Roses Are Blue

Surely not? And yet... With Valentine's Day fast approaching, I figured this unusual rose-tinted approach to the theme of  blue might catch a few eyes and touch some hearts.

But blue roses - everybody knows they're about as real as unicorns, or silk purses made from sows' ears; as contrary to the laws of nature as time-travel, walking on water, or bread landing buttered side up.  And yet... Just marvel at the beautiful image below, not photoshopped in any way. So what's the story?

Blue Rose (i)

Scientific fact states that blue roses naturally don't exist. Of course they don't. The genus Rosa simply lacks the specific gene that allows roses to achieve a true blue colour. And yet... Blue roses have been written about for hundreds of years in oriental and middle-eastern literature, and because they don't exist in nature it means they have come to symbolise magic, mystery, perfection and a longing to attain the unattainable.

In fact the keen desire for blue roses also led to one of the earliest examples of man's ingenious attempts to improve on nature. The 12th century Arabic agricultural treatise 'Kitāb al-filāḥah' explains how a bush bearing white roses could be made to produce blue flowers by the injection of blue dye into the roots or bark of the plant. So that was how it was done, by trickery. And it's still the way today.

Even with all our marvels of modern science, recent attempts to biologically engineer blue roses by genetically adding the blue pigment delphinidin to the structure of rose DNA have merely resulted in a pale lavender flower. Although the market for them is significant (and there are lots of bogus sites on the internet selling blue rose seeds), it seems that the holy grail of true blue roses will continue to elude us and those beautiful blue blooms will only be attained by artificial means, by dyeing. 

In 1886 when Rudyard Kipling was just twenty-one and living in India, he wrote a poem titled 'Blue Roses' that contained the lines: 

She would none of all my posies

Bade me gather her blue roses. 

Half the world I wandered through, 

Seeking where such flowers grew. 

Half the world unto my quest 

Answered me with laugh and jest. 

Home I came at wintertide, 

But my silly love had died 

Seeking with her latest breath 

Roses from the arms of Death.

Although Kipling's verse is heavily Pre-Raphaelite in mood, I took the sentiment of it, along with a sprinkling of particle physics and the Portuguese seaside, as a starting point for a contemporary reading, this latest semi-ekphrastic poem from the imaginarium...

Blue Rose (ii)

Azul*

No faulting wanting more than he could give 

but heavens, such vaulting desire born out of

a hothouse holiday romance fast blossoming

in Alte's quaint streets, idle hours for love fun

and laughter, up down strangeness and charm

but top and bottom it's all quarks and no gluon

this elementary covalence of two. Perforce on

the final night everything flies apart, he means

no harm but still a summary rejection, leaving 

blue Rose shedding tears shredding azul petals 

on the threshold of dejection, outmanoeuvred 

in a game called love by hoping for perfection

and though right now she'd like to die, in time

she'll press the flowers within a Book of Hours

and dedicate her sorry heart to a higher power.

* Portuguese name for the blue rose; also the name of a strategy game, and a term for Heaven.

To send you away weeping, here's a musical bonus, not Joni Mitchell this time (though her 'Roses Blue'  could have served). This is the inimitable Freddie Neil singing his lovelorn classic: Blues On The Ceiling

Thanks for reading, S ;-)