I would guess and say when empress Josephine began her rose gardens. They were probably called the "queens flower's", and from that became "the queen of flowers". A logical transition? No?

Josephine is a lot later than the 1656 date. She's latest 1700s to early 1800s. She got to enjoy some of the early noisettes.

The Greek poetess, Sappho, was I think the first to call the rose "the Queen Of Flowers."
The Greeks initially called the rose the "King of flowers . . " (Âbasileus ton antheonÂ) but in 600 BCE it became the "Queen of Flowers in SapphoÂs ÂOde to the RoseÂ
I've never found the whole text, so the only part of that I know is: "The Rose The queen of flowers should reign"

Jeri

Hey, Ann here's a discussion on that got from typing rose, queen of flowers into google.

Here is a link that might be useful: Queen

Yes, Kaylah, that's also the problem.
"Everybody says" or "everybody believes" always bothers me.

The phrase Queen of Flowers is an elegant one. But I've seen local HT growers rhapsodize for ten minutes about the beautiful red HTs, the Queen of Flowers, that so inpired Robert Burns, the Scot poet who lived from 1759-1796. That bothers the heck out of me.

So what did roses mean to people back when they first were called Queen? Was fragrance as important as the petals? Was it the fragrance that made roses so important?

Marianne, your comments from Sweden are wonderful and give me an insight I would never have found otherwise. Thank you.

So what did roses mean to people back when they first were called Queen?

And what did Queens mean to people back when they first called a Rose a Rose? I mean we don't say "The First Lady of Flowers" or "The President of Flowers", or "The CEO of Flowers"...(thank goodness!)

If the reference to the flowers becoming more scented after they've been picked is saying what I think it's saying, then maybe it was pointing toward a gallica. That's only a guess, though.

Probably refers to the Virgin Mary. I haven't had time to really research this (I'm at work), but here is what I quickly found:

Of the flowers of the Mary Garden
the rose, queen of flowers, is an ancient
and universal symbol of the Incarnation, of
Mary, of her love of God, and of her
spiritual beauty and fragrance, pleasing
to God.

This is a wild rose typical of those known
to the Christians of the Middle Ages and
called by them, Mary's Rose. It is also
the rose adopted as the model for the
central rose windows of the medieval
cathedrals.

Pope Plus XII has said, "The liturgical
development of the symbol of the rose in the cult of Mary has
nothing which should astonish us, for man has instinctively
chosen the most beautiful of flowers to offer to the most beautiful
of creatures."

"The Virgin herself was then compared to a rose . . . and now
Christians invoke her twice in the litany of Loreto under the title
of the queen of flowers: 'Mystical Rose,' and 'Queen of the Most
Holy Rosary.'

Hope that helps.

Kate

Here is a link that might be useful: Flowers of our Lady

Ann,

I recently came across something that says that Sappho first referred to the rose as the Queen of Flowers... I've not delved deeper.

I've had a little more time to research this topic, but still may not have the final answer.

As best I can tell, the rose as the queen of flowers dates back to Greek/Roman mythology--namely, the stories about Chloris who was called Flora by the Romans. Usually she is considered the goddess of springtime. Part of her story is famously told by Ovid (43 BC Â 17 AD) who notes she was raped by the West Wind (Zephyr) who then married her and pronounced her in charge of all the flowers. In some versions, that translates as "Queen of the Flowers"--but there's the hitch. "Translates." I can't read Ovid in the original, so I don't know if he actually called her that, or if the "queen of flowers" is an English phrasing of Ovid.

There is also a second story about Chloris transforming a dead nymph into the first rose, but I can't determine where that story comes from--maybe Ovid also. At any rate, the summary version given repeatedly on the internet is as follows:

Chloris is said to have created the first rose. Walking one day in her garden, she came upon a lifeless nymph in a clearing surrounded by forest. She decided to change the girl into a flower to preserve her beauty. Chloris beseeched Aphrodite for help, and the Goddess of Love was kind and gave the nymph a portion of her beauty; Dionysus, the God of Wine, then gave a drop of nectar to give her a pleasurable fragrance, and The Three Graces gave her allure, brilliance and elation. Zephyrus came and blew a clearing in the clouds so that Apollo, the Sun God, could shine upon the nymph and cause her to bloom. And so the Rose was born and was immediately crowned the Queen of Flowers.

My main concern about that passage is that no one ever cites a source for it--it is just mindlessly repeated in pretty much the same words used above. So I don't know how authentic the story is or whose language is being used. It's kind of like the continual repetition of the words "queen of flowers" that supposedly Sappho uttered in a four-line verse. The only problem is that Sappho did not say that--that is not her verse. Moral of the story: Lies and errors will be endlessly repeated on the internet, but that doesn't make them any more true.

If I had the time and interest, I could go to academic sources and find an excellent translation of Ovid, read it, and thus verify how much of this story is Ovidean--and check several academic commentators on that translation to find out how other experts view it, etc. In other words, this mystery could probably be tracked down--but I don't care to take that much time to confirm the answer, so . . . .

Well, at least I tried. Hope that helps someone else pick up the trail.

Kate

Here is a link that might be useful: Chloris, Queen of Flowers