(1958)  Page(s) 170.  
 
This is a note on some roses not often seen. Comtesse du Cayla, a China rose, so red in the stem on young wood as to appear transparent in a bright light; very pointed in the coral-colored bud; very early to flower, continuing to flower throughout the summer until the frosts come; somewhat romantic in her associations, for the lady in whose honor she is named was the mistress of Louis XVIII; altogether a desirable rose, not liable to black spot or mildew; needing little pruning, apart from the removal of wood when it has become too old, say, every two or three years.

(1958)  Page(s) 67.  
 
I am astonished, and even alarmed, by the growth which certain roses will make in the course of a few years. There is one called Madame Plantier, which we planted at the foot of a worthless old apple tree, vaguely hoping that it might cover a few feet of trunk. Now it is 15 feet high with a girth of 15 yards, tapering towards the top like the waist of a Victorian beauty and pouring down in a vast crinoline stitched all over with its white sweet-scented clusters of flower.

(1958)  Page(s) 78.  
 
There has been some correspondence in the press recently about that old favorite rose, Zéphyrine Drouhin. Dear though she was to me, perfect in scent, vigorous in growth, magnificent in floraison (a lovely and expressive word we might well import from French into English, since we seem to have no equivalent in our language), and so kindly and obliging in having no thorns, never a cross word or a scratch as one picked her—dear though she was, I say, I had always deplored the crude pink of her complexion. It was her only fault. Seen through the magic glasses, she turned into a copper orange, burnished; incredible.
Zéphyrine Drouhin has a romantic history, worthy of her breeze-like name. She derives from a hybrid found growing in 1817 in a hedge of roses in the Ile de Bourbon, now called Réunion, off the east coast of Africa. This hybrid became the parent of the whole race of Bourbon roses, which in their turn have given rise to the modern roses we call Hybrid Perpetuals and Hybrid Teas. This is putting it very briefly, and seems to bear no relation to the great pink bush flowering in the summer garden under the name Zéphyrine Drouhin. Who was Zéphyrine? Who was Monsieur Drouhin? These are questions I cannot answer. They sound like characters in a novel by Flaubert. I only know that this gentle, thornless, full-bosomed, generous trollop of a rose turned into a fabulous flaming bush under the sorcery of the tinted glasses.