When the tired, beleaguered settlers stepped onto the “new land” of North America, they didn’t see any roses for their gardens. But they mustn’t have looked very closely: North America is home to 26 varieties of roses that grow from coast to coast and throughout the rest. Instead of harvesting these native plants, the settlers and Europeans that followed, imported their own roses from England, France, Holland and elsewhere.

By the eighteenth century, gardeners and professional nurserymen were developing hybrids, something the Chinese had been doing since time immemorial. One of their roses had an enviable trait: it flowered from spring through fall, whereas the attractive European variety only flowered once. The growers got to work bringing the two together, and a beautiful long- flowering rose was born. Many other hybrids followed, hundreds in fact, and the rose bush, a new plant that was already here, spanned out across the nation.

But why the rose? This ornamental creature of today was admired for its medicinal and culinary value starting with the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans and, on a larger scale, the Persians of the ninth century. The rose found its way to Europe with the crusaders in such culinary (and medicinal) pleasures as Turkish delight and marzipan, which was first made thousands of years ago. In the eighteenth century, the rose appeared in tea biscuits, cakes and other sweets. Confectioners also created a delicious confit with floating rose petals in a sugar base, reminiscent of Turkish delight but with a jelly-like consistency. All these candies live among us, although primarily on the shelves of specialty stores.

As for the rose petals, they held their own in the historic confectionery world. The idea of using flowers in candy, or even as candy, began in the Middle East, where they would pulverize and coat them with sugar. This trend continued throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the U.S. where they appeared in Martha Washington’s Cookbook as well as African American cookbook author, Rufus Estes’ about one hundred years later.

So, how did the rose lose its confectionary stature? As a flavor, the rose lost out to the vanilla. As a candied sweet, it’s hard to say. My hunch is that the rose petal was too delicate and sensitive to mass produce once the Industrial Revolution took hold. Today most candied rose petals in the U.S. come from France, although some are prepared at home or, now and then, by boutique confectioners.

As for the petals the locals are using: the vast majority are from imported roses but this might be good news for the natives. Barring urban sprawl or suburban development, they may be growing unpicked and unencumbered wherever soil and climate allows.