When contagious diseases are abroad, the air should be warm, and charged with agents which prevent decomposition of the air.  Things which emit pleasing odours are good, especially if they are contrary in temperament to that of the atmosphere… Very often, too, the air itself is the seat of the beginning of the decomposition changes—either because itis contaminated by adjoining impure air, or by some “celestial” agent of a quality at present unknown to man.  In that case it is best to retire to underground dwellings, or to houses enclosed in walls on all sides, or to caves. Fumigations may be used to purify the air: sedge (or, galangale), frankincense, myrtle, rose, and sandalwood. During the time when pestilences are about one may use vinegar in both food and drinks, for this preserves one from the danger…

Though rose petals, in various forms, oils and scents, as well as pills and lozenges, were far from unknown as treatments for a variety of conditions, as a particular treatment for pestilence, beyond what is mentioned above, it seems original.

Medieval herbals generally do not mention this treatment so it seems as if Nostradamus was indeed ahead of his time.  The knowledge that roses are sources of vitamin C was not to come for several hundred years yet. Still the knowledge they were efficacious in several areas was not an uncommon thing.

The Frame

We will be taking a tour of the extended family of the rose, including not only roses but cousins sometimes far removed, and the purpose of our tour will be to notice some of the main characteristics of the frame Science uses to picture the rose family.  The facts, as opposed to the illusions of evolution play a large part in this frame and will be ever present during our tour.

The family contains herbs, shrubs, and trees.  Examples include apples, apricots, plums, peaches, pears, and strawberries, cherries, raspberries, as well as roses, rowans, and hawthorns… well and many others…  it is a big family!

Of course one of the simplest questions we might ask, and perhaps too simplistic some might say, is how many roses are there in the world?  There are, according to your interpretation, several answers to this question.

The cut-flower market is simply huge.  A multi-billion dollar industry- and an interesting overview of the trade can be found here and here…  The market for roses is in the billions of dollars, the number of individual roses bought and sold is at the very least in the billions world-wide.  The number of roses, if one could actually count every single rose on the planet, possibly in the trillions.

Still the ordinary understanding of this question would be otherwise; how many different kinds of roses are there?  Still even this simple question, no longer quite simplistic, allows us no easy answer.  There is no complete agreement on the number of species in the Rosa genus.  Often you find estimates on the order of 100 to 150.  Sometimes over 200.  Wikipedia has a list of so-called species roses here.  Greenmantle Nursery, in the UK, a somewhat arbitrary source, estimates over 200 different species.  The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in England, have 100 species on display.

Of course we haven’t talked about hybrids, numbering in the thousands, and unless they are patented there is probably no universal agreement on the exact number of hybrids as well.  We could talk about ‘cultivars’ too, a portmanteau of the words cultivated variety, but that may take us to far afield right now.

Another simple question one might ask about roses generally is their geographical distribution.  They are in this day and age cosmopolitan.  They are a global phenomenon.  Still it is a peculiar fact that outside of our modern age no wild rose, fossilized or otherwise, has been discovered south of the equator, unless taken there in ‘recent’ times.

Peter Harkness, in The Rose: An Illustrated History, suggests all rose species must have evolved after the separation of Gondwanaland from the southern land mass Laurentia.  So even in the case of geographical distribution the answer isn’t quite as straightforward as one might think.

Another obvious question might be how old is the rose?  Again there is more than one possible way of looking at this question.  One answer is the species has a lifetime reaching back 35 odd millions of years.  Here is a fossil imprint from the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Another very different answer, gleaned from the Greenmantle Nursery site, a quote from How and Why We Age by Leonard Halflick…

Age is even more difficult to determine in plants that can be propagated by cuttings. If you remove a cutting from a favorite plant and root it in soil or water, when was it ‘born’? When does it ‘die’? If you take a cutting again from the newly rooted plant and re-root it? If the cutting was left in its original place on the tree or plant, it would eventually die; re-rooted it may live longer than the plant from which it came. If you re-root cuttings indefinitely, does the plant ever die?…….. You might argue persuasively that these plants are, indeed, immortal .

Our tour will reach back in time to the root of the Rosid clade, and sometime before, to the ancestors of the rose, and end in Bermuda and the so-called Mystery Roses.

