Plants blossom for more than 200 days a year

Chinese rose plants lining the roads always are a welcome sight for Ye Jiaxing, 32, when she returns from a business trip and takes a taxi home from Beijing Capital International Airport.

Like many Beijing natives, Ye feels deeply connected to the city, regardless of where she is, and the roses in full bloom always make her feel less tired and reassure her that she has arrived home.

Chinese roses, which bloom for more than 200 days a year, are easy to overlook. When spring arrives, they form a colorful sight, especially along Beijing's Third, Fourth and Fifth ring roads, and in other parts of the city.

The roses, in a variety of colors, are planted along 250 kilometers of the city's roads.

Zhao Shiwei, chief engineer of the Beijing Institute of Landscape Architecture, said planting Chinese roses along Beijing's ring roads began in 2003, when the city set out to improve street landscaping.

"These multicolored climbing roses, like vines, can also be seen on ring road medians," Zhao said.

In 1987, the Chinese rose was chosen as the flower to represent Beijing. Three years later, when the city began preparations for hosting the 1990 Asian Games - the first large-scale international sports event staged in the People's Republic of China - large quantities of floribunda roses were planted along the roads, according to Zhao.

However, these flowers, a type of Chinese rose with multiple heads and which bloom for a long time each year, are easily affected by the wind and vehicle exhaust emissions because the plants are relatively short and the flowers are near to the ground.

"After hundreds of experiments, we concluded that climbing roses were the best choice to plant along ring roads in Beijing," Zhao said.

These roses have been planted on stands on many road dividers along the city's ring roads.

Praise from poets

Zhang Zuoshuang, president of the Chinese rose branch at the China Flower Association, said cultivation of the roses in the country can be traced back about 2,000 years. Before they were cultivated, the wild roses only bloomed once a year.

As more and more people were attracted by the roses, cultivation started, resulting in the flowers blooming for more than 200 days a year.

Well-known poets during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) produced many works to praise the lengthy flowering period of the Chinese rose.

During the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), specialized flower businesses began appearing in some towns to supply Chinese roses to the imperial palaces. This business spanned 600 years.

In the late 18th century, some Chinese rose seeds were shipped to Europe by the East India Company.

Empress Josephine (1763-1814), the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, loved roses and collected varieties from all over the world. There was widespread enthusiasm in Europe for the flowers, especially as they bloom for most of the year.

Thousands of Chinese roses were shipped to Europe, and in the next 120 years, multiple new hybrid varieties were cultivated throughout the continent.

Zhang said, "Most of the Chinese roses we see today stem from these hybrid varieties that were cultivated in Europe and then brought to China at the start of the 20th century by students and workers."

He added that there are more than 30,000 Chinese rose varieties globally, but only 300 are cultivated in China.

Wu Laixi, a Chinese-Singaporean who studied at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, established the first Chinese rose garden in Beijing in 1920, which covered an area of 2,000 square meters.

After he fell ill, Wu entrusted Jiang Entian, a female horticulturist nicknamed "Lady Chinese Rose", with the responsibility of caring for the roses.

In October 1959, Jiang built a Chinese rose garden outside the Great Hall of the People to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. In the following four years, she set up four other such gardens in the Beijing-Tianjin area, along with a workshop in a room occupying about 12 square meters at the Temple of Heaven in the capital.

By 1966, more than 3,000 Chinese rose varieties had been planted in the Temple of Heaven park.

Research efforts

Last year alone, more than 50 million Chinese rose plants from over 2,500 varieties were growing in Beijing's streets, gardens and parks, said Chen Junqi, deputy director of the industrial department at the Beijing Gardening and Greening Bureau.

"The Chinese rose usually blooms three to four times every year after Spring Festival, each lasting about 10 days, providing a perfect opportunity for Beijing residents to fully appreciate them until October," Chen said.

Li Wenkai, a Chinese rose specialist who has worked at the Temple of Heaven for several decades, can tell precisely when the flowers will start to bloom.

Li, 63, said that in summer the flowers often become dry and scorched, and it is usually difficult for them to remain in full bloom due to high temperatures.

Before the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Li spent three years researching the exact day that the roses would bloom.

In August 2008, a week before the opening ceremony for the Games, the roses burst into bloom around Tian'anmen Square.

"Most of the time, I treat the roses as my own 'babies' and observe them to find the most suitable way to cultivate them. I am also very careful about when I start to prune the plants," he said.

Li said that compared with other regions of China, Beijing has a unique advantage when it comes to planting Chinese roses.

The city's mainly dry weather and low rainfall make pest control easier, he said. Some fungal diseases, such as black rot, which is usually seen in southern China, are also prevented by these weather conditions.

Challenges remain

Zhao, the engineer, said amateur growers have cultivated many hybrid varieties of the roses, but these have not been registered.

"In the past 20 years, some companies and professionals have realized the economic value of the flowers and started to become involved in cultivating new varieties," he said. "This led to the Chinese rose being registered as an intellectual property."

Zhao said seven varieties have been cultivated by researchers at the Beijing Institute of Landscape Architecture. They have been registered and planted across the country.

"Cultivating a new variety of the Chinese rose is not easy. We need to cross-pollinate at least 10,000 plants to get a new one, " he said.

The Chinese rose is normally self-pollinating, but cultivating hybrid varieties requires cutting off the petals and waiting for pollen from other plants to reach the flowers.

"Even when all the conditions are right, we still need some luck to cultivate new varieties," Zhao said.

A new variety cultivated by the institute won the Chinese rose contest at the International Horticultural Exhibition in Beijing last month. Named Beijing Pink, the variety was cultivated after more than 10 years' work.

Feng Hui, senior researcher at the institute, said, "The new variety is especially suitable for planting in Beijing, as it can resist both severe cold and high temperatures.

"During our research, we did not apply any fertilizer to the roses for five years, but the blossoming rate for the Beijing Pink still reached a level of more than 60 percent," said Feng, who cultivated the variety.

For the public, it is hard to tell the difference between the Chinese rose and regular varieties, even though 85 cities in China have chosen the former as their representative flower.

Ye, the Beijing businesswoman, said, "I and many of my friends confuse Chinese roses and regular ones all the time."

Zhao said many Chinese rose varieties, grown by enthusiasts in their homes and gardens, have not been officially recognized, and there is still a long way to go until the registration system is put in order.