Tracing the history of panneer rose, a flower closely tied with the culture of India

The entrancingly sweet fragrance of the panneer roja jogs my memories of my beloved aunt accessorising my plait with enchanting blooms from her suburban rose garden. Honey bees love them too: why else do they swoon into the languorous curls in the panneer rose heaps and not in other fancy coloured pouters?

Our flower vendor Manju said assertively, “Ithu thaan original [This is the original one]”. And so, I embark on a delightful journey with the panneer/Thanjavur rose or the Rose Edouard, a topper on India’s “heritage scents” list.

A semi-double, continuous flowering rose, the panneer rose has been recorded as having been grown in several hundreds of hectares around the temple town of Thanjavur. The plant was also grown from the delta of the Cauvery river in the extreme south up to the foothills of the Himalayas – spanning the entire length of the country, at some point.

Girija Viraraghavan (the granddaughter of the venerable Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the former President of India) and retired bureaucrat MS Viraraghavan, both rosarians, share, “There are various theories about the origin of what we know in South India as the panneer roja. Formally known as the Rose Edouard or Edward, most experts believe that this variety arose in the French island…

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