The Italian writer and thinker Umberto Eco, when explaining how he came up with the title of his beloved novel The Name of the Rose, wrote that he chose it “because the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it has hardly any meaning left.” Across time periods and cultures, the sweet-smelling flower’s significance, depending on its color and context, has symbolized sentiments including love, beauty, innocence, mourning, silence, secrecy, purity, and passion. In Victorian England, yellow roses were even used to signify jealousy, conflict, and suspicions of infidelity. Beyond their symbolic richness, though, roses also contain another attribute with a wide range of uses.