Roses for valentine day are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. The leaves are borne alternately on the stem. The flowers of most species have five petals, with the exception of Rosa sericea, which usually has only four.

Each petal is divided into two distinct lobes and is usually white or pink, though in a few species yellow or red. The aggregate fruit of the rose is a berry-like structure called a rose hip. Many of the domestic cultivars do not produce hips, as the flowers are so tightly petalled that they do not provide access for pollination. The oldest remains of roses are from the Late Eocene Florissant Formation of Colorado. Roses were present in Europe by the early Oligocene. Today’s garden roses come from 18th-century China.

Among the old Chinese garden roses, the Old Blush group is the most primitive, while newer groups are the most diverse. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Rosa minutifolia and Rosa stellata, from North America.

This subgenus is subdivided into 11 sections. Roses are best known as ornamental plants grown for their flowers in the garden and sometimes indoors. They have been also used for commercial perfumery and commercial cut flower crops. Some are used as landscape plants, for hedging and for other utilitarian purposes such as game cover and slope stabilization. The majority of ornamental roses are hybrids that were bred for their flowers. Ornamental roses have been cultivated for millennia, with the earliest known cultivation known to date from at least 500 BC in Mediterranean countries, Persia, and China. In the early 19th century the Empress Josephine of France patronized the development of rose breeding at her gardens at Malmaison.

Roses are a popular crop for both domestic and commercial cut flowers. Generally they are harvested and cut when in bud, and held in refrigerated conditions until ready for display at their point of sale. In temperate climates, cut roses are often grown in greenhouses, and in warmer countries they may also be grown under cover in order to ensure that the flowers are not damaged by weather and that pest and disease control can be carried out effectively. Significant quantities are grown in some tropical countries, and these are shipped by air to markets across the world. Some kind of roses are artificially coloured using dyed water, like rainbow roses. An associated product is rose water which is used for cooking, cosmetics, medicine and religious practices. The main constituents of attar of roses are the fragrant alcohols geraniol and L-citronellol and rose camphor, an odorless solid composed of alkanes, which separates from rose oil.