The Rose is a Eukaryote

The so-called modern era, with the advent of molecular biology and its forays into the world of DNA, has seen the rise of competing schemes for describing the rose’s niche in Science; according her a changeable place beyond her role as guinea pig in the blue rose petal experiments, and her role in the creation of hybrids generally.  There are now several nomenclatures for her niche in the Rosid clade, the dust from the commotion in molecular biology having far from settled, with the old Linnaean framework slowly becoming passé.

The Cronquist version of Linnaeus, in use by the USDA and many others still:

The Color Blue

How long have we been dreaming of a blue rose?  The desire has been with the human race a long time.  The Book of Andalusian Agriculture, by Zubair ibn al-Awam, written in the 12^th century, and in 1874 translated into the French by J.J. Clement-Mullet, describes the process for creating blue roses by placing blue dye in the bark of the roots.  The horticultural societies of Britain and Belgium are said to have offered in the 19^th century, 1840 to be more exact, to the first person able to breed a blue rose, a prize of 500,000 francs.

A history of the blue rose, rather versions of the blue rose, as the real thing does not yet exist, undoubtedly would be interesting.  In spite of the absence of the real thing the image of the blue rose has found its way into our hearts.

According to legend, Witigo had five sons. He divided his land between them and they founded new castles and estates such as Krumlov, Rožmberk, Jindrichuv Hradec, Trebon – Landštejn, Stráž nad Nežárkou and Sezimovo Ústí. This old legend is depicted in the picture in the Telc Castle and also its copies in Krumlov and Jindnichuv Hradec. These show us how Witigo divided the coats of arms, each with a different coloured five-petalled rose, among his sons. The oldest, Jindrich, is given the golden rose on a blue background and is leaving for Jindrichuv Hradec. Vítek z Klokot has a silver rose on a red background on his banner and goes to Trebon. The ancestor of the Lords of Stráž departs with a blue rose on a golden background. Sezima, who was illegitimate, is also leaving for Ústí and carries a banner with a black rose on a golden background. Rožmberk and Krumlov are to be ruled by Vítek with a red rose on a white background.

The blue rose in this painting can be seen in the lower left hand corner.  More history here.

In The Azure Vault James Hillman contemplates various associations to the color blue.  He quotes Jung’s comment re a near-death experience from Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents….its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through the wonderful blue light…

The Earth from space looks quite blue.  He also quotes his experience in Ravenna, in the Baptistry of the Orthodox, where the atmosphere was pervaded with a blue light:

Here, what struck me first was the mild blue light that filled the room; yet I did not wonder about this at all. I did not try to account for its source, and so the wonder of this light without any visible source did not trouble me.” It was here that Jung and his companion envisioned “four great mosaic frescoes of incredible beauty… I retained the most distinct memory of the mosaic of Peter sinking, and to this day can see every detail before my eyes: the blue of the sea, individual chips of the mosaic…

The blue rose, though empty of reality, has still a meaning in the so-called language of flowers; having fallen out of use nowadays, in Victorian times coded messages could be sent in this language allowing expression of feelings that otherwise could not be spoken.  In this language the blue rose, courtesy of Wikipedia, has meant: “Mystery, attaining the impossible, love at first sight.”

All this only to say the color blue itself has associations bordering on the mystical and holy.  Of course Novalis and his search for the blue flower became an emblem of the Romantic consciousness.  And the more mundane reference, from the movie The Thief of Baghdad, to the Blue Rose of Forgetfulness…  the blue rose, in spite of its unreality, has managed to enliven our imagination.

Applause

The blue rose, ‘Applause’, unveiled by Suntory Holdings last October 20, 2009, at a press conference, may be closer to the real thing…  but it is obviously not the real thing.  The search has not come to an end.  These roses are, to the naked eye, not truly blue at all, but a shade of lilac, well a shade of mauve may be more descriptive.  Please see an image of the Suntory blue rose below.

So, in spite of the internet ‘acclaim’- long before its unveiling- and news coverage etc., and the fact its petals, genetically at least, abound in blue pigment (from People’s Daily Online “…the world’s first roses with nearly 100 percent blue pigment in the petals…”), ‘Applause’ is not blue.

The Search

Sometimes trying to find information on the internet is like looking for a needle in a haystack; indeed it can sometimes seem like the search for the Holy Grail, or the blue rose, unattainable.  The nature of the internet, and human nature, is repetition and imitation and often you find a single source and multiple voices, none of them original, simply imitating what has already been said.  A great deal of the information available on the internet re the blue rose falls into this category.  Trying to find something different, something original, or something that genuinely adds information, as opposed to increasing its redundancy, is difficult.

