What Do Yellow Roses Represent?

What do yellow roses represent is a question asked by people interested in yellow roses and before purchasing these beautiful roses.

Yellow roses were found growing in the Middle East around the 18th century. Wild roses from Afghanistan and Southwest Asia bloomed in pale yellow and a deep sulfur color. They were immediately renounced and grew quickly in popularity. The yellow rose at that time had no fragrant and although extremely beautiful this was a drawback. Also about this time techniques were being introduced in the field of rose cross-breeding and hybridization. As these techniques evolved they were able to add a pleasant aroma to the yellow rose.

In the beginning the yellow rose was associated two ways. The first was a negative connotation as a symbol of jealously and dying love. The positive symbolism was associated more with the color. The color yellow is related to the sun. The sun is known as a source of light and warmth an integral to life on Earth. As time passed the yellow rose was connected more to the color yellow rather than to the negative symbolism. Now they are related to joy and friendship and get well soon.

Yellow roses have different flower shapes. The globular is a bloom possessing many petals forming a ball-like arrangement with a closed center. An open-cupped is a bloom possessing many petals forming a cup-like arrangement with an open center. The quartered has inner petals folded into 4 distinct sections rather than forming a cone.

Yellow roses are available in several varieties. There are seven groups of roses. The classic rose is a long, pointed bud which opens to reveal many velvety or satin-like petals.


The Alpine Sunset is a yellow English bred rose. The flowers are very large and the fragrance is outstanding. These are great for cutting.

The Elina another yellow rose is the healthiest of Hybrid Teas. The flowers are borne singly on strong stems. Pointed buds open to produce porcelain-like flowers. These stand open well to poor weather.

Freedom has yellow pedals that do not fade with age and they fall cleanly. The scent is pleasant and the leaves are abundant.

Goldstar won top honors at The Hague. It has a special appeal for flower arrangers as the blooms are borne on long straight stems. The pure yellow blooms appear freely and the color does not fade with age.

Grandpa Dickson is regarded as the best pale yellow Hybrid Tea. Rose books sing its praises. Superbly formed blooms with long petals. It addition, its good rain resistance, freedom of flowering and late-season blooming makes it an excellent bedding variety.

King's Ransom has straggly growth but has non-fading blooms that are high-centered and rain-resistant. They are beautifully shaped and excellent for cutting.

There are several other yellow roses available should you decide to grow your own.

A bouquet of yellow roses will absolutely bring a smile to the receiver of this exquisite rose.

What do yellow roses represent? They represent warmth and happiness and sunny cheerful feelings. Yellow roses can send the message of appreciation or platonic love. P These are perfect to be given to a great friend either as a bouquet or a plant for the garden.

Plantwatch: Acorn crop dips as climate changes

Oak leaves in Britain are still mostly green. The oak is one of the last trees to change colour in autumn, although many have already dropped their acorns. But the days of finding lots of big acorns may be drawing to a close since they are falling victim to climate change.

A study of acorns has revealed that the warmer the weather the smaller the crop of acorns. Tim Sparks, a professor at Coventry University, has examined more than 160,000 observations of oaks and found that the more the first dates of flowering vary in springtime the poorer the acorn crop. In warmer springs the oak trees flower in a less synchronised fashion over a longer period and this gives a smaller crop of acorns in autumn, a drop of about 20%.

In cooler springs the oak flowers within a shorter period and the blooming is more synchronised, allowing more successful cross-pollination.

These days acorns are ripening about 13 days earlier than they did 10 years ago, a phenomenon that matches a widespread earlier shift in fruit and nuts ripening on British trees.

Another sign of the changes is autumn tree-leaf colours tending to appear later in the year and leaves staying on the trees longer; oak leaves now seem to lose their leaves about a week later than was the case 30 years ago.

The observations of the oaks and other trees came from a yearly survey of spring and autumn called Nature’s Calendar, run by the Woodland Trust. Each year the public is asked to record signs of those seasons in the natural world. It has built up into an invaluable, and timed, record.

Nearly a third of world's cacti face extinction, says IUCN

Nearly a third of the world’s cacti are facing the threat of extinction, according to a shocking global assessment of the effects that illegal trade and other human activities are having on the species.

 Cacti are a critical provider of food and water to desert wildlife ranging from coyotes and deer to lizards, tortoises, bats and hummingbirds, and these fauna spread the plants’ seeds in return.

But the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)‘s first worldwide health check of the plants, published today in the journal Nature Plants, says that they are coming under unprecedented pressure from human activities such as land use conversions, commercial and residential developments and shrimp farming.

But the paper said the main driver of cacti species extinction was the: “unscrupulous collection of live plants and seeds for horticultural trade and private ornamental collections, smallholder livestock ranching and smallholder annual agriculture.”

The findings were described as “disturbing” by Inger Andersen, the IUCN’s director-general. “They confirm that the scale of the illegal wildlife trade – including the trade in plants – is much greater than we had previously thought, and that wildlife trafficking concerns many more species than the charismatic rhinos and elephants which tend to receive global attention.”

The conservation group now judges cacti the fifth most threatened species on its red list of endangered flora and fauna, and is calling for an urgent ramping up of international efforts to tackle the illegal wildlife trade. Three of the IUCN’s five most threatened species to date are plants.

Cacti are almost always succulents but unlike most others, they store water in their stems alone, enabling them to survive extreme droughts. The plants can be as small as one centimetre in diameter and grow above 19 metres in height. Well over half of the species are used by humans for display ornamentation, food or medicine.

Almost 1,500 types of cactus were surveyed by the IUCN specialists over a five-year period, mostly in the Americas, where the plant is endemic.

Some, like the once-ubiquitous Echinopsis pampana, have seen population drops of at least 50% in Peru, due to plunder for the ornamental plant trade. The species is now listed as endangered.

