Finding French Roses on Stamps
- 7 hours ago
- 1 min read
As we wait for warmer temperatures to bring us roses, we can enjoy images of roses. Just look at this lovely stamp souvenir sheet from France!
There are three roses on this particular stamp sheet, which was issued by the postal service of France in 1999. The roses are as follows:
Madame Caroline Testout
This rose was bred in the 1890's by Lyon-born rose breeder Joseph Pernet-Ducher, a pioneer in the world of hybrid tea roses. Who was Madame Caroline Testout, though? She was a French dressmaker born in southeastern France who wanted a rose named after her. It was introduced at her 1890 spring fashion show. That's the Wikipedia version of the story, anyway.
Madame Alfred Carrière
This climbing rose was bred in the 1870's by Joseph Schwartz. It is still available by rose purveyors such as David Austin.
La France
Bred by Jean-Baptiste André Guillot, another Lyon-based rose cultivator, this 1860's rose is widely considered to be the first among modern hybrid tea roses.
Many modern roses have been bred to withstand a wider variety of climates, so these roses are not as well-known, but they were cutting-edge for their time. It is nice to see older roses memorialized on stamps, so we can still enjoy their beauty more than a century later.