Here is something from one of the exceptions:

In 1986 an Australian company, now called Florigene (motto: “Smart flowers, better living”), decided to relaunch the ancient quest for a blue rose. Their original plan seemed simple: Take the blue gene out of petunias and transfer it to roses, as well as to carnations and gerberas. But it wasn’t that easy. Experiments had shown that the gene produced a class of enzymes called cytochrome P450, of which there turned out to be hundreds of different forms. To find the right one, research director Edwina Cornish and her colleagues painstakingly extracted one P450-producing gene fragment after another and transferred the most promising ones to petunias lacking the gene. It wasn’t until five years later, when Cornish was checking her latest batch of stubbornly white petunias, that a glint of colored pollen caught her eye. “It was a beautiful light iridescent blue,” she remembers.

And another exception here:

By Renaissance times, blue roses created by simply soaking petals in indigo were common gifts among the merchant class. Breeders continued to pursue a ‘natural’ breed without success—except in the common imagination. In the nineteenth century, reports circulated of a rose breeder in Ulster discovering a single blue bloom in his seedling patch. It was said that he destroyed it immediately, believing that the mutant roses would corrupt public taste—and, perhaps, morals.

And a condensation of the present article may be found here…

The blue rose revealed by Suntory, though not the real thing, seems to be accepted as such by and large.  Still perhaps the applause should be held; the ubiquitous comparisons to the search for the Holy Grail, having at last ended with the cultivar of Suntory and Florigene, is a little bit ridiculous.  The search for a blue rose extends into other ages, and Suntory and Florigene have added a chapter to this search but have yet to bring a conclusion.  Indeed, much like the Holy Grail, it has receded from their grasp; the task a bit more difficult than they first suspected.

Blue Moon

Blue roses don’t exist in nature.  The gene that makes the color possible simply doesn’t exist in roses.  Of course this has only recently come to light:  Florigene isolated the gene responsible for the expression of the color blue in 1991.

The conventional methods of breeding blue roses ‘naturally’ so to speak, have long been attempted and failed, yeilding roses of a different hue instead, such as lilac.  The Blue Moon variety of hybrid tea roses, not unlike the Suntory ‘Applause’, is another ‘version’ of the blue rose, to use the doublespeak of Suntory.

Suntory vs. the Blue Rose Petals

The blue rose that has emerged from the collaboration of Suntory and Florigene is no mean feat.  An ongoing project for some twenty odd years it is only one of the latest techniques in genetic engineering, gene silencing, that has brought the project to fruition, if one may use that word.  The end of the road is not yet really in sight.  The creation of the blue rose has proven a little more difficult than either Suntory or Florigene may have imagined.

What we have now is more a demonstration of our age’s belief in Science, seeing is believing notwithstanding, the faith that the line will eventually lead us to that dreamed-of blue rose; roses that not only are blue but even look blue as well.

Right now, for the time being, these are the real thing!  Suntory and Science after all are not wrong!  Isnt there just a bit of surreal humor in all this, counterfactual at worst, imaginary and fantastical at best.  Rene Magritte would have smiled.

TKO

From physorg.com:

“Blue shades should be achievable if Florigene and Suntory researchers can make the rose’s petals less acidic. Rose petals are moderately acidic, with a pH around 4.5, while carnation petals are less so, with a pH of 5.5.

Florigene and Suntory researchers have ‘fished around’ for roses with higher petal pH, but the low-acidity trait appears to be genetically limited in roses. Researchers are now using RNAi gene-knockout technology to identify genes that influence petal acidity, or that modulate petal colour in other ways.”

The delphinidin gene cloned from a pansy, an enzyme gene from an iris to trigger the reaction, and a synthetic gene, suppressing the DFR gene in a pink rose, this was the 1-2-3 combination that did the trick. Of course the residue of cyanidin, and the natural ph of roses have combined and left not a blue rose, but one just like what you see above, in the picture.

In other words, even with the ‘TKO’ Florigene and Suntory may have scored with its Blue Roses so-called, the real thing, roses that are in fact blue, may yet be years away. And of course, it goes without saying, Suntory and Florigene, after some 20 years of research, were probably anxious to at last get their roses on the market, blue or not.

