Roses are just about everyone’s favourite flowers it seems and people spend a fortune on buying rose bushes to brighten up their gardens — but, and this a major problem, so many of the modern rose varieties do not have any perfume at all! True that they can be found in every colour of the rainbow and a myriad others besides, but the vast majority have no fragrance at all which is where our very own, indigenous, Pakistani wild roses come out right on the very top!
Our wild roses, there are many different varieties, can be found throughout most of the country but especially so in the wilds of Balochistan, the Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir, plus some parts of Punjab too.
These wild roses can be massive climbing varieties which are able to clamber as much as 60 feet and more high up convenient trees and from where they cascade back down in mind-blowing showers of pink or white, double or single, heavily perfumed flowers or they may be dwarf bushes, a few inches to one foot tall, again bearing pink or white, single or double blooms and heavily armoured with thorns to prevent wild animals and goats from eating them up.
These same wild roses also bear extremely tasty, vitamin C rich rose hips after the flowers themselves have finished. Rose hips contain the seeds for the next generation of these wonderful shrubs, ramblers and climbers, and are feasted on by birds and animals alike. Some humans are wise enough to harvest them to turn into healthy syrups and teas too.
For all their beauty though, people tend to avoid planting regionally climatically suitable wild rose species in their gardens for the simple reason that their flowering period is very short, much shorter than commercial produced varieties. Yet, a garden in which the awesome fragrance of wild roses pervades the atmosphere — in the garden itself as well as inside the house and outside the garden gate — even for just a few short weeks, is, in my humble opinion, a far more beautiful and natural place in which to wander and relax than a garden full of brightly coloured roses without any perfume at all.
Commercial bred roses do also produce rose hips, these are mainly larger than those of wild roses, but are nowhere near as attractive to animals, birds and humans too, as the much sweeter tasting, more vitamin rich wild ones. Commercially bred roses are also less hardy and far more susceptible to pests and diseases than their wild relatives so are inferior on all the fronts that matter. It is therefore a terrible shame that wild roses are not given the respect and prominence they so richly deserve.