Pin wrote a simple tutorial on his roses arrangement a few days ago, which prompted me to share with you about “guard petals” on roses. There seems to be a huge misunderstanding on these guard petals.

Many of my customers dislike guard petals and thought that roses with guard petals aren’t fresh. For the past 2 decades, I have received numerous complaints from our customers accusing us of selling wilting roses whenever they encountered these suspicious-looking guard petals around the roses.

Even today, many still doubt the freshness of a rose if it has guard petals on it. Now, it’s time for me to share with you the truth behind these guard petals.

All roses that grow from this planet come with guard petals, no exception. These are the outer layer petals that need to be removed from the roses prior to “using” them. The role of guard petal is to protect the rose buds from bruising during the entire harvesting process at the rose farms to handling of the roses at your local florists. Thus, it is essential for these guard petals to stay intact to ensure that the roses get all the protection it needs.

Guard petals often appeared charred and wrinkled at most edges of the petals, especially for red roses. Depending on the colors, most roses are normally accompanied by charred and wrinkled dark brown, black, or green guard petals.

1. A red rose with guard petals intact.

2. Removing the guard petals

3. Ready to use rose with all guard petals removed. (Notice the contrasting white tip from the removed guard petal? That is also a sign of freshness.)

One more useful tip on these guard petals: You can actually determine the freshness of a rose just by peeling off a guard petal.

If the rose is fresh, you’ll be able to peel off the petal easily and it (the peeling) comes with a crisp sound. A not-so-fresh rose would have guard petals that appear to be crumpled and softened. When you try to peel it off, the peeling won’t produce any cracking sound at all.

That being said, you might want to practice some TLC while peeling off the guard petals less you accidentally peel off the real petals of a blooming rose.