Beautiful Thorns

Not a thorn, but I thought it was beautiful.

This morning I was working on my shop newsletter, and I wanted a picture of rose thorns to accompany my musings on roses and our cultural perceptions about love. I thought I would take a quick picture or two, and be done with it. But I found myself completely captivated by the colors and varieties of thorns on the different roses, and found myself with too many images to put in one little newsletter (which isn’t just about roses, after all).

The thorns above are from the extremely prickly, 5 petaled wild rose that blooms near the walnut tree.

These (above) are from a very attractive pink rose, I’m not sure of the variety–but I think they’re rather elegant. Look at the shine and the color fade from nut brown to almost black.

Those pale brown thorns on a mahogany stem are from a climbing rose that produces fragrant crimson blossoms with bright yellow centers, that fade to a black-red as they age.

These drab olive and brown thorns are from a very ruffly pink rose.

And THESE belong to the wonderful rose that I introduced to you all in this post. If you want to really join me in obsession, go back to that post and see how these stems looked in the summer. It’s a really amazing contrast.

Of course, it’s time to cut all of these ladies back, because they will come back to life by the middle or end of next month. I see some prickly protective charms in my future . . . with the trimmings from these bushes.

I thought about including my musings about roses, thorns and love here . . . but then I decided I would let my newsletter subscribers feel special! If you are interested in signing up, drop me a line at green.fingers.gazette@gmail.com and I’ll add you the list.