Cloning Neanderthals

The faith we have in Science to ultimately lead us to an authentic blue rose, a rose that is truly blue, inside and out, and not the counterfeit Suntory has put on the market, out of all this talk of blue roses, is probably the easiest facet of the story to overlook.  We take it so much for granted!  We turn to Science for answers to everything; from apple pie to communicating with aliens.

Of course gene silencing technology is the avant-garde of Science now, one of its leading edges, and the changes genetic technology and the field of molecular genetics generally is ushering in, well it’s nothing so much as simply revolution.  The use of it to ‘knockout’ the expression of the rose’s DFR gene is almost prosaic and can lull us into thinking it’s not such a bad thing.  The revolution is a quiet revolution, under our very noses, too close for us to see what is happening with any perspective, and oblivious to the first repercussions, to pause and consider what is really going on is sobering- and a wee bit frightening.  Considering Monsanto’s bid to monopolize the market, how else to interpret their research is hard to say, sobering and a wee bit frightening don’t quite seem to be the right words, rather the word that springs to mind as being closer to the reality is plain old evil.

If we need a further illustration beyond the example set by Monsanto, on a totally different front, the possibility of creating a colony of Neanderthals in our very midst, a la Jurassic Park, looms on the horizon.  Their genome is already being recreated, and the idea of ‘cloning’ a colony is being considered and discussed in some depth, in some scientific quarters.  Please see Should We Clone Neanderthals? at Archaeology Magazine on-line for the rudiments of this project.  Perhaps, to welcome this unique colony to the age of the impossible, the authentic blue roses, impossible enough on their own, and hawked at a ridiculously high price of course, will arrive just in time.

The Birds

During the late afternoon, they would gather in the trees outside the rectory where the seers shared their apparitions, chirping and cooing and calling by the hundreds, at times deafeningly loud, until ‘they suddenly and simultaneously all go silent as soon as the apparition begins.

I went completely rigid; I stopped my walk and stared at those beautiful clouds. Time seemed to have come to a halt. Nothing moved around me: the people, the birds, the noises… Everything went quiet, still… The love that surrounded me, that filled my skin, my eyes, my clothes, my head…, was something so, so powerful that I realized I wanted to follow it to till the end.

These descriptions, from the experiences of two different people at Medjugorje, are not unlike the rose petals associated not only with the apparitions at Medjugorge, but many other similar sightings, in that they seem to be characteristic of such occurrences.

One of the earliest visions of the Virgin Mary is contained in the Vita Ildefonsi, a record of some deeds of the Bishop Ildefonsus of Toledo. The vision occurred in the year 662 on December 18 in the town of Toledo. The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Ildefonsus on her own feast day and endowed him with ‘a small present from the treasury of my Son.’

Tradition has since said this present to be a garment, a chasuble:  ’ a long sleeveless outer vestment worn by a priest when celebrating Mass’.  The vision is supposed to have been witnessed as well by Reccesuinth, the King of Spain at the time. An artistic rendering of this event appears below.  Roses however have not been linked to this apparition.

Still the rose has been linked with the Madonna for centuries and the origin of this connection undoubtedly goes back to the early middle ages. Some aspect of the rose has been attendant on many, if not most, apparitions of the Virgin. Whether the distinct smell of roses, or rose petals falling from the sky or in the air, or in some other guise, the rose is often associated with apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

Fatima

Fatima, in Portugal, is without doubt one of the most famous sites of the apparitions. She appeared to three children in 1917, not quite a century ago now, and has been a place of pilgrimage since. Lucia Santos, one of the children, described her as brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal ball filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun.

From “A Pilgrim’s Handbook to Fatima by Leo Madigan”:

It seems that different people saw different things, though the activity of the sun was a central experience. Many saw rose petals falling, as had also been reported in September, and others were enveloped in the brilliance of the changing colours…

The Mediatrix

Teresita Castillo, a novice Carmelite, in 1948, saw a woman in white describing herself as the ‘Mediatrix of All Grace’.  This took place in the Phillipines, in Lipa.

(from “Meetings with Mary: Visions of the Blessed Mother”, by Janice T. Connell.) 

