Is the orange rose your birthday flower?

Is the orange rose your birthday flower? If you were born on November 15th, then, yes it is! The orange rose is one of two of the birthday flowers of November 15th annually. The other is a flower with many names - I will use the name most commonly used in Japan; the higanbana. I love any excuse to share an higanbana photo, so I will write about that separately. This post is dedicated to the orange rose.

As you may know, roses come in lots of different colors. There is even a blue rose and Japan was the very first place to cultivate one, in 2004. There is lots of information online about red roses, white roses, yellow roses and so on, but, although not that rare, there is less information available for orange roses. In the sources I use to learn about the language of flowers in Japan, none of them have a meaning for the orange rose. Google AIO says that the meaning of orange roses is "bonds, happiness, trust, aspirations, health," But we all know how unreliable Google AI is, so don't take it as gospel. 

But what we do know is that orange is a color halfway between red and yellow. Red roses have a very positive meaning, but yellow roses actually don't. In both Japan and the West yellow roses are associated with negative images such as "loss of love" or "jealousy". However, orange is considered a warm and intimate color, that few people dislike. Thus it has a positive image and are sure to delight anyone born on November 15th.