Greetings to the rose lovers of the world,

Welcome to the FPS Rose Encyclopedia, which is produced by Foundation Plant Services (FPS) at University of California Davis. The FPS Rose Encyclopedia is our way of sharing our ongoing work at FPS with a global world. As Director of FPS, for many years, I have wished we had the resources to document and photograph the roses in our collection. It is the largest public collection of virus tested roses in the world and is very deserving of quality documentation.

Our FPS custom database has recently been transformed by the work of programmer Karl Krist, our FPS technology director. This has made it practical for us to begin documenting the characteristics of each rose cultivar in our collection in a new application, the FPS Rose Encyclopedia. Judy Lee, the FPS rose specialist, took on this heroic task, depending on the irreplaceable Modern Roses 12. Also, Val Krist has created a wonderful design for the site which is both attractive, and easy to use. We have further enriched the Rose Encyclopedia with thousands of beautiful photographs taken by our photographic team of Karl Krist, Val Krist, Marita Madeloni, and Sue Sim. We are proud to share these photos with others who are as passionate about roses as we are. We have provided each photo as a downloadable file that is full size and printable- click on each rose picture to download the full-size image. All we ask is that you give 'The Regents of the University of California' credit for the image.

Our FPS rose collection has grown to contain over 548 cultivars and 2,372 plants; it covers eight acres with plans of expansion. The FPS rose program was originally established in the 1960's by Dr. George Nyland; his work lead to the establishment of a virus-tested collection at UC Davis. Bud wood from these plants was then made available to nurseries and growers to serve as a source of propagating stock. Our commercial rose nurseries have used this collection to create clean nursery stock that is more successful in the propagating process at commercial nurseries and more productive in garden. We sell exclusively unrooted cuttings to commercial nursery and propagators. The Garden Rose Council has been supporting this effort for over 20 years. We and the rose growing public owe them a great debt of gratitude.

I hope you all enjoy the FPS Rose Encyclopedia as much as I do,

Best wishes for a rosy future,