PROFITABLE ROSES.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 31 July 1914, Page 2

PROFITABLE ROSES.

Roses, though generally admired as the most beautiful flower, are not universally recognised as the profitable article of commerce that they really are. Trade roses are grown in various parts of Europe, but chiefly at Grasse, in Franco, and Kasanlik, in Bulgaria, where great stretches of rose gardens provide the chief supply of roses for the markets of the world. The highly cultivated roses are useless for commercial purposes, and both at Grasse and Kasanlik it is the cabbage rose that is chiefly grown—"the rose of a hundred petals," as they call it in Southern France. The Grasse roses are used chiefly for pomades, soaps, rose-water,-. and commodities ; and the demand made by the manufacturers of such on the rose-growers of Grasse can be partly guaged from the fact that more than 2,500,0001b. of roses are annually gathered in the district. Essence —or. as it is called, attar of roses —is rarely made in France, on account of the expense of production, but nearly all ' the Bulgaria!! roses are used for this purpose.