“The results of this assessment came as a shock to us,” said Barbara Goettsch, the study’s lead author. “We did not expect cacti to be so highly threatened and for illegal trade to be such an important driver of their decline.”

Cacti are often dug up and exported off the books to Europe and Asia where rare species such as Ariocarpus can sell at prices of up to $1,000 (£660) a plant, Goettsch said.

Tackling the smugglers is a daunting task as the prickly cargo can be smuggled in suitcases or even socks. While countries such as Peru have made progress in blocking the illicit trade, the IUCN is calling for stricter implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in the ‘hotspots’ of Uruguay, Brazil and Chile. Mexico has made advances but still has work to do, according to Goettsch.

Despite their charismatic flowers, and iconic status in popular culture, cacti are often overlooked in conservation planning. The report calls for a broadening of arid land protection to deal with human activities such as construction, quarrying and aquaculture.

Exeter University’s Professor Kevin Gaston, who co-led the assessment, said that the results showed how important funding for further scientific assessments is. “Only by so doing will we gain the overall picture of what is happening to them at a time when, as evidenced by the cacti, they may be under immense human pressures.”

Osmanthus

Osmanthus is a genus of about 30 species of flowering plants in the family Oleaceae. Most of the species are native to eastern Asia (China, Japan, Indochina, the Himalayas, etc.) with a few species from the Caucasus, New Caledonia, Sumatra, and North America (Mexico, Central America, southeastern United States)

Osmanthus range in size from shrubs to small trees, 2–12 m (7–39 ft) tall. The leaves are opposite, evergreen, and simple, with an entire, serrated or coarsely toothed margin. The flowers are produced in spring, summer or autumn, each flower being about 1 cm long, white, with a four-lobed tubular-based corolla ('petals'). The flowers grow in small panicles, and in several species have a strong fragrance. The fruit is a small (10–15 mm), hard-skinned dark blue to purple drupe containing a single seed.

Osmanthus are popular shrubs in parks and gardens throughout the warm temperate zone. Several hybrids and cultivars have been developed. Osmanthus flower on old wood and produce more flowers if unpruned. A pruned shrub often produces few or no flowers for one to five or more years, before the new growth matures sufficiently to start flowering.

In Japan, sweet osmanthus (gin-mokusei) is a favorite garden shrub. Its small white flowers appear in short-stalked clusters in late autumn. It has an intense sweet fragrance. A variant with deep golden flowers (kin-mokusei) is also popular.

The flowers of O. fragrans are used throughout East Asia for their scent and flavour, which is likened to apricot and peach.

In China, osmanthus tea (guìhuāchá) combines sweet osmanthus flowers with black or green tea leaves. Traditional Chinese medicine claims that osmanthus tea improves complexion and helps rid the body of excess nitric oxide, a compound linked to the formation of cancer, diabetes, and renal disease.

Osmanthus wine flavours huangjiu or other rice wines with full osmanthus blossoms and is traditionally consumed during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Alys Fowler: the best way to beat weeds

Dandelions are beastly weeds. Photograph: Alamy

Weeds are often thought of as being unpredictable, with an ability to turn up anywhere and take over. In fact, they are quite the opposite: entirely predictable and wholly reliable. Give them bare ground and they will appear; thus, the first rule of weeding is cover your work. If you are not going to be back at that spot for a couple of weeks, cover the soil with cardboard, black plastic, mulch, or sow green manure. Don’t give the weeds a new playground.

All weeds exploit two strategies to reproduce: by spreading stems or roots, or scattering seed. If you can’t get round to weeding out the roots, pull off the flower heads. But be nice; pollinators love weeds that are rich in nectar and pollen. If possible, let them flower, then pull off the flower heads before they set seed. Rot the seed heads down in a bucket before adding to the compost, as immature weed seeds will happily mature on top of the compost heap if they are left with enough flower stalk.

Seeds can travel long distances. They hitch a ride on the wind or a visitor, and arrive unannounced in your garden. Annual weeds rely on this strategy to get anywhere, while perennials can fall back underground to keep marching on. We fear this lot.

The beastly types are brambles (rooting stems), buttercups (runners or stolons – stems that creep along the ground), ground elder and bindweed (rhizomes – subterranean stems), dock and dandelion (tap roots), mare’s tail or Japanese knotweed (both rhizomes) and creeping thistles (spreading roots and seed). If you leave bits of root behind as you dig, they will resprout.

The biggest weeds probably will have to be dug out nonetheless. “Lasagne gardening” – where you layer sheets of cardboard and rough organic matter on top of the soil – can defeat them, or at least loosen the soil, so it makes digging them out a more joyous task. The bigger the weeds, the more layers of cardboard you will need.

Lasagne gardening works better than weed-suppressing membrane because it enriches the soil and doesn’t leach petrochemicals into the ground. Worms love lasagne gardening because it provides them with new food; they don’t feel the same about plastic. Both systems work by weakening plants through lack of light. Some plants with very deep roots keep going for longer than you’d expect, so if in doubt, add another layer. This way you will also bury weed seeds, which tend to need light to germinate.
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If that doesn’t appeal, get a goat, rabbits, chickens, or a strimmer. My mother’s battle cry used to be “off with their heads”: eventually, you exhaust the roots.

If your weeds are running through the roots of shrubs or herbaceous perennials, the task is more difficult. Picking at new growth will slow them down, but you must be vigilant to win. Digging up shrubs and perennials in autumn, washing the roots and picking out the offending types is laborious but effective. Glyphosate and the like isn’t nearly as effective as it would like you to think it is.

You should come to your garden in the spirit of generosity to all that grows there.

• Listen to Alys on our gardening podcast at theguardian.com/sowgrowrepeat.

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