What a beauty.

How big are the flowers? Fragrant? What kind of stems? Thorns?

This is probably miles off, but I wonder if it might be a climbing HT in the family of Ophelia sports. The coral stamens and apparent satiny texture (is it?) remind me of Mme Butterfly, which can have as few as 15 petals. These roses have a complex tea+ fragrance. The petals have substance.

The flowers are a good 4 inches across. The plant is well armed with fish hook thorns. The fragrance is very Tea with an undertone of apple. This is what my nose gets. I just hope the cuttings will root:-)
Thanks for the suggestions it might be a climbing HT, good point.

Coral stamens are pretty unusual.

What about stems and necks? Compatible with HT?

Most of the rosa gigantea crosses were bred by Alister Clark, according to help me find. He was an Australian gentleman and it was his hobby.
Help me find said some were taken to California during WWII. Many had single petals but none that I found looked like yours. Found the stamens, though. Check out squatter's Dream.

Here is a link that might be useful: Clark garden

Michael- Yes the petals have substance and the blooms are held upright. It has a flower on every leaf axial. Some of the canes are at least 4 inches across. The new growth is a nice purple color.
Thanks kaylah I have cheched the webpage it resembles squatter's dream....mhh?
I am not an expert just a passionate garden.

"Squatter's Dream" is my new favorite rose name.

I guess there are a lot of roses that would grow that big over 50 or 80 years in California. Can you guess at the age of the house?

If a rose hasn't been fertilized since, say, the start of the Great Depression, would that affect petal count?

The nifty CD that came with Botanica's Encyclopedia of Roses lets you search by stamen color. I came up with 'Meg'. The first pic on helpmefind looks very similar.

A

Here is a link that might be useful: Picutes of 'Meg' at helpmefind

Emmiegray,
I think you got it. Mine pics are identical to the pics of HMF.
I very positive is Meg.
Thank you very much.
Now I know is a rose very much worth growing in my area since the one I saw was spotless and beautiful without any care at all.
Those are the roses I want in my garden.
Thank you all:-) Michael you were right the rose is related to Mme Butterfly...

Meg had no rosa gigantea parents when I looked up the parents going back three generations, She was bred in 1954.
I found this page about George Schoener, who worked with rosa gigantea in Santa Barbara and corresponded with Alister Clark, obtaining seeds, etc.
About 98 miles from South Hoover Street is Milpas Street where Schoener worked. And appears to be linked by one of the oldest roads in the area.
Somewhere in California there's a large collection of Alister Clark roses, but I can't remember where.

Here is a link that might be useful: George Schoener

The Clark roses are at Descanso Gardens. I;ve heard that lucky volunteer deadheaders may get to take home cuttings.

Michael gets a cookie!

A

This was a very cool and interesting thread! Meg certainly looks completely identical to the mystery flower. I am glad that there is a db that allows search by stamen color as that was clearly the key here. Neat.

Emmie gets the big cookie! That was a really smart search tactic. Jon Dodson used to have Meg on the front of his house. Crazy Chemist, did you notice any of the flowers having ruffled petals? That would certainly nail it for Meg.

Something that surprised me while I was poking around was that Cl. Mme. Butterfly is a rampant grower. The bush is notorious for low vigor, and mine barely got over two feet in the two seasons before it froze out (at about 10 F with the graft buried). But what an elegant rose. It would be worth coddling in a pot.

The Ophelia roses are really important in rose history. As far as I can tell, they were about the first of the truly modern bush roses, having both high-centered buds and the strictly upright plant habit. All the breeders used them, for example Pemberton used Ophelia to produce Cornelia, Felicia, and Penelope. Mme Butterfly is also a parent of Joanna Hill, considered one of the top roses of the interwar period, and JH is in Peace.

Siri Amrit used to rave about Lady Sylvia, another Ophelia sport, but I killed the cuttings she sent me.

Looking up Meg again, it gets 8-13 feet, while crazy chemist said his rose was 20 feet tall. Meg sure looks like his rose, though. The time frame for a cross between rosa gigantea and Madame Butterfly would be about right. She was bred in 1918.
The info on Schoener said he made lots of crosses. There was another man working with R. Gigantea in Santa Barbara before Schoener. Here's what I copy-pasted about him.
"The honor of bringing R. gigantea into the United States belongs to the late Dr. Franchesci Fenzi, a native of Florence, who died a few years ago in Tripoli. Dr. Franchesci, as he was known to his friends, maintained a garden in Santa Barbara for more than a quarter of a century, and introduced a great many valuable foreign plants into southern California. According to his son, Camillo Franchesci Fenzi, R. gigantea was imported by his father directly from India about 1904. In the American Rose Annual of 1921, page 175, he is erroneously credited with being the originator of Belle of Portugal. The fact is that, having contact with all the leading horticulturists in the world, he imported Belle of Portugal from the Lisbon Botanical Garden, where it was originated in 1905 from a cross between the old Tea rose, Souvenir de Mme. LÂonie Viennot, and R. gigantea. From Dr. Franchesci's garden in Santa Barbara, Belle of Portugal gradually found its way over California and into other southern states.

Dr. Franchesci produced a few Gigantea hybrids. His Montecito and Montariosa are the two best known to me. Both are seedlings of R. moschata by R. gigantea, and both show very dominantly the musk character."
It sure would be fun to get your hands on a 1930's road map of that 98 miles from Santa Barbara to South Hoover street and snoop around.
Me, I never get to go everywhere.
Mike, the creeks are running higher than I've seen in five years. Might be some good fishing this year.
Here's what it says about the breeder for Madame Butterfly.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hill

I grew Meg in Wasco, California. It was easily close to 15 feet and only 3 years old when I left.

Trish

Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Something to do on a cold cloudy day. 38 degrees on the porch this morning. I was pretty worried about the lilacs last night. They aren't supposed to bud out yet, but our unseasonable warm spell brought it on.
You know the thing about me is I have a lot more time to look up stuff then most people, and it's become a vice.
I get surrounded by encyclopedias, surfing around the planet, messing and messing, where I shouldn't be messing.
Having not ever seen a rosa gigantea, but desperately wishing someone would send me one to see if I could kill it here, I get curiouser and curiouser.
Out snooping on the internet this morning, I located a pink native gigantea/odorata cross called Lijiang Road Climber. It had too many petals to be our mystery rose, but did have the copper stamens. Looking up Rosa odorata, I found the coppery stamens.
Checking out the parents of Madame Butterfly to the beginning, I found noisettes, tea roses, and rosa moschata. Which had some coppery stamens, but not as many.
The doggone cat has got a robin. They have called in the magpie, who is making a racket on the roof. Pretty soon twenty of his buddies will show up, and the annual cat hunt will begin.
Me, my shovel is calling, as soon as it warms up.

Here is a link that might be useful: Lijiang Road Climber

Deb, it must be something watching a flock of those huge, noisy magpies harass a cat. Down here, a single mockingbird will chase a cat under a car and drive him nuts. I was amazed by the magpies when I first went West. They look like they belong in the Serengeti or some such.

Here's a website, which if you click on magpie shrike, will get you a picture of the Tanzania magpie, which is where Serengeti is which I had to stop and look up.
And It has different black and white markings than ours.
I know what you're up to Mike. Yeahhhh....
The forecast is for 70 tomorrow and I'm folding the encyclopedias until fall.
Absolutely locking them up.
Nope, not even one, and I shall not touch high speed internet either.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tanzania magpie shrike