Empires on Stems

EMPIRES ON STEMS is a cultural history of the relationship between people and roses through the centuries – starting with the Persians and Greeks and exploding with the Romans, who adored roses and could not possibly hold an orgy without them, through the middle ages and into the present, with an examination of what’s happening to the rosebush now.  On the way we meet fascinating lovers of roses from Empress Josephine to the painter Redoute to the explorers who risked their lives to bring plants unknown back to Europe, to the many breeders who spent their lives altering the rose from a wild bush to what we grow in our gardens today and will grow tomorrow.

Marge Piercy says:

"Who among us have not been touched by the rose? Who has not given or received a blood red stem for Valentine’s Day? Or delighted in the earthy pleasure of a bar of rose-scented soap? Who has not planted a rose bush and, having ignored it or pampered it, been drawn to it’s sharp sweet scent on a perfect June morning? What traveler has not marveled at the rose windows of Gothic cathedrals? What hardened football fan has not followed the bizarre parade of rose floats on New Years Day? However esteemed, however symbolic of life and love—the beauty of the petal versus the pain of the thorn—these exquisite natural wonders are often taken for granted.

And yet to disregard the rose is to dissociate from human history, for we humans have planted it, uprooted it, carried it, eaten it, healed ourselves with it, painted it, written about it, made and lost fortunes from it, and simply enjoyed it for thousands of years.

This is a book about our long human fascination with a flower that some of us grow and all of us enjoy, albeit according to our obsessions. The Roman army traveled with roses, with doctors who made medicines from it, and planted it all over Europe. The Empress Josephine had collectors send her roses from around the known world, even during the Napoleonic Wars when the British were blockading France. Pierre Joseph Redoute painted their likeness in sensuous portraits reproduced in our greeting cards even today. Perfumers have cooked their petals down to fragrances that have spawned industries and dynasties of rose-loving families, the Meillands (who smuggled roses out of France during World War II as the German army advanced), the Kordes of Germany, the Austins of England, have bred and improved them. There are those of us who coddle them to vainglorious perfection in rose competitions, who steal them from cemeteries, who attempt to recapture history by growing forgotten varieties; some who still attempt to nurture them to health with deadly poisons but many more who see the rose of the future only in an organic world. There are even those of us who like to eat them in savory stews and sticky delicious syrups (and for those there are recipes).

Simply put, to inhale the scent of a rose, to admire its blossom, to prick your finger on a thorn or belatedly order a dozen online when you just realized it is your mother’s birthday, connects you to a long line of people throughout history who share a singularly human fascination."

Scheduled for publication by Basic Books, Spring 2010.