The Rose of Sharon is a poetic name, the name itself is a mistranslation from the Hebrew. The first time the term appears at all in English is in 1611 in the King James Bible. It is now accepted that the term was a phrase meaning a crocus or the what botanists identify as the Pancreatium maritinum which grows on the Plain of Sharon in Israel on the shore of the Mediterranean. In 1920 it was expressed that it probably referred to the crocus, but is now given to this golden Hypericum calycinum. This plant could never have been on the Israeli shores. Song of Solomon 2:1: 'I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys'; the whole Song appears to be a collection of secular poems, which may even have been Egyptian or Syrian in origin (its vocabulary is quite different from the rest of The Bible) perhaps even used in Wedding ceremonies; but the poems were later taken into the Bible as it was seen to express an allegoric for Christ's love for the church.
