What is the symbolysm behind roses?

I know that they are symbolic of love, but what else could they represent?

What is the symbolysm behind roses?
The most important thing about a rose are its thorns, because it represents love and beauty, but because it has thorns, it also represents the potential pain love and beauty can cause and how they don't come free of drawbacks.
Reply:A rose is most beautiful when its petals are opening, which may indicate a need for maturity and completeness.



A rose doesn't last very long, so you're encouraged to "stop and smell the roses" while you can, before the petals fall. The hidden meaning here is that beauty is transient, and you may miss it if you're too busy.



Also, and this may be a bit more obscure, roses are difficult to grow properly, requiriing a lot of attention and care. Some people are like that, too, and one need only look at the results of one to extrapolate the value of the other.



"God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." J.M. Barrie
Reply:--The dual nature of love: "This and later myths about Aphrodite display the dual nature of love: purity and innocence represented by white roses; desire and sexual gratification by red ones. In one story she runs to help her wounded lover Adonis and catches her flesh on the thorns of the white rose bush. Her blood falling on the bush turns the roses red, symbolising the way innocence and purity change to fecundity and motherhood when blood is shed through menstruation and parturition."

--Sex. "Eros, son of Aphrodite and God of sexual desire, is frequently depicted wearing a wreath of roses. "

and

"One [Roman] myth parallels that of Aphrodite rescuing Adonis and symbolises the connection between blood, sexual fulfilment and red roses. Venus loved Adonis but was also pursued by Mars, the God of war, who would have killed Adonis had not Venus warned her lover of the dangers he faced. In her haste to save him, she slipped in a rose bed and scratched her legs. Red rose bushes grew from the blood that flowed from her wounds onto the ground."

--Life: [In Ancient Rome] "The rose was a symbol of life because of its beauty, a symbol of death because of the inevitable withering of its blooms and a symbol of eternal life because of its association with the Gods."

--Christianity: "The rose was incorporated in many works of art and literature, and by association with the myth of Christ and the acts of the saints was associated with pain, death and martyrdom. It became the chalice of redemption or cup of blessings."

and

"The oldest meaning of the word "rosary" was a rose-garden (rosarium), the enclosed rose-garden of Marianism. Later it came to refer to the strings of beads, made of dried rose hips or carved from rose-wood, that monks used for counting their prayers, originally paternosters but Hail Marys by the 12th century."

--Kingly power: "It became a symbol of human love and also of kingly power. In England the white rose was associated with the House of York and the red rose with the House of Lancaster. When the Wars of the Roses ended in 1485 the heraldic badge of the Tudor rose, which Henry VII incorporated to symbolise the merging of the two dynastic families, was a small white rose upon a red one. It is still the badge of the royal house of England."
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