To the naked eye, the delicate velvet roses in southeastern Turkey appear black and overwhelm the senses with their irresistible sweet smell.
The rosebuds are just as dark, and when fully developed, the flower takes on the color of an intensely rich red wine.
These black roses, known as karagul in Turkish and thornier than others, can only grow in the town of Halfeti in Sanliurfa Province with soil that has distinctive features including a special PH level.
Photo: AFP
The unique color cannot be preserved elsewhere, experts say.
Now Halfeti’s residents want to transform the rose into a brand, since Turkey’s rose sector is a blooming business.
The industry is dominated by the western province of Isparta, known as Turkey’s “rose garden.”
Turkey and Bulgaria make up about 80 percent of the world’s rose oil production.
However, Halfeti resident Devrim Tutus, 28, has already seen business flourish.
After coming up with a business plan to promote the black roses, he now supplies Istanbul with petals for colognes, Turkish delight and ice cream.
Demand is already outgrowing supply.
That does not stop Tutus who already has his next plan: karagul wine.
“There’s a huge market out there in Istanbul. It’s all about Isparta roses. Why not the same here?” he said.
The black rose’s fortunes were not always so sweet.
It once aroused only indifference among residents, said a local official in charge of preserving the roses.
“They were everywhere in the gardens, but nobody paid attention to them,” said his friend, who only gave his name as Bulent.
“Locals had no idea the roses were unique. We transported some to higher ground and started production in greenhouses,” said the official, who did not wish to be named.
In upper Halfeti, one greenhouse operated by the town’s agriculture department is home to 1,000 roses.
However, the town’s residents rallied to rescue the rose after a dam on the Euphrates River flooded the region in the early 2000s, threatening to bury the flower like dozens of archeological sites from ancient Mesopotamia.
Today, 20 variants of black roses have been identified worldwide — including 16 in Turkey, botanist Ali Ikinci said.
“Karagul is not an endemic species in Halfeti,” said Ikinci, a professor at Harran University in Sanliurfa. “But the particular ecology, climate and soil cause it to bloom darker there. If you plant that rose somewhere else, it won’t be as dark or black.”
The professor said Halfeti’s rose was “unique.”
The color of the rose darkens, becoming more black and the scent is stronger as one moves from Sanliurfa toward Syria, which is 60km to the south, Ikinci said.
The Halfeti official said the rose blossoms on higher ground, as the soil close to the dam is more acidic because of the Euphrates’ waters.
Ikinci believes the origins of karagul could be the “Louis XIV” black rose, grown in France in 1859 and named after the French king.
However, for Frederic Achille, deputy director of the Botanical Gardens of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, it is much ado about nothing.
“’Louis XIV’ could really be transformed by the waters of the Euphrates ... and bogus communication,” he said with a smile.
Halfeti is also home to the peculiar green rose that has the appearance of a weed.
“It remains mysterious. Some locals had it in their gardens, but because it’s odorless, it failed to attract attention,” Ikinci said.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the