The cultivation of roses most likely began in Asia around 5000 years ago.
They have been part of the human experience ever since and mentions of the flower are woven into a great many tales from the ancient world. Theophrastus, a pupil of Plato and Aristotle, wrote the first guide to roses around 300 B.C. Pliny the Roman went into more detail 200 years later with the equivalent of the world’s first catalogue, which listed 13 roses. It has been estimated that gardeners worldwide purchase 150 million rose plants each year. Perhaps the oldest painting in the world depicts a five-petaled pink rose. It resides in a cave on the island of Crete and dates back to about 1450 B.C. Today, there are over 30,000 varieties of roses and it has the most complicated family tree of any known flower species.