Very curiously, Skinner’s red, a rose that was hitherto totally unknown to me, recently appeared in the catalogue of a small Finnish nursery. Their description matches the images in HMF. Paul G. Olsen has given the parentage as Iowa No. 9 x Souvenir d’Alphonse Lavallee. Any other information about his rose?
Bw,
Jukka
Helsinki, Finland
I have Iowa No. 9 here in Australia but it is a multiflora rootstock developed by Buck
Margit Schowalter passed this along from the book Growing Roses in Saskatchewan.
“Skinner’s Red (2003) - Bred by Dr. F.L. Skinner but named and introduced by his son Hugh Skinner. Flowers are red, double, with a flat, old garden rose form, slightly quartered, about 7.5cm. Reported as hardy only to zone 4, but originated in zone 2. Contains R. blanda parentage.”
Her comment on HMF indicates that the Iowa 9 parent was not the Buck rootstock but a much older, probably hybrid rugosa, crossed with Souv de Alphonse Lavallee. The introducer of IA 9 was Budd, a professor there decades earlier (1890s).
Bierkreek Nursery in Holland lists Skinner’s rose named ‘Leda’. All info hmf has on this rose is that it was bred in 1960 and that it is a hybrid of Rosa laxa Retzius. Any additional information, anyone? It will be very interesting to see what kind of plant it is.
Jukka
Helsinki, Finland
Jukka,
Margit Schowalter checked the Skinner catalogs. This rose was sold by Skinner in 1960 and maybe (or maybe not) in 1961 (catalog was not available). Leda is not listed in his catalogs from 1962 and later. Unless we got really lucky, the rose carried by Bierkreek is probably another Leda or even one of the roses named Léda. See 'Leda' Rose
The pictures of Leda on the Bierkreek site are like those of the Damask Léda. I’ve sent a note to Bierkreek to alert them to the likelihood that the rose they have is not the Skinner Leda.
Peter
Peter,
Thanks for your reply. Bierkreek lists a number of other rare North American roses, so I had to order this “Leda” atop others just in case it turned out to be the Skinner’s rose. But yesterday when I opened the packet and inspected the roses I immediately noted that their Leda has typical green and finely thorny damask-like branches. The damask Leda is a fine rose, no problem. I hope the Lynnies I bought are correctly labelled, though.
Btw, I e-mailed Bierkreek a while ago and suggested, as they seem to have interest in propagating the above mentioned rare cultivars, that they try to obtain propagation material of Prairie Peace and Musician and other very hard to find hardy roses from Canada. They replied kindly that it is never a straightforward thing to import such material but that they’ll see what they can do in the coming years. Might there be someone here who could help them? Someone working at the botanic gardens/germplasm collections?
Jukka
The pictures of Leda on the Bierkreek site are like those of the Damask Léda. I’ve sent a note to Bierkreek to alert them to the likelihood that the rose they have is not the Skinner Leda.
Peter[/quote]
I bought Leda in Bierkreek. I confirm that unfortunately is not Skiner rose.
For those of you interested in Skinner’s roses I am posting a link to my file of Dropmore Hardy Plants catalogues on Dropbox.
There are single files of some complete catalogues.
The last file contains photographs of rose pages only. These are from a catalogue collection that recently has been discarded.
For those interested in downloading the file, I’ll leave it there until the end of the month.