A Rose by Any Other Name

Wild roses are ubiquitous with over 150 species found throughout the Northern Hemisphere and fossil evidence dating back 58 million years. The modern rose era was marked by a distinct cultural diffusion from France starting in the mid-19th century (Office of the Gene Technology Regulator, 2009). The modern rose era began with the creation of the hybrid tea rose ‘La France’ in 1867 when French cultivator Jean-Baptiste André Guillot successfully crossed a hybrid perpetual rose with a tea rose, thus exploiting the hardiness of the perpetual roses and the repeated-flowering of the tea rose. The hybrid tea rose is favored for cut flowers due to their single larger blooms on long, straight stems.

The hybrid tea rose initially circulated through the sharing of cuttings among nurseries throughout the world. However, it was ultimately a well-named rose and the luck of timing that led to the hybrid tea rose’s current popularity. Between 1935–1939 the French horticulturist, Francis Meilland, was developing a hybrid tea rose labelled ‘3-35-40’ and was intending to name it ‘Madame A. Meilland’ for his deceased mother. Anticipating the inevitable German invasion of France, Meilland sent cuttings of the rose to Turkey, Italy, Germany, and the United States (Meilland and Lambert, 1984). The roses on Meilland’s farms were then torn up to plant vegetables during the war. The cuttings never made it to Turkey because Germans commandeered the train with the budwood on it. While the cuttings sent to Germany and Italy initially arrived, breed stock did not survive the war. The cutting destined for the Conrad Pyle Nursery in Pennsylvania was rumored to have been transported on the last flight to the US before the German invasion by hiding it in a diplomatic satchel to avoid established trade embargoes (Bradenton-Sarasota Rose Society, No Date). Meilland was unable to communicate with the Pyle Nursery until after the war to know if the budwood had been received or successfully propagated. Yet Robert Pyle of the Conrad Pyle Nursery was able to successfully propagate the budwood and the rose was submitted to the All-America Rose Selections (AARS) testing program to determine if the rose would successfully grow in all regions of the country. After the liberation of France, Conrad Pyle was finally able to inform Francis Meilland that the budwood had been received, successfully propagated, and the rose was ready to be publicly released.

After successfully going through the testing program, ‘Peace’ was formally announced as the rose’s commercial name by Conrad Pyle on April 29, 1945 at the Pacific Rose Society Annual Exhibition. The announcement included the statement “We are persuaded that this greatest rose of our time should be named for the world’s greatest desire: ‘PEACE’” (Bradenton-Sarasota Rose Society, No Date.). In a stroke of coincidental timing, the announcement occurred on the same day Berlin fell to the Allied Forces, effectively ending the war in Europe. On May 8, 1945, a single ‘Peace’ blossom—like the photograph displayed on the cover—was presented to each of the 49 delegations who met to form the United Nations with a note “We hope the ‘Peace’ rose will influence men’s thoughts for everlasting world peace.” On the day the war with Japan came to an end, the ‘Peace’ rose won the top US prize for roses—the AARS All American Award. After the war, many households planted the ‘Peace’ rose in their gardens as an expression of their hope for continued world peace. Since the ‘Peace’ rose was hardier and more disease resistant than previous varietals of hybrid tea roses, it started a renaissance in rose gardening, including the rise of the commercial rose industry and the continued development of new cultivars of hybrid tea roses. A testament to the influence of the ‘Peace’ rose is that it is identified in the parentage of over 300 commercial roses. In 1976, the ‘Peace’ rose was inducted into the Rose Hall of Fame by the World Federation of Rose Societies and by 1992, over one hundred million ‘Peace’ roses had been sold worldwide.

Though the beginning of...