# Are any rose species native to the Middle East? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 25, 2017, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-rose-species-native-to-the-middle-east/789839 "2017-06-25T16:45:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-rose-species-native-to-the-middle-east/789839/1 "2017-06-25T16:45:37Z")
Wikipedia just says things like “X species native to North Africa and Europe”, which really isn’t specific enough, and looking up the various subgenera on Google isn’t providing much more information. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-rose-species-native-to-the-middle-east/789839/2 "2017-06-25T17:13:21Z")
Best that I can tell, there are two species of rose native to Israel: the [Rosa Phoenicia](https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rosa_phoenicia#/media/File:Rosa_phoenicia.JPG) and the dog rose ([Rosa Canina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_canina)). Neither, however, look like the generally accepted image of how a rose is “supposed” to look. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-rose-species-native-to-the-middle-east/789839/3 "2017-06-25T17:16:03Z")
_Rosa x damascena_ (damask rose) has been grown in the Middle East for a long time, as the name (from “Damascus”) suggests. But AFAIK neither it nor any other rose species is originally native to what we now think of as the Middle East, although there are apparently some species originating as far east as Turkey and as far west as central Asia. (Edit: Yes, **Alessan** is right that the dog-rose and Rosa phoenicia appear to be native in a large region including parts of western Asia, but not just Israel in either case. So there’s two Middle Eastern roses for you.) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-rose-species-native-to-the-middle-east/789839/4 "2017-06-25T19:23:11Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > as far east as Turkey and as far west as central Asia. Want a do-over on that? The word for rose originates from Old Persian. The ancestors of the Iranians must have been the developers of the original rose cultivars, from the basal wild form that has only 5 petals, in very ancient times. You can tell how old the word must be from how far it has changed over time. The original Old Persian for rose was \*_wrda_-. From this you can see the source of Arabic _ward_, Hebrew _vered_, and Greek _rhodon_ (from archaic Greek _wrodon_, before the Greek /w/ disappeared altogether). But the modern Persian form of this word is “gol” (earlier pronunciation: “gul”). That’s a hell of a lot of change for one little syllable. In glottochronology, the science of dating languages and language change, that is evidence of Persian origin. It’s been there the longest and has therefore changed the most. How the heck do you get from _wrda_ to _gul_? You know how in Germanic words starting with w-, when borrowed into French, it changes to gu-? (e.g. ward/guard, war/guerre, warranty/guarantee, etc.) Same thing happened here. Also the protohistory of Indo-Iranian languages features instability of /r/ and /l/, where the one often (but not always) turns into the other. The final /d/ weakened to a fricative /δ/ and then dropped out altogether over time, and the vowel /a/ shifted to /u/ or /o/ under the influence of the original w-. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-rose-species-native-to-the-middle-east/789839/5 "2017-06-25T20:06:28Z")
Is there a correlation between the Persian \*_wrda-_ and whatever the original Proto-Indo-European root was for the English word \*red \*and all of the Indo-European cognates? ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-rose-species-native-to-the-middle-east/789839/6 "2017-06-26T01:48:46Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Best that I can tell, there are two species of rose native to Israel: the [Rosa Phoenicia](https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rosa_phoenicia#/media/File:Rosa_phoenicia.JPG) and the dog rose ([Rosa Canina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_canina)). Neither, however, look like the generally accepted image of how a rose is “supposed” to look. They look to me pretty much like wild roses are supposed to look (granted, I know only of one kind that happened to grow in the area where I was brought up). ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-rose-species-native-to-the-middle-east/789839/7 "2017-06-26T03:18:52Z")
And just for the record, it seems the ['Rose of Sharon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_of_Sharon)’ is something that’s sounded good to poets and songwriters, but doesn’t seem to refer much to any real roses. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-any-rose-species-native-to-the-middle-east/789839/8 "2017-06-26T04:30:20Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Is there a correlation between the Persian \*_wrda-_ and whatever the original Proto-Indo-European root was for the English word \*red \*and all of the Indo-European cognates? It does come from an IE root, but not the one for red. The Proto-IE source \*_[wrdhos](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rose#Etymology_1)_ is thought to be the word for sweetbriar or some kind of bramble. I also saw a reference to an Old English word for thornbush (coincidentally “_[word](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rubus#Etymology_2)_,” a homonym of the word _word_) derived from \*_wrdhos_. The primitive root of \*wrdhos is thought to mean ‘to grow’, and at one time I thought it might be related to English “wild.” Red is traced back to Proto-IE \*_rowdhos_, from the root \*\*[rewdh](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h%E2%82%81rewd%CA%B0-)\*-. They’d be pretty close, except for the initial w- in \*_wrdhos_.