Jean Claude Pernet, père (15 October 1832, Villeurbanne - 31 March 1896) was a French rosarian known for his cultivation of rose cultivars. He was born to a family of rose growers in Villeurbanne, Rhône, near the city of Lyon. His father, Claude Pernet, established a rose nursery in 1845.
Among rose breeders today, Jean Pernet is known as 'Pernet pere' and was one of the first hybridizers who sought out novelties. He developed the Baroness de Rothschild Hybrid Tea rose in 1868, named for Baroness Caroline von Rothschild. In 1874, he named a Moss rose 'Soupert & Notting' in honour of his Luxembourg rose breeding colleagues. Another colleague of Jean Claude Pernet - Louis Lévêque from Louis Lévêque & Fils, that was famous among royal families and dynasties, also developed Madame Olympe Tereshchenko rose, which was known to be a romantic gesture by the Tereshchenko Brothers as a gentlemen' tradition followed in Rothschild and Tereshchenko families. This white, carmine-pink shading or white blend Bourbon color rose, named for Olympiada Tereshchenko, wife of Simon Tereshchenko.
Among his numerous creations are:
Using Rosa foetida in 1887, he and his son, Joseph Pernet-Ducher, began developing a yellow rose through a cross between a red hybrid perpetual and 'Persian Yellow'. After Jean Pernet's death in 1896, his son carried on the experiments and developed a worldwide reputation in 1900 when he introduced the 'Soleil d'Or', the first yellow Hybrid Tea. This rose it is now recognized as the first of the Pernetiana Roses (Roses of Pernet) and an important ancestor of 'Peace', introduced by Meilland in 1945.