Down here in Devon, dog rose – Rosa canina – is coming into full bloom, and I adore the pink and white blush of its petals.
The delicate scent lets my body relax, a deep sensory calm that goes to the core of my being.
Its name is ambiguous. Pliny the Elder recorded that a Roman soldier cured himself of a rabid dog’s bite by drinking a decoction of wild rose root. Cynorrhodon is the name the Greeks called this preparation: the Dog Rose.
Other origin names are less flattering, with some saying that dog is a corruption of dagger, which references the plant’s jagged leaves.
While others believe it was applied in contempt, dismissing it as only fit for the hedgerow rather than the garden.
Whatever its origins, this wild rose has outlived all the arguments of its origin.
Long before the Roman Empire arrived, people found rose hips in prehistoric sites across Europe.
This shows the plant was important in human life even before writing existed.
It is mistakenly believed that the ancient Celts associated the rose with the horse goddess Epona, and that she is depicted accompanied by rosettes as symbols of beauty.
Epona was the only Celtic deity that the Romans adopted into their pantheon primarily by the Roman cavalry.
The Roman writer Apuleius noted in the Golden Ass that small shrines for Epona in stables were often adorned with fresh roses.
During her festival on December 18th, both horses and stables were decorated with these roses.
The link between Epona and roses isn’t Celtic. It stems from Roman military worship. The rosettes in her Celtic imagery symbolise the sun, fertility and abundance – not beauty.
Under the old Brehon laws in Ireland, people forbade clearing dog rows from a field. The penalty was a fine of one cow. This shows that people valued the plant as much as livestock.
In the old western part of Cambridgeshire, in Huntingdonshire, farmers counted nine weeks from seeing the first dog rose flower. This marked the start of the harvest.
In the sheep farming countries of northern England, shearing would not begin until the dog rose was in full bloom.
The old saying being ‘one must not shear the sheep of its wool before the dog rose is at its full.’
Even in the Christian tradition, roses are said to have made Christ’s crown and where his blood fell, roses grew.
Saint Benedict, tormented by desire, threw himself into a briar thicket at Subiaco to subdue his flesh. He clearly resisted the sensual qualities of this ancient plant.