This is a confection of a rose that could easily be made of pink fondant, and it looks good enough to eat in the first picture. I'm wondering when your arch will collapse under all that weight since it looks quite a bit heftier this time than last year. Please post another picture when it's in full bloom. This is a dream rose, at least in your garden.

What a glorious rose! Looks to me like it has lots of gigantea blood in it

Yes, Ingrid, that arch is pretty much overwhelmed. I've started a second plant of Florence on a much more substantial pergola at the front of the house, not knowing how this one will fare in the future (little did I know!). However, we had a very violent windstorm night before last that broke and blew down a large plum tree in the back yard, not to mention miscellaneous sizable branches off the pepper tree, but the arch persevered, so I am hopeful for this year, at least.

There's an interesting idea, Nik. Just looked at some first-generation R. gigantea hybrids on HMF, and some of those flowers do have a similar look, like 'Emmanuella de Mouchy' and some of the 'Follette' photos, for example. It certainly does seem to be more than just your average tea. With all the rain we've had, the leaves are particularly attractive this year, too:

I'm sooo jealous of that rose..you guys are killing me lol!! Really beautiful photos.

~sjn

I have both Florence and Emanuella and in my garden, they are very different in leaf type and bloom.

Thanks for the first-hand observation, Kippy -- photos are nowhere as good as actually being there! Back to considering whether or not it is the "true" 'Souvenir d'un Ami'....(a suggestion by Brent Dickerson a few years ago).

Interesting observation about this possibly being the genuine SdA. I had this rose and finally got rid of it because it was not at all satisfactory. On a good day it looked fine, but most of the time the flowers looked bedraggled, the rate of bloom was poor, and the bush a slow grower. It was surprising to me that a rose that was so popular and well-known was such a flop with me (not that I haven't had many flops) but the other tea roses at that time, before the drought, were doing very well. I'm beginning to wonder whether the rose sold as SdA may be an interloper, unless other people have this rose and it's performing beautifully for them.

Souvenir d'un Ami on a good day in April, 2011.

I'm afraid that photo does not support your case, Ingrid. A photo of mine right now may work, but I don't want to humiliate it. Mine is only a couple of thin canes with a few leaves. It needs to warm up and have a growth spurt before a picture.

As I said, Sheila, this was on a good day, but this rose was already several years old and stilled looked rather runty, and most of the time the flowers looked messy and shapeless from the get-go. I wish I had a picture of a "bad hair day" so that your little rose won't feel bad. I would love to see the flowers on yours, but I realize it might take several years for the flowers to mature. I'm looking at my La France, bought October 5, 2015, and the flowers are very small and underwhelming. This was a big rose from the ARE, which is still tall and lanky rather than bushy. I'm thinking fish emulsion.

Unlike most "Teas", Florence also has a great deal of scent to her peduncles and ovaries. Most Teas don't express scent from those plant parts, but while collecting pollen from Florence's flowers, my hands became sticky and heavily scented from handling the peduncles. Though it isn't the same scent Gloire des Rosomanes, Grandmothers Hat, Eugene de Beauharnais and others like them express, it is very similar in intensity, "stickiness" and endurance.

I don't even care what she is. I just know she is vigorous, disease-free, a champion bloomer, and beautiful . . . Let me repeat "vigorous."

This rose could be a huge asset for a seller of roses -- her commercial possibilities shriek that.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE "FBPT". (I need to write another letter to Florence Bowers, and tell her that.)

I, too, find the number of glands on the peduncles and ovaries intriguing, Kim -- it's a whole new layer of scent on top of an already prodigious amount of scent in the flowers. It seems unusual and I wish it gave some hint to her background, but apparently not? (I've taken to noticing these glands more lately, such as those on the peduncles of 'Souvenir de la Malmaison'.) But, as Jeri says, whatever it is, it's a great rose.

Here are photos from yesterday and today, which were rather gray and threatening rain, but Florence was a bright spot:

Also, by the way, was 'Jaune Desprez' today, up a bay tree. The scent fills the entire backyard:

That glandular scent is more Bourbon or HP to my nose than traditional "Tea". Obviously, it is an intermediate hybrid on the road to HTs.

Beautiful! Thank you!

...incomparable... what else can one say?...

Wow! Just wow. Carol

so glad I got this one! Own root, from La Roseraie du Désert; it's got a few buds on it; will have to move it up to a larger pot, methinks...

Your garden is simply spectacular, with the background of large trees to frame the roses making the whole even more incredible. Please post many more picture. This makes my garden look like a mangy mongrel, and yet I continually show it off, but frankly I'd much rather see many more photos of yours. What does it look like closer to the house? I want to see it all!

Do you prune Florence Bowers? If so, how?

Flowers, I remove whole canes in the winter to get rid of awkward ones and thin it out some, and shorten laterals on the top of the arbor after each bloom cycle. It's mostly been improvisation --- don't know what the long-term strategy will be.

Thanks, Ingrid -- I do have some borrowed landscape there with my neighbor's trees on the top of the hill in the far background, though the chaparral with smaller trees on the hillside right behind Florence was created by me (was previously ENTIRELY covered by screaming magenta-purple ice plant...OMG when it bloomed...). Your garden and landscape are wonderful, and in much better order (and further along it seems -- late year up here this year) than mine right now -- I'm teaching two sections of intro. plant biology for majors with labs this semester and they're killin' me! There are some photos from last year on my photo page on HMF that show garden areas closer to the house.

Beautiful, Catspa. I love the wild, naturalistic garden you have created.

Thank you, Catspa, for the pruning info. I have a few Canadians that are big but not Florence Bowers big, and they don't always get pruned. The rest of mine are all about 1" right now, after pruning away the winter kill. Your garden (on HMF) is a feast for the eyes. Your neighbor was thoughtful to provide that nice green backdrop.