A Love Letter to Rose

When describing you, Rose, we have to speak in specificity: your blooms range from creamy white to velvety reds that are near-black, with all shades of yellow, pink, and peach in between. Your blooms may be large and heavy, or small and compact. You may bush out as a tiny shrub, or climb to heights of several meters. Your flowers may remain small, carefully-hybridized buds, or may open wide and wildly, releasing your scent over the summer air. In all of these forms, your beauty is a delight to our senses.

When I was a little girl visiting my grandmother, she would send me and my cousins several houses up the block to visit with Aunt Cora. Aunt Cora was not a blood relation, to my knowledge, but she was extended family and shared the southern Black woman’s love for a flower-filled, well-swept yard. What I remember most about our brief visits was her walking us through the rose beds all around her clapboard house, clipping and pruning, and then sending us back to Grandma’s with gently-toted, thorny armfuls of roses in all hues.

Aunt Cora loved those visits, as did we. The beauty of her generations-old roses was appreciated by all of us, whether we were 5 or 75 years old. Rose, your beauty shines not only across the seasons of the year, but across the seasons of life.

Rose, you are beloved as a rosewater tonic and skin toner, with your gentle, astringent, and softening actions, but we often limit your full healing power. Sure, you are sublime for skin care, but your medicine soaks in deep below the surface. I know this from personal experience—I have learned that my prickly, itchy autoimmune skin always finds instant relief with a simple spritz of rosewater.

When I think of “cordial,” I think of you. Not so much because of your usefulness in cocktails (although a good rose syrup is fantastic with ginger syrup, grapefruit juice, and gin!) but more so in the old-timey herbalist sense of the word. Cordials can be strengthening and nutritive to the heart and to the digestion, and uplifting and gladdening to the spirit. These are just some of the ways that your leaves and flowers meet us humans where we are.

Even toward the end of your flowering cycle, the slightly browned edges and freckling of your wilting blooms hold a particular reminder of the beauty in each of life’s stages. I’m not yet an elder, but see elderhood right around the corner, and rose medicine reminds me of the gift of beauty in all seasons and in our perceived imperfections. It’s like Aretha Franklin and Lauryn Hill sang: “A rose is still a rose … Baby girl, you’re still a flower.” You remind us that with love, we are more than okay, we are beautiful precisely as we are.

And you hold such powerful lessons in balance. For all your sweet, floral headiness, you can cut a serious bitter streak. That’s not a bad thing, for without it you wouldn’t be such a support to the digestion—strengthening the stomach and cooling hot inflammatory conditions of the gut, skin, and mucosa. This balance shows up again in the contrast of your gorgeous, silken blooms and your spiky thorns.

You haven’t attained legendary status over the ages by shrinking back or folding yourself into shady corners. No, you show up bright-faced in your full and luxurious glory—with protection, in the form of prickly outgrowths along your stems. Amazingly, you manage to be strategic about your protection, depending on your needs. Sometimes your thorns are hook-shaped and woody, better for protection against predatory animals. Other times (as in the case of my beloved beach rose, Rosa rugosa) the prickles stand straight and densely-packed, to protect blooms and fruits not only from birds and animals but also from damage by wind-driven sand.

The way your outgrowths protect your beauty and your fruit reminds me of the way our pericardium—the tough, fibrous, outermost layer of our heart—protects the fleshier, life-giving apparatus within.

French herbalist and a true master of flower medicine, Maurice Mességué, speaks of your ability to balance the harmful effects of long-term antibiotic use by supporting the gut flora—most likely because your petals have high soluble fiber content. For this reason, I heap your beauty on top of yogurt, salads, birthday cakes, and salsas.

Even your hybridized offspring—soft but with no alluring scent, few thorns, and no hips—are a knockout, still lovely and statuesque. But where I used to think that you were demure, romantic, and easily contained—a perfectly suitable flower for prom corsages and wedding bouquets—I’ve come to find you to be much more: more wild, more fragrant, more powerful, more sweet, more bitter, more healing.

It can be easy to underestimate your power, but virtually all of your parts are helpful in healing. The petals and sepals, hips, stems, leaves, roots, root bark, and thorns of both wild and domesticated species together have a dizzying array of applications. Perhaps your rosebuds and petals are more recognized than other parts, as they are so popular in formulas to tighten and firm the skin. However, they are capable of so much more, and have traditionally been included in formulas that staunch bleeding from the lungs, stomach, and nose.