Talk:True Lab/@comment-27363468-20151208003320/@comment-4757418-20151210210857

Entry 7 talks about how Alphys needed a vessel to wield the souls, since monsters can't absorb the souls of other monsters. She goes on to say she found a candidate in the next entry, and implies that she chose the first flower to be the vessel for the souls and injected it with Determination (the will to live). Entry 10 tells us that this had no measurable effect for a while. The room where we find this particular entry is full of the golden flowers, probably the control cases. Entry 15 tells us she sent the souls and the vessel (flower) back to Asgore, and by Entry 18 it's gone.

Putting all this information together it looks like Alphys really did take the flower to the lab for Determination experiments. Flowey most likely "woke up" sometime after she returned him to Asgore. According to Flowey, his save point is in the garden, when he woke up. He probably left the garden shortly after his latest reset, eventually made his way to the ruins, and lost control of the timeline when Frisk arrived.

As for the Toriel situation, Alphys didn't have to have met the queen to know when she'd left or when the first flower bloomed. All this information could have been given to her either by word of mouth or news outlets of some kind.