One full, cupped rose, white with a pink blush at its heart, opens on a thorny stem. Around it stand several buds wrapped in bristly, moss-like green sepals, their pink tips just showing, and toothed leaves grow in sets of five and three. Engraved lettering below reads Rosa Muscosa alba and Rosier Mousseux à fleurs blanches, with the painter's, printer's and engraver's credits beneath. Pierre-Joseph Redouté painted this moss rose for the first volume of Les Roses (Paris, 1817), with text by Claude-Antoine Thory; Langlois engraved the plate and the Rémond press printed it.

Thory wrote that it differs from the ordinary moss rose only in its flowers, white washed with a very pale pink, so the name white moss rose is not exact: even the English, who supplied it to France, had never seen it pure white. An English nurseryman had raised it four or five years earlier, and Thory thought it a cross between the Rose unique and the common moss rose. Boursault brought it to France, where it was still not widespread. It is in the California State Library in San Francisco.