Rose Trivia - Questions about roses
A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of
the genus Rosa, in the family Rosaceae, or what?
A: The flower it bears.
How many species of roses are there?
A: Over three hundred and there are tens of thousands of cultivars.
They form a group of plants that can be erect shrubs,
climbing, or trailing, with stems that are often what?
A: Armed with sharp prickles.
Their flowers vary in size and shape and are usually
large and showy in what
colors?
A: In colors ranging from white through yellows and reds.
Where are the most species native to?
A: Asia, with smaller numbers native to Europe,
North America, and
northwestern Africa.
Species, cultivars, and hybrids are all widely grown
for what?
A: Their beauty and often are fragrant.
Rose plants range in size from compact, miniature
roses, to climbers that can reach what height?
A: Seven meters.
Different species hybridize easily, and this has been
used in the development of the wide range of what?
A: Garden roses.
Most roses are deciduous, but a few (particularly from
Southeast Asia) are what?
A: Evergreen or nearly so.
The flowers of most species have how many petals?
A: Five, except for Rosa sericea, which usually has only four.
Each petal is divided into what?
A: Two distinct lobes and is usually white or pink, though in a few species
yellow or red.
In nature, how are roses pollinated?
A: Roses are insect pollinated.
The aggregate fruit of the rose is a berry-like
structure called what?
A: A rose hip.
Why do many of the domestic cultivars not produce hips?
A: The flowers are so tightly petalled that they do not provide access for
pollination.
The hips are eaten by what?
A: Fruit-eating birds such as thrushes and waxwings, which then disperse the
seeds in their droppings.
The sharp growths along a rose stem, though commonly
called "thorns", are technically what?
A: Prickles, outgrowths of the epidermis (the outer layer of tissue of the
stem), unlike true thorns, which are modified stems.
Rose prickles are typically sickle-shaped hooks, which
aid the rose in what?
A: Hanging onto other vegetation when growing over it.
Despite the presence of prickles, roses are frequently
browsed by what?
A: Deer.
Today's garden roses come from where?
A: 18th-century China.
Roses are best known as what?
A: Ornamental plants grown for their flowers in the garden and sometimes
indoors.
They have been also used for commercial what?
A: Perfumery and commercial cut flower crops.
Some are used as landscape plants, for hedging and for
other utilitarian purposes such as what?
A: Game cover and slope stabilization.
