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Enthusiasm for roses grew as people realized how freely the new types bloomed and how easy they were to grow. They became the flowers for the people, for the cottages, and for the roadside. In 1876 a group of enthusiasts in England formed the National Rose Society, the first body of its kind. The Americans followed in 1898. In 1900 came Australia's first Rose Society, the National Rose Society of Victoria. Since then all States (except Tasmania) and New Zealand have formed their own Societies.

With the added interest came greater numbers of roses, especially Hybrid Teas. In 1890 William Paul, the celebrated English rosarian, listed six hundred and sixty-one Hybrid Per-petuals, but only six Hybrid Teas. By 1900 he listed sixty-five Hybrid Teas. Hybridists were becoming more and more discerning in the selection of seed and pollen parents, and so the new roses were showing rapid improvement.

About 1900 Pernet, the world-famous French rose hybridist, crossed the Austrian Yellow Rose (R. foetida) with Antoine Ducher, a red Hybrid Perpetual, not one of the newer Hybrid Teas, as one may have expected. This gave us the first of our modern highly coloured roses; he aptly named it Soleil d'Or. This variety is an ancestor of most modern roses. From it they have gained in colour, but, unfortunately, lost in constitution, as one would expect with the Austrian Copper Briar heredity. Their wood, especially in the earlier varieties, was soft and open in texture; their foliage was sparse, and they were very subject to black spot and constitutional die-back, though not to mildew. Their perfume was altered and often lessened. Growth was short and thin. However, despite all of these forms of deterioration, the world wanted them for their sensational colourings. In honour of their great introducer these roses were called Pernetianas. Within the next forty years these early hybrids of R. foetida had been re-crossed on to Hybrid Teas so many times that the Pernetiana characteristics almost disappeared except that the vivid colours were retained, and there is still a slightly greater weakness for black-spot infection. Today we do not see new roses that can be classed as Pernetianas, but the term is by no means obsolete, in that many of the earlier roses that came under this classification remain, and retain their popularity. They are steadily being replaced by roses that are equally good or even better in colour, form, growth, and perfume, but do not have the faults of their Pernetiana antecedents.

It may seem strange that Pernet not only used a Hybrid Perpetual as one parent for his revolutionary hybridization, but chose a yellow species of single formation (R. foetida) as the other parent, instead of R. hemispherica with its double formation. They were the only two bright-yellow species. This choosing may have been mere chance, or it may have been that R. hemispherica would not cross with another rose, for there appear to be no hybrids of it. However, poor as is the constitution of R. foetida, we are fortunate that Pernet preferred it, for R. hemispherica is much weaker and more prone to die-back, so much so that the species itself is almost extinct today.