… extraordinary showers of rose petals fell within the convent walls on several occasions. Many of these rose petals still exist nearly fifty years later and have not spoiled. In May 1949, hundreds of Filipinos reported that they all saw the Blessed Mother as Mary Mediatrix of All Grace appear briefly in the sky above Sampaloc Lake …

In the “The Secrets of Mary: Gifts from the Blessed Mother” Janice T. Connell continues:

The late Benedictine Father Rene Laurentin, a French theologian and preeminent Mariologist, was highly skilled at discernment of authentic apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary and wrote extensively about them. I could not have known when I read his description of Our Lady’s apparitions to Teresita Castillo, a novice at the Carmel of Lipa, in the Philippines, that one day I would meet Teresita. At the conclusion of my interview with her, my husband and I , along with several of the nuns who were present, personally experienced a shower of red rose petals, bearing the imprint of the face of Christ, mysteriously falling upon us in the parlor of the Carmelite Convent where the apparitions occurred in 1948. The origin of the rose petals was not understandable with human reason. My husband continues to marvel; not only at the mysterious shower of rose petals, but also that he is one of the few males ever permitted in the convent garden of apparitions.

Peter Harkness, a well-known English rose breeder, in The Rose: An Illustrated History has this to say about roses and the Madonna: 

Devotion to the Virgin Mary reached new height in the medieval period, and many paintings portray her with the rose. In popular legend she was the Blessed Rose, the Mystic Rose, the Rose Without a Thorn and the rose-crowned Queen of Heaven. The five petals of the rose proclaimed her Five Joys and the letters of her name MARIA. This association has continued into modern times, through the vision at Guadalupe in 1531, Lourdes in 1858 and Fatima in 1917.

Fatima & Lourdes

A little more about Fatima and Lourdes.  Of course Lourdes is quite well known as a pilgrimage site now, and a place of healing.

The apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes began on 11 February 1858, when Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl from Lourdes admitted, when questioned by her mother, that she had seen a “lady” in the cave of Massabielle, about a mile from the town, while she was gathering firewood with her sister and a friend. (courtesy of Wikipedia)

The following are comments from GardenWeb re what kind of rose petals might have been ‘falling’…

… Also, in and around many sacred places in Europe (Lourdes, Fatima) it grows in abundance and in the spring, churches are decorated with flowers. There are also many local stories that say more about mystical appearances of Mary; often, it is said in Fatima, her appearance is preceeded by a shower of heavenly silence and fragrant white rose petals are falling from the sky. Many times I was wondering .. fragrant rose petals .. of which white rose? Semiplena?

Who knows. In Lourdes, it is known by remarks of pope Pius XII, when Mary appeared (it was February) in front of her was some rose bush growing, and althought it was winter still, it bloomed in magnificient way. It is said that was a speckled rose. Bicolour? We have more clue now, but it’s still hard to say which rose was that. And then again, during some appearances in Lourdes, a shower of white rose petals came from above. Semiplena?

Something About Mary

Finally, this topic, apparitions of the Virgin Mary and the attendant events, is more involved and multi-layered than may appear on casual acquaintance. 

The apparitions @ Marpingen in Germany in 1876, and at this distance the authenticity of that site seems very much in question, still it holds many parallels with the happenings in Medjugorje; see Ghosts of Surmanci: Queen of Peace, Ethnic Cleansing, Ruined Lives for more details. 

And for an interesting overview, something of a social perspective, see Something About Mary.

What do we really make of such accounts? The reports are many and varied and even from different centuries.  The suspicion would lean towards there being more than just a kernel of truth in these observations.

That old fairy tale, Beauty & the Beast, suggests, like the Beast watching the rose petals fall from his rose, the time we have here is limited, and the falling rose petals are but a halcyon call to our souls to use our time wisely and make the most of what time we do have on this Earth.

The Old Soul 

 … Oh, could we hear those whispering roses sweet,
Three beauties bending till their petals meet,
And blushing, mingling their sweet fragrance there
In language yet unknown to mortal ear …

So the rose appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh (Hamilton 1901); probably circa at least 1000 BCE but probably nearer 2000 BCE in its origin.  The rose had found its place in the cultures of Sumer, some 5000 years ago, and Egypt, and Greece quite some time ago as well, not to mention The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  Of course let us not forget Sappho, from 600 BCE, and her ‘rose-fingered moon’.  The rose has had many haunts in its adventures.

A wreath uncovered in a cemetery in Hawara, Egypt, from the 1^st century BCE, as reported in Science 1889, was

A perfect wreath composed of rose-petals threaded by a needle onto strips of twine.

