THE WORLD’S ROSE CARDEN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2480, 10 May 1909, Page 8

THE WORLD’S ROSE CARDEN.

To most people the Balkans are vaguely known as a region where a turbulent people in comic opera costumes indulge in perpetual quarrels with their neighbours, and occasionally rid themselves ot obnoxious rulers by methods that are startlingly sudden. There medievalism still lingers; and there, tucked away in the remotest corner of Europe, is the world’s rose garden. In the short intervals between their internecine squabbles, and when they are not being harried by Turkey or bullied by Austria, the Bulgarians manage to grow enormous quantities of roses in the southern slopes of the Balkans, and have done so for the last 220 years. Though the extraction of the perfume of this regal flower by distillation had' been practised m tho East for hundreds of years, it was not until the middle of the sixteenth century that the secret of separating the essential oil was discovered; and yet the process is exceedingly simple, and, as practised in Bulgaria, almost crudely primitive. The roses are gathered in the early morning while the dew is still on them, and are carried as quickly as possible to the distilleries, with few exceptions. These are of a very simple description, built up under rough wooden sheds. A peasant may have one or two stalls, but the merchant has a large number in a row.

The sti'lls, or “alembic®,” are made of sheet copper, and are in the shape of a truncated cone. Each still contains about 20 gallons. The “charge’* usually being 10 kilos of flowers and 75 litres of water, a brisk fire is kept up for an hour or two, and when the litres of liquid; have boiled over the fire is drawn. The still is then opened, and the exhausted flowers thrown away. This operation is repeated until 40 litres are collected. This is redistilled, an dth© first five litres are put in a long-necked flask. The remaining 35 are used for distilling again, with fresh roses. The attar which floats on the surface collects in the neck of the flask, and is carefully drawn off. The rose cultivated for attar in Bulgaria is a variety of the red damask rose though in the South of Prance the English Cabbage, or, as it is called there, the Provence Rose, is used! for the purpose. The flower is plucked with its sepals on, and these are not removed, all being distilled. Roughly, 1000 roses weigh one kilogram, and about 2 acres of ground yield 3,000,000 roses, which in their turn give,, one kilo of attar. Thus it takes 100,000 roses to give one ounce of the precious perfume. Bulgaria’s annual export of this essence averages 5000 kilos, or 160,000oz; so one may imagine the almost countless number of roses flowering every year among the out-of-the-way Balkans,