Wild Rose Collection
Untamed Origins: The Wild Rose Collection
There is something enduringly human in our relationship with roses. Long before the cultivated blooms of modern gardens, wild roses threaded themselves through hedgerows, mountain paths, and coastal walks—unpruned, resilient, and luminous. This framed botanical collection is an homage to those untamed origins.
Each piece is composed of carefully gathered wild rose specimens from the mountains of New Mexico, pressed by hand and arranged to honor their natural form. In the stillness of a pressing, the plants reveal a different kind of presence: the gentle asymmetry of five petals, the arching line of a stem, the quiet insistence of thorns.
Beyond the rose itself, the wider rose family carries the same intelligent form. In botany, the rose family—Rosaceae—is defined by a shared set of structural traits rather than by showy flowers or fragrance alone. Most members have five-petaled flowers with a clear radial symmetry, often accompanied by five sepals and numerous stamens, a form that echoes the ancient simplicity of wild roses. Leaves are typically alternate and often serrated, and many species develop stipules—small leaf-like appendages at the base of the leaf stem. But from there, nature takes creative liberties with each family member. Apache plume drapes the desert with soft, spiraling seed heads, its white blossoms giving way to feathery trails that catch light and fly on the wind—beauty expressed as movement rather than color. Cinquefoil, with its small five-petaled flowers and humble stature, echoes the rose’s ancient geometry, thriving in rocky soils and open meadows where persistence matters more than display. Prairie smoke blooms briefly, then transforms, its nodding flowers lifting into wisps of pink, threadlike plumes that dance in the wind.
One of the most defining characteristics lies in the fruit structure, which varies widely across the family but follows recognizable patterns. Fruits may appear as hips (roses), pomes (apples and pears), drupes (cherries and plums), or clusters of small achenes (strawberries), all formed from variations in how the flower’s reproductive parts mature. This diversity of fruit types within a single family is unusual and central to how botanists identify Rosaceae.
Equally important is what the rose family reveals about adaptation. Members of Rosaceae thrive across deserts, grasslands, forests, alpine regions, and cultivated landscapes, united by a botanical blueprint that favors resilience. In essence, the rose family is defined not by a single look, but by a shared architecture—one that balances delicacy with durability. These relatives share a common language and form, reminding us that the rose family is not defined by grandeur alone, but by adaptation, continuity, and the art of enduring where one is planted.
Roses have carried meaning across centuries and cultures. In ancient Greece, they were linked to Aphrodite and the fleeting nature of beauty. Medieval herbalists valued wild roses not for ornament alone, but for their healing properties, using petals and hips as medicine long before vitamin C was understood. In East Asian poetry, wild roses appear not as symbols of romance, but of resilience—blooming briefly, without spectacle.
Across history, roses have been more than ornament. Fossil records suggest wild roses bloomed on the earth over thirty million years ago, long before they entered gardens or language. In ancient Persia and China, roses were cultivated for their fragrance and medicinal value, distilled into waters and oils used in ritual, healing, and daily life. The Romans scattered rose petals at celebrations and funerals alike, recognizing their dual symbolism of abundance and impermanence. During the Middle Ages, monastic gardens preserved wild and cultivated roses for their healing hips and astringent petals, while illuminated manuscripts recorded their forms with reverence. Later, the rose became a political and poetic emblem—appearing in heraldry, religious iconography, and love poems.
Like wild roses, people are shaped as much by where they grow as by what they are. We learn to bloom without invitation, to adapt to uneven light, to carry both tenderness and defense in the same breath. Our lives, like theirs, are marked by brief seasons of openness followed by long stretches of quiet work—rooting, enduring, waiting. Wild roses do not strive for perfection or applause; they persist, forming beauty at the margins. In recognizing ourselves in them, we are reminded that resilience can be gentle and we unfold and become our full selves with the seasons of time.
These works highlight the wild members of the rose family. They are not about perfection or cultivation, but about our wild origins and that wildness that remains in us that allows us to connect to and care for the wild outside of us.