Pliny reports similar uses in his Natural History.  The fossil record also has a home for the rose; she rests comfortably in the Tertiary period, some 35 millions of years ago.  The rose is something of an old soul, having been around for a very, very long time.

The Rose in the Bible

The Bible has only two explicit references to the rose.  From The Song of Solomon, Chapter 2:

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.

And Isaiah Chapter 35:

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

Now it is the consensus these references aren’t really even to the rose, as we know the flower in our day, but are perhaps references to a crocus or even a lily.  The striking thing is really the lack of such references in the Bible; it is a so-called ‘dis legomenon’ in this context.  Though, after searching a few databases on the Web, it’s interesting the Koran and the Book of Mormon as well make no references explicitly to the rose at all.

The rose, as a symbol of purity among other things, has become entwined with the Virgin Mary, and even Christianity.  It is somewhat surprising the Bible has so little to say about the rose.  Still the relationship has evolved over centuries and is more an artifact of this evolution than a symbol with scriptural meaning.

The so-called deutero-canonical books, having made the cut at the Council of Trent yet still not universally accepted, contain further references to the rose.  There is this from the second chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon, verses 7, 8, and 9:

Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments: and let no flower of the spring pass by us:

Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before they be withered:

Let none of us go without his part of our voluptuousness: let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place: for this is our portion, and our lot is this.

The book Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, also known as Ecclesiasticus Chapter 24, verse14 also:

I was exalted like a palm tree in En-gaddi, and as a rose plant in Jericho, as a fair olive tree in a pleasant field, and grew up as a plane tree by the water.

As a matter of fact Ecclesiasticus has a couple more references to the rose…Not much more, but both the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus refer to the Hebrew word for the true rose rhodus.

It is interesting too, as a footnote to this search: the word appears in The Book of Enoch, Chapter 82, verse 16.

And these are the signs of the days which are seen on the earth in the days of his government: sweat and heat and anxiety, and all the trees producing fruit, and the leaves appearing on all the trees, and the harvest of wheat, and the blooming of roses, and all the flowers blooming in the fields, but the trees of winter become withered.

Chapel of the Burning Bush 

The Chapel of the Burning Bush is located in St. Catherine Monastery at Mt. Sinai in Egypt.  From their site:  

According the oldest monastic tradition, this chapel sits atop the roots of the same Biblical bush “that burned with fire, and was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2) when God spoke to Moses for the first time. A few feet away from the Chapel is the reputed bush itself, a rare species of the rose family called Rubus Sanctus. This species is endemic to Sinai and extremely long-lived, a fact that lends scientific credence to the site. 

Past Master 

Still we are not done with the Bible.  There is yet another not unrelated occurrence of a name in Acts Chapter 12: 

And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda.

And when she knew Peter’s voice, she opened not the gate for gladness, but ran in, and told how Peter stood before the gate.

And they said unto her, Thou art mad. But she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel.

But Peter continued knocking: and when they had opened the door, and saw him, they were astonished.

Rhoda, in its literal meaning, is ‘rose’.  Do we make anything of this?  Just the uniqueness of the occurrence, Rhoda is found nowhere else in the Bible, perhaps is a hint, along with the other rare occurrences referred to, and betokens a different meaning.  The miracle, which was Peter, and ushered in by Rhoda, having been led out of the clutches of Herod by an angel is linked to a word for rose.

Wild roses were blooming in Palestine in the days of Jesus.  The rose was beauty, spring, and love to the Graeco-Roman culture and echoed too the hastening of time, with the next world and death itself a part of its circle of life.

Just so is the rose a past master in the miraculous.  She is the intimation of another world, one long heralded, and from the burning bush of Moses, the falling of rose petals in apparitions of the Virgin Mary, to the expression of the enigma of love and romance, a barometer of the tides of emotion that sway us, and the undercurrents bringing about change in our individual lives.  The rose is a living emblem of deep emotion and miraculous presence.

The rose has another life, a different life, one that interpenetrates our culture in many ways we scarcely give second thoughts too.  The other life of the rose has many dimensions. 

The Cathedral of Chartres- the Notre-Dame de Chartres Cathedral- not far from Paris has, embedded in its floor, one of the most famous prayer labyrinths in the world.  Prayer labyrinths have been used, in the past, for hundreds of years as a matter of fact, for prayer, initiation, and spiritual growth.  They had slowly fallen out of favor with the Church during the 17th and 18th centuries, and now some associate them with the New Age movement, but really walking the prayer labyrinth is a practice becoming popular again even in contemporary Christianity. 

