Flowers are powerful means of conveying emotion: condolences, loss, love, apology, friendship, thanks. Among the flowers commonly given, roses occupy a particularly important place, especially to express love. Yet, roses die quickly. Cut from the bush, placed in a vase full of fresh water, they last only a few days before petals brown and fall all over the table and the rose bud itself droops and becomes sad. A metaphor, perhaps, of the fleeting and fragile nature of romance.
Genetically modified and homogenized, grown in carefully controlled environments, today’s roses lack the variation, hardiness, and rich aromas of older varietals. 1867 and the tea rose. Today’s roses are standardized, like so many things in our world, even the ways we express our emotions.
And yet, if we look close enough, we can find variation and differences even in today’s roses, the shapes of the pedals, the colors of the stems, the peculiar way each flower decays. These two photos are form part of a pamphlet in a series of pamphlets on flowers, a sort of paper menagerie.