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'Isabella Skinner' rose References
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Magazine  (2006)  Page(s) 13. Vol 28, No. 1.  
 
Cass Bernstein. If enough rosarians see your rose, sooner or later, one may recognize it, if only by happenstance. The unidentified rose “Victorian Memory” was circulated in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain states of the western United States since the 1960s, when it was received unlabelled in a shipment of Canadian roses. In May 2005, “Victorian Memory” was used as a study rose at the Heritage Rose Foundation Conference, Southern California hybridizer Kim Rupert identified our study rose as ‘Isabella Skinner’, an obscure hybrid of Rosa laxa by amateur Canadian hybridizer Frank Skinner. If ‘Isabella Skinner’ can be identified after being in commerce for almost 45 years, there is hope for any found rose.
Book  (Dec 1998)  Page(s) 316-317.  Includes photo(s).
 
Isabella Skinner Modern Shrub. Medium pink. This shrub produces well-formed pink flowers on new wood all summer long on a bushy plant. The parentage is unusual, and the breeder has been successful in producing a rose that is worthy of being included in a selection of Old Garden Roses. It is not widely grown in Australia. Zones 4-9. Pre-1965. Parentage: (Rosa laxa x Tea) x Cluster-flowered seedling.
Book  (Apr 1993)  Page(s) 262.  
 
Isabella Skinner Shrub, flowers pink, (R. laxa x Tea) x Floribunda seedling; Prior to 1965...
Book  (1966)  Page(s) 165-166.  
 
[In "A Little Bit of Rose Breeding" by F. L. Skinner,Dropmore, Manitoba, Canada:]
....R. laxa has shown the ability to transmit more hardiness to its hybrid progeny than R. rugosa. It will also mate with a wider range of other roses and give a higher percentage of fertile hybrids. This is shown not only by my work but by that of Buck and Simonet. Neither R. laxa nor its hybrids seem to be so prone to contract rust as do our native roses and their hybrids.
R. laxa itself often has three bursts of bloom during the summer and I have seen flowers, green fruit and ripe fruit on a bush at the same time. However, this tendency is passed on to only a few hybrids, one which I have thought worthy of naming 'Isabella Skinner' (which continues blooming from June until September, and has good form and color for an everblooming shrub rose).
Article (misc)  (2 Jul 1964)  
 
Personal correspondence from Frank L. Skinner to Percy Wright

I believe however that my greatest contribution to the cause of getting better hardy roses was the directing of attention to the value of the true Rosa laxa as a parent, some of my hybrids of it are of fairly good quality and continue to flower from the end of June untill frost. One of these which I have called Isabella Skinner is in bloom now and last year I photographed flowers on it in October, it is fully double, comes in clusters of four or five and has good foliage and the colour is a good clear pink.
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