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In the few years immediately preceding and following the year 1800 the Empress Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, did a wonderful service to rose-growing by getting Dupont to collect all the varieties of roses that he could find, and having them planted at La Malmaison. Josephine's rose garden became famous for having the most comprehensive collection of varieties ever made up to that time. It was a very great achievement. Obviously, it contained only species, a few sports, and a very few accidental hybrids, for no other roses existed. In 1812 Dupont catalogued two hundred and eighteen such varieties of roses. The first display of rose blooms ever made was from the empress's garden in 1810. She was in disfavour with Napoleon by this time, and was not allowed to attend the display. She died in 1814, a year before the battle of Waterloo.

In those early days many thousands of rose plants were raised from seed. Being of simple and unmixed ancestry, each species produced, from seed, plants of identical habit and bloom characteristics with those of the parent, except in the very rare instances of accidental hybrids. Seedlings were raised in large numbers even in far-flung outposts of the French Empire, in particular. On the Island of Bourbon (since renamed Reunion), east of Madagascar, these seedlings were used for hedge-making. Only two species were grown there, R. chinensis and R. gallica. An accidental hybrid of these two species occurred there and was recognized some years later, in 1817, by a visiting French botanist as being new and distinct. It was called the Bourbon Rose (R. borhonica) and was taken to France in 1819 under the name of Rose Edward. The first variations, raised by Desprez, appeared in 1831. In 1888 William Paul listed forty-six varieties of the Bourbon Rose, in addition to thirty-eight Bourbon Perpetuals and eight Hybrid Bourbons-all probably the result of recrossing R. borhonica on to R. chinensis. All of them bloom fairly constantly. Thus, by accident, came the first great step towards the rose, as we know it today.

In 1837 Laffay, yet another Frenchman, crossed R. dama-scena with a hybrid of R. borbonica and R. chinensis to produce our first Hybrid Perpetual rose. He named his new variety Rose du Roi. By 1840 twenty Hybrid Perpetuals were catalogued; none of them was yellow.

The Noisette Rose (R. noisetticma) was raised in South Carolina by either Philippe Noisette or John Champney by crossing the White Musk Rose with the Chinese Monthly Rose. It was taken to Paris by Louis Noisette, with whom it flowered for the first time in 1818. The bright-yellow climbing Hybrid Noisette, William Allen Richardson, was a favourite early in this century, but R. noisettiana has actually contributed very little to modern roses.