During the time of the crusades, the 12^th century, when making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land at least once in your lifetime was something to which most Christians aspired, a commitment, but travel increasingly perilous because of the crusades, the Church decreed seven Cathedrals to be places where this commitment could be fulfilled by walking their labyrinths; the trip, and walking the labyrinth, became spiritual journeys in themselves.  They became known as ‘Roads to Jerusalem’ from this practice.  There is evidence pilgrims would traverse the labyrinth sometimes on their knees, in penance.  In the case of Chartres a rather long way… Nowadays the labyrinth at Chartres is frequently lined with chairs for services, and only uncovered for walking on Midsummer Day, June 21^st. 

“In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth (Greek  labyrinthos) was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, a creature that was half man and half bull and was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus. Daedalus had made the Labyrinth so cunningly that he himself could barely escape it after he built it.Theseus was aided by Ariadne, who provided him with a skein of thread, literally the “clew”, or “clue”, so he could find his way out again.” (Wikipedia) 

The classical labyrinth, the one in Crete included, is the so-called 7-circuit labyrinth, meaning in traversing you make 7 circuits about the center, and can be traced back several thousand years.  The one in Chartres is an 11-circuit design often found in Gothic cathedrals.  Chartres is definitely one of its earlier representations. 

The center of the labyrinth, instead of a place to escape from, as was the center in the original labyrinth constructed by Daedalus for King Minos, a prison for the Minotaur, instead the center was the end of a search, the New Jerusalem, the City of God. At the center of the Chartres labyrinth is a six-petalled rose. 

From an article in the ‘American Rose Annual’ of 1977, by Jack Harkness, on Rosa persica:

“Twice we have had flowers of 6 petals, and of greater diameter than normal. In accounts of rose history, I have seen illustrations of the rose on the palace of Knossos in Crete. My six-petalled H. persica resembles that illustration more closely than any rose I know.”

In fact the ‘Blue Bird’ fresco, now housed at the Iraklion Museum in Crete, shows a six-petalled rose.  You can see a portion of this fresco to the right.  This is the first known ‘painting’ of a rose.

The association of the rose with prayer and spiritual growth is an aspect of this other life of the rose within human culture that seems to have, like the rose itself, more than one fold, more than one meaning. 

It is interesting the origin of the Labyrinth is in Crete at Knossos and the fresco with the six-petalled rose has its origin there as well.  A six-petalled rose is a bit unusual.  Until 1792 when it was melted down, for cannons supposedly to supply the army of the newly founded French Republic, there was a copper or brass plaque at the center of the Chartres labyrinth, showing the struggle between Theseus and the Minotaur. 

The six-petalled rose has long been associated with Mary, mother of Jesus.  The cathedral at Chartres is dedicated to her.  And the six rose petals are sometimes taken as the six realms Mineral, Plant, Animal, Human, Angelic, Divine.

The major rose gardens, or rosariums, the ones whose raison-d’etre is breeding, had their origins in the 19th century.  The sketches below are only introductions to the most well known. 

The Roseraie du Val-de-Marne, also known as the Roseraie de L’Hay is a rose garden in France, just south of Paris, established in 1899.  Edouard Francois Andre, a landscape architect, and Jules Gravereaus, a rosarian, were its creators.  The garden claims to be the first exclusively dedicated to roses.  There are some 3,200 species and varieties, and a total of 13,100 rose bushes. 

The Europa Rosarium, originally the Rosarium Sangerhausen, is located in Sangerhausen, Germany and bills itself as the largest rose collection in the world.  It was established in 1902 and designed by Friedrich Erich Foerr, a landscape architect.  Today it contains some 75,000 rose bushes, including over 8,300 rose cultivars, a Wild Rose collection with about 300 species of rare trees and shrubs, and an arboretum with about 250 types of trees and shrubs. 

The Rosarium Uetersen is also in Germany, in the city of Uetersen.  This garden was established in 1929 and designed by landscape architects Berthold Thormahlen, Mathias Tantau, and Wilhelm Kordes.  The rosarium hosts some 1,020 rose varieties. 

