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The most popular garden plants are roses and lilies. Rose is the common name for members of the family Rosaceae, a family of one hundred genera and three thousand species. Included are important fruit and ornamental species, including the familiar genus Rosa (true roses). Rosaceae and more than twenty other families belong to the order Resales. Rosaceae grow as trees, shrubs, or perennial herbs. Within this family, food is produced by apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry, apricot, almond, and nectarine trees. Many berries, including raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries, are Rosaceae.
Since antiquity, the true rose has been among the most popular garden flowers in the world. Roses evolved from sweetbriers (wild roses). This genus of perennials, with about one hundred species, is mostly native to the north temperate zone. Experts recognize two main classes of the approximately thirteen thousand cultivated rose varieties (cultivars) which have arisen from hybridization of a few original species, mostly from Asia. Members of the original class, such as brier, damask, and moss roses, bloom once a year, in early summer. The others, called perpetual roses, bloom more than once a season. They include the tea roses, polyanthas, and rugosas. Tea roses smell like tea or fruit. Other roses have the distinctive rose smell or no smell at all. True rose flowers are white or various shades of yellow, orange, pink, or red. A perpetual rose bush can grow up to 6 feet (2 meters) tall. Polyantha bushes are low and bear flower clusters, shrub roses grow up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) tall. The leaves of rose plants have stipules (leaflike appendages) at stalk bases and are most often compound.
The name "lily" indicates any of forty-five hundred species of the family Liliaceae. This is one of the largest, most important plant families in the order Liliales. The herbaceous flowering plants have beautiful, showy flowers. True lilies, Liliaceae of the genus Lilium (one hundred species), are native to temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere and are among the oldest of cultivated plants. Examples are Colchis, tiger, Madonna, and Easter lilies. Within the same family are onions, garlic, and asparagus. Also included in Liliales are tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and amaryllis. Among the eight thousand Liliales species are herbs, climbing shrubs, succulents, and trees. Their thick, fleshy stems grow from underground storage organs, and all have narrow, upright leaves with parallel veins. Most grow worldwide but flourish only in temperate and subtropical areas. These perennials bloom once yearly and store food and water in scaly bulbs, corms, or rhizomes. Stems and leaves may be storage organs, too, and have thick bark to prevent water loss. Many plants in the group can carry out asexual reproduction via bulblets on parent bulbs or flower clusters (for example, garlic).
See also: Blooming Habits, Cultivation
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