Roses and other Valentine’s Day favorites can brighten any room, especially during a long Michigan winter. Still, the real magic of roses and other Valentine’s Day blooms lies not just in their beauty, but in their evolutionary backstories and sometimes their Michigan roots.
Whether your favorite flower is wild, cultivated, or somewhere in between, the LSA Herbarium has plenty of secrets to share, says its director, Thais Vasconcelos.
Floral Attraction: A Long History
You might be familiar with the typical array of Valentine’s Day flowers at your local grocery store: roses, orchids, tulips, lilies, and carnations are often depicted as classic floral iconography of the season. “Thousands of species of these plants grow in the wild worldwide,” says Vasconcelos, who is also assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “But the flowers we exchange for Valentine’s Day today often look quite different from their wild relatives, thanks to centuries and sometimes thousands of years of human cultivation.”
Humans find various traits of flowers attractive and associate them with romance: “bright colors, interesting shapes and fragrances,” notes Vasconcelos. But these qualities are also what attracted pollinators over millions of years of evolution. “We know this because it has been observed for decades that completely unrelated plants often evolve similar-looking flowers when they share the same pollinators.”
Vasconcelos points to the examples of strong scents and colored petal patterns. These traits often signal the presence of nectar to pollinators like bees, hawkmoths, and bats. Birds in particular are attracted to red flowers, which they can spot easily in a sea of green foliage. When humans began cultivating flowers, they “further enhanced these flower traits, selecting for stronger scents, richer colors, and larger displays.”
Both evolutionary biology and human intervention made Valentine’s Day flowers as iconic as they are.
Hey Michigan, Stop and Smell the Roses
No Valentine’s Day flower is more iconic than the rose. But the scarlet flower, instantly recognizable in both history and popular culture, doesn’t grow bright red in the wild. “Most wild roses are white or pink and are pollinated by insects,” Vasconcelos says.
Botanically, roses belong to the same family as locally cultivated fruits like apples, pears, strawberries, and plums. But in their distinct genus, called Rosa, there are approximately 200-300 species growing in the wild—and they’ve been around for a long time.
“Some studies suggest that roses originated around 30 million years ago, with most lineages evolving and diversifying in the Northern Hemisphere, including North America, Europe, and Asia,” Vasconcelos explains.
There are even a few species native to Michigan and the Great Lakes region as a whole; many grow wild in our backyards. Rosa carolina, known as the pasture rose, and Rosa palustris, the swamp rose, are both native Michigan species. Their blooms don’t look much like the luxurious bouquets at the florist.
“But they’re quite attractive in their own right,” Vasconcelos says. While you may be able to catch them flowering during a summer romp in the woods, the Herbarium has preserved examples of these species for year-round study.
These historical examples are vital to the study of local habitats. “They capture not only their beauty, but also where and when they grew,” Vasconcelos points out. As ecologies change over time, the Herbarium preserves evidence from the past in order to inform our understanding of the present and future in its 1.75 million specimens of vascular plants, algae, bryophytes, fungi, and lichens.
Vasconcelos encourages all flower enthusiasts, Michiganders and otherwise, to stay curious about the ecology and evolution of floral forms and to learn more about the work done in their local herbaria. “Seeing the flowers as herbarium specimens helps remind us that roses are not just cultivated symbols of love,” she explains, “but also important components of local ecosystems.”
Photos courtesy of the University of Michigan Herbarium
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