Countess Henrieta Hermína Rudolfína Ferdinanda Marie Antonie Anna Chotková of Chotkov and Vojnín- also known as Marie Henrieta Chotek came to be known as the Countess of Roses, and established the rosarium of Dolna Krupa, in Slovakia, once Austria-Hungary.

Originally an estate belonging to Michael II Brunswick, an English garden was created by Christian Heinrich Nebbien during the years 1813-1819.  This garden was eventually turned into a rosarium by Marie in the 1890′s after  inheriting the estate.

She was very involved in breeding experiments, improving rose species, and developing new cultivars.  After World War I Marie also established in Dolna Krupa a school for rose growing.

Jozef Brunswick, Michael Brunswick’s grandson, was friend to composer Ludwig van Beethoven; he was a guest at the estate during the years 1797-1806.  There is a small building near the entrance to the park, known as Beethoven House, it is said to be where he lived during his stay, and is also supposed to be the place where he composed the Moonlight Sonata, home now to a museum devoted to his memory. 

Finally should be mentioned the rosarium begun by Josephine, wife of Napoleon; it was at Château de Malmaison that Josephine planted her famous gardens.  The Belgian artist Pierre Joseph Redoute recorded her roses and lilies and prints of these works sell even today.

She created a large collection of roses, plants were gathered not only from her native Martinique but other places around the world.  She had some 250 varieties of roses. At its height Malmaison was a home to kangaroos, black swans, zebras, sheep, gazelles, ostriches, chamois, a seal, antelopes and llamas to name a few.  From a 2002 article in Orient Express magazine:

“Château de Malmaison is situated at Rueil, 8km from central Paris, towards St-Germain-en-Laye. Its museum features furniture and artworks relating to the Imperial family, while its park contains the rose garden and many rare, old trees”. 

Perhaps also should be mentioned the International Rose Test Garden in the city of Portland in the United States.  It was opened in 1917 and was the creation of a group of Portland nurserymen.

Today it has over 7000 plants and over 550 species and new rose cultivars are received continually from many parts of the world to be tested for color, fragrance, disease resistance, and other attributes as well.

Rose oil has many uses. As a moisuturizer and tonic for the skin, to relieve mental and physical tension, to ease depression, as a massage oil, and of course in perfumes. Rosewater, a product of the same distillation process, is used particularly in Iranian cuisine to flavor a variety of foods.  Rose hips, the pods at the base of the rose flower, have been used to make tea as well, and native americans have made this tea for thousands of years.

It is the essential oil extracted from the petals of roses.  Depending upon the extraction process the oil can be referred to as either rose otto- known also as attar of rose or attar of roses- or rose absolute.  Rose ottos are extracted through steam distillation and rose absolutes use different methods, in particular solvent extraction.  The damask rose and cabbage rose have been cultivated for the production of rose oil.

The price of rose oils is a barometer of the number of rose petals it takes to produce even an ounce of oil; the proportion can vary widely depending on the extraction process and ratios typically fall between 1500:1 all the way to 10,000:1.  Nowadays some less than forthright dealers, in an effort to mitigate the expense, adulterate it with geranium or Palmarose, both rich in geraniol, the main constituent of rose oil.

The production of rose oil is basically a three step process. The gathering and preparation of the roses, the extraction process, and separating the oil itself.  A simple yet useful description of a do-it-yourself version follows:

Gather a couple handfulls of fresh rose petals, still soft with dew. Crush gently, place in jar, adding a little oil- such as jojoba or palm, coconut or olive- and cover for 24 hours. Finally squeeze petals, adding that oil back to jar, strain what is left, and repeat the process until you reach the desired fragrance.

The actual manufacturing process parallels this simple description. The petals are gathered in the morning and distilled the same day. There are several extraction methods. The distillation traditionally involves copper stills, filled with roses and water and lasts for about an hour before collection  begins.

The collection consists of vaporized water and rose oil, they are condensed and returned to a flask. The water is distilled again and the end product of the entire collection process brings together the oils from both the distillations into the final rose otto, or attar of roses. It is a dark olive-green in color and will form white crystals even at room temperature. 

The ‘hydrosol’ portion of this product is known as rosewater. India, Persia, Syria, the Ottoman Empire were sources in the ancient world but nowadays Bulgaria, Morocco, Iran and Turkey are the primary locations. Today the Rose Valley in Bulgaria, near the town of Kazanlak, is one of the major producers in the world of the attar of roses.