Dr. Henry Skinner was the second director of the US National Arboretum in Washington DC from 1952-1973. Earlier, he was curator of the Morris Arboretum from 1940-1943 and from 1945-1952. In 1951, he spent six months driving 25,000 miles through the southeastern and eastern United States searching for native azaleas, sending many plants and herbarium specimens to the Morris Arboretum. See http://etext.virginia.edu/collections/projects/rhodo/skinner/introduction.html for more information about him and the trip.

When he retired to Hendersonville NC, Dr. Skinner planted a few of his selections in his garden. The pictures by Ed Collins are of those plants, and the pictures by Vivian Abney are seedlings of those plants.