Can you grow black roses from seeds? Do they really exist in a remote village in Turkey? What's your secret? You'll learn all this and more in this article.

There's no doubt about it. People love black roses.

The one question that always pops up is....

"Are they real?"

My answer...

"Yes, they are real roses."

People seem to be on a quest to find "real" black roses. One of the first things you stumble upon when searching for the term 'black roses' online is a viral video that claims to have captured the only natural black rose. It is located in Halfeti, Turkey and only turns black for a short period during the summer. So let's just make a cutting and grow it everywhere? Well there's the catch.... it seems that it can't be grown elsewhere due to specific environmental factors of this village. Conveniently there are plenty of people who claim to be locals and swear they have seen and touched the roses and that they are indeed natural black roses. 

If this were true I think they should be spending less time commenting on videos online and more time trying to figure out how to export these "real" black roses for everyone to enjoy.

Continuing to search for these mysterious black roses online you'll run across people attempting to sell black rose seeds on popular websites such as Amazon, Ebay, or AliExpress. Remember the tale about Jack and the beanstalk? The same trick is being played on people today... well minus the giant and beanstalk. If you read the reviews you'll find nothing but negative expressions typed in all caps.

Now for some science and truth.

As it turns out, black roses are not black. There are many species of roses out there that have 'black' in their name: Black Jade, Black Magic, Black Beauty, Black Baccara. None of these are a pure black rose. This is because there are no appropriate genes in the genome of any rose species which would be capable of producing a true black rose.

So wait... how do you do it?

Great question! Stay tuned because in the next article we'll go into the details.