Roses in Farmstead World — crop in the game, and what it is on a real farm.
The rose is a thorny shrub of the rose family, the same family as the apple and the strawberry, and one of the oldest cultivated flowers in the world.
Cut roses are picked in tight bud and kept cold all the way to the florist, and they sell best around Valentine’s Day, when demand peaks.
A short history
Roses have been cultivated for thousands of years in China, Persia and the Mediterranean, and were prized by the Romans for garlands and perfume. Modern cut roses come from centuries of crossing, and the rose family includes the apple, the pear and the strawberry.
How it is grown
Roses are woody shrubs that need sun, rich soil, regular feeding and careful pruning. Most commercial cut roses are grown in greenhouses or at high altitude in places such as Colombia, Ecuador and Kenya, and are cut in tight bud, graded by stem length and kept cold.
Processing and uses
Roses are sold by the bunch to florists, wholesalers and retailers, with demand peaking around Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Petals are also used for oil, water and food flavoring.
Pumpkin vines carry separate male and female flowers and rely on bees to pollinate them — the USDA recommends one honeybee hive per acre of pumpkins. (en.wikipedia.org)
Young sunflower buds track the sun from east to west across the sky each day, then swing back east overnight — but mature flower heads stop moving and face east for good. (en.wikipedia.org)
A young sunflower's sun-following runs on an internal circadian clock and continues even on cloudy days when the sun never appears. (en.wikipedia.org)
Facing east at dawn warms a mature sunflower head quickly, which attracts more pollinating insects. (en.wikipedia.org)
A sunflower 'flower' is actually a head of hundreds of tiny florets — each yellow 'petal' around the edge is its own small, sterile ray flower. (en.wikipedia.org)
Sunflower seeds spiral in intersecting curves of 34 and 55 — neighboring Fibonacci numbers — and a very large head can show 89 and 144. (en.wikipedia.org)