Gertrude Jekyll
June is finally here! We have enjoyed watching Meowmie plant in
The rose is a rose,
Roses
Roses belong to the family Rosaceae (rose-AH-see-ee),
We two cats still love to look at Meowmie's roses, which to us are
Shirley and I wish to dedicate this page to our brother Lloyd
The midi is playing "How Beautiful". Roses are beautiful.
her gardens. Her roses are just starting to bloom! June is the
month for roses and summer begins!
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose-
But were always a rose.
Robert Frost
a rather large family (meaning that it contains many species),
including quite a few food and ornamental crops. Members of the
family usually have stipules (the pair of green flaps at the base
of the leaf), often have thorns or prickles, and their flowers
tend to have their parts in multiples of 5, with large numbers
(more than 12) of stamens. Flowers of most members of the family
have a hypanthium, which is a bowl- or cup-shaped structure,
made up of the bases of the sepals, petals, stamens, and part of
the receptacle (the end of the stem to which the flower is attached),
all fused together. The sepals, petals, and stamens appear to grow
out of the edge of the hypanthium. The family Rosaceae is divided
into six subfamilies, based on flower and/or fruit structure.
Species within a subfamily are more closely related to each other
than they are to members of any other subfamily.
Family names end with the letters "aceae," and subfamilies end in
"oideae." Here are the six subfamilies of Rosaceae:
Spiraeoideae- includes bridal wreath (Spiraea), an ornamental shrub.
In this group, the fruit is a dry, papery capsule or follicle.
Pomoideae (pom-oy-dee-ee) - includes several important fruits.
All of this subfamily make a "pome" as their fruit type. A pome has
a core made up of the true fruit (ovary), surrounded by a much-enlarged
hypanthium. Apples, pears, and loquats are in this group. Most of what
you eat is actually swollen hypanthium, and the core that gets thrown
away is the true fruit (derived from the ovary of the flower).
Prunoideae (prune-oy-dee-ee) - In this subfamily, the fruit is
a "drupe," entirely made up of the ovary of a flower. The hypanthium falls
off with the petals, while the fruit is still tiny. A drupe has a thin
outer skin, a soft, juicy pulp, and a hard, stony "pit," surrounding 1
or 2 seeds. This group includes peach, nectarine, plum, cherry, apricot,
and almond. In the case of almonds, we throw away the fruit and keep the pit.
Chrysobalanoideae (kriss-oh-bal-an-oy-dee-ee!)Some taxonomists
believe this subfamily is so different from the other subfamilies that
it should be given full family status, in which case it would be the
Chrysobalanaceae. It includes the gopher apple (Licania), a common
ground-covering subshrub throughout Florida, and cocoplum
(Chrysobalanus), a popular native shrub for use in clipped hedges in
South Florida.
Neuradoideae - (new-rad-oy-dee-ee) - This subfamily apparently
doesn't occur in Florida, either cultivated or native.
Rosoideae - (rose-OY-dee-ee) - This is the subfamily to which
roses belong. Flowers in this group usually have at least 10 ovaries,
often many more. In addition to roses, the group includes raspberries,
blackberries, and strawberries. With one exception, the plants we call
"roses" all belong to a single genus within the Rosoideae. The genus name
is Rosa, which should always be written in italics. The exception
is Hulthemia persica, which has been separated from the true roses because
of its simple leaves (only one leaflet), its complete lack of stipules,
and perhaps some other reasons. It is not often seen in this country.
The true roses (genus Rosa) have stipules (usually attached to
the base of the leaf), compound leaves, usually with an odd number of
leaflets, often produce prickles (outgrowths of the epidermis at any
point along the stem) but never true thorns (modified stems, specifically
from the buds just above the leaves). They have 5-petal flowers.
(R. omiensis is an exception with only 4, and cultivated "double"
roses have been selected by horticulturists, as desirable "freaks.")
Unique to the roses, they produce "hips" as their fruit type - a sort
of inside-out strawberry, which is a deep, bowl- or snifter-shaped
structure formed from the hypanthium. Inside are the hard, angular objects
that most of us refer to as "seeds," but which are actually small fruits
(achenes), each of which contains a single seed. Other examples of achenes
are the so-called "seeds" of a strawberry or a sunflower. In each case,
the shell is structurally a fruit, with a single true seed inside,
attached to the achene at one end.
the most beautiful flowers that we have ever seen. Your activity for this
month is to mew about roses. We took care of the scientific stuff which
the author Robert Frost was refering to. Send in graphics, research or what
roses you have planted in your own gardens. Mew to us, Shirley and Sophie
by clicking on the mail button below. There are still gardens to plant in.
Please send in your autobiographies and pictures for our
"Getting To Know You" page.
who passed over the Rainbow Bridge in December 2001.
