In the early 1900s, botanists reclassified the Spirea, Plum, and Apple families as subfamilies within the Rose family. This new categorization was embodied in a Robert Frost poem from 1927.
~ Smithsonian Gardens - An Apple is a Rose?

The Rose Family
by Robert Frost

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
what will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose —
But were always a rose.






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