Various folk cultures and traditions assign symbolic meaning to the rose, though these are seldom understood in-depth. Examples of deeper meanings lie within the language of flowers, and how a rose may have a different meaning in arrangements. Examples of common meanings of different coloured roses are: true love (red), mystery (blue), innocence or purity (white), death (black), friendship (yellow), and passion (orange).
Hans Simon Holtzbecker: Rosa gallica, gouache, c. 1650 (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen). The vivid red, semi-double Rosa gallica was "the ancestor of all the roses of medieval Europe".
Venus Verticordia (1868) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, showing the goddess Aphrodite surrounded by red roses
Selling roses on St George's Day in Catalonia, Spain
Emblem for "The World Order of Socialists" with a red rose, substituting the shield of arms, containing a handshake stretching a rationally devised globe under a rising sun, designed by Walter Crane, c. 1915
Floriography is a means of cryptological communication through the use or arrangement of flowers. Meaning has been attributed to flowers for thousands of years, and some form of floriography has been practiced in traditional cultures throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Color lithograph Langage des Fleurs (Language of Flowers) by Alphonse Mucha (1900)
Illustration from Floral Poetry and the Language of Flowers (1877)
Ophelia, 1852, John Everett Millais
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885–86), Tate Britain, London
