Rose Valley, Bulgaria. Anton Lefterov via Wikipedia
In Bulgaria, a famed rose harvest has come nearly a month early this year.
The eastern European nation is today a top producer globally of rose water and rose oil. To produce these goods, pickers must harvest the flowers early in the morning, when their petals are richest in oil. After a mild winter and warm spring, pickers in Bulgaria’s Rose Valley have headed to the fields around three weeks earlier than normal, Reuters reports.
“We checked our archive from 1987 and found that the active, mass onset of flowering of rosebushes was between June 10 and 20,” Valentin Kazandjiev, of Bulgaria’s National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, told Reuters. “And we have roses today that start blooming a month earlier.”
Scientists say climate change had a hand in the early bloom. Europe, the fastest-warming continent, measured 2.5 degrees C (4.5 degrees F) warmer than the preindustrial average last year. As temperatures rise, spring and summer are arriving sooner.
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