Court of Honor

Once the judging for specimens in a show has been completed, all judges participate in selecting the Court of Honor.  The point of taking this collective vote, usually by secret written ballot, is to identify the best roses being shown.  The highest award is for the Queen of the Show.  Second is King, third is Princess.  Some shows also add less-courtly ranks.

I shall never forget my first Queen of the Show.  San Francisco's annual rose show is always on Mother's Day, the second Sunday in May.  On the Friday before, I spotted a bloom of John F. Kennedy in my garden that was unlike any I had ever seen.  It wasn't ready yet; it still had that greenish coloring this rose can have as it's maturing, before it becomes perfectly white.  But it had all the makings of a winner.

Sure enough, on Sunday morning it had everything you'd want:  a huge, stiff white bloom perched on top of an exemplary stem with abundant foliage.  It needed practically no grooming at all, nor would you have needed any particular expertise to pick it as Queen if you had happened by the show.  It set a new standard of excellence for me that day, and for some others as well, I suspect.

San Francisco takes Queens a step farther than most places.  The annual rose show has an entry for Pair of Queens:  two blooms of one variety displayed in a single bud vase.  Rose varieties that have won Queen of the Show sometime during the previous ten years are eligible as entries.

I once entered the Pair of Queens competition with the blooms of Ernest H. Morse, a great turkey red rose with an unfortunate habit:  it "blows" (opens fully) if it gets too warm.  When I put my Ernests on the designated table, they were perfect and would have easily won a blue ribbon.  Because of some show schedule mix-up, however, judges didn't consider any of the Queen pairs until the end of their allotted judging time.  Alas, my pair of Queens had blown into dowagers, and I got a red (second place) ribbon while the blue went to a pair of Pascali that tightly held their form.

There may also be an award for the finest specimen exhibited, usually called Best in Show.  Unlike the Queen, this rose needn't have classic, formal hybrid tea form.  It may even be a single or a miniature, but it must be exemplary in what it has achieved for its variety.