Rouge (French: Red), also called blusher, is a cosmetic typically used by women to redden the cheeks so as to provide a more youthful appearance, and to emphasise the cheekbones.
Historically, rouge was used as early as in ancient Egypt. It was also applied on the lips, the way lipstick would be used today. In some times and places, both men and women wore rouge, such as during the Regency period in England. In Britain's Victorian Age, when wearing makeup was associated with low morals, ladies resorted to pinching their cheeks (and biting their lips) to make them appear red instead.
Various substances have been used as rouge. In ancient Greece for example, crushed mulberries were favoured, while red beet juice and crushed strawberries have also variously been used.
In modern times, rouge generally consists of a red-coloured talcum-based powder that is applied with a brush to the cheek. The colouring is usually either the substance of safflor (the petals of safflower), or a solution of carmine in ammonium hydroxide and rosewater perfumed with rose oil. A cream-based variant of rouge is schnouda, a colourless mixture of Alloxan with cold cream, which also colours the skin red.
Mulberry
Mulberry (Morus) is a genus of 10–16 species of deciduous trees native to warm, temperate, and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, with the majority of the species native to Asia.
The closely related genus Broussonetia is also commonly known as mulberry, notably the Paper Mulberry Broussonetia papyrifera.
Mulberries are fast-growing when young, but soon become slow-growing and rarely exceed 10-15 m tall. The leaves are alternately arranged, simple, often lobed, more often lobed on juvenile shoots than on mature trees, and serrated on the margin. The fruit is a multiple fruit, 2-3 cm long. Mulberries begin as white to pale yellow with pink edges. They are red when ripening. A fully ripened mulberry is dark purple to black, edible, and sweet with a good flavor in several species.
Strawberry
The Garden strawberry (Fragaria xananassa and related cultivars) is the most common variety of strawberry cultivated worldwide. Like other species of Fragaria (strawberries), it belongs to the family Rosaceae; its fruit is more technically known as an accessory fruit, in that the fleshy part is derived not from the plant's ovaries (achenes) but from the peg at the bottom of the bowl-shaped hypanthium that holds the ovaries.
The Garden Strawberry was first bred in Europe in the early 18th century, and represents the accidental cross of Fragaria virginiana from eastern North America, which was noted for its fine flavor, and Fragaria chiloensis from Chile and noted for its large size.
Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is a highly branched, herbaceous, thistle-like annual, usually with many long sharp spines on the leaves. Plants are 30 to 150 cm tall with globular flower heads (capitula) and commonly, brilliant yellow, orange or red flowers which bloom in July. Each branch will usually have from one to five flower heads containing 15 to 20 seeds per head. Safflower has a strong taproot which enables it to thrive in dry climates, but the plant is very susceptible to frost injury from stem elongation to maturity.
Cultivars of Fragaria xananassa have replaced in commercial production the Woodland Strawberry, which was the first strawberry species cultivated in the early 17th century.
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