Classified by Graham S. Thomas as a Provence rose but with ‘signs of hybridity.’  Most Australian nurseries consider it to be a Hybrid Perpetual although it scarcely warrants this appellation as it is summer-flowering only.  Paul described it variously as a Hybrid Bourbon and Hybrid China and Rivers as a Hybrid Bourbon.  Paul Ricault was a prominent rose fancier from Falkirk in Scotland and regular writer on the subject of roses in the pages of the The Gardeners’ Chronicle and elsewhere.  ‘Paul Ricault’ has large, very double crimson-pink or bright carmine flowers.  According to The Gardeners’ Chronicle of 1857 ‘a most hardy rose for size, shape, colour, very lasting and beautiful in a pot or exhibition’.  [Paul (1888, 1903), Rivers (1854, 1857, 1863)].