If you are looking for one the color of the lavender plant then probably not. Lavender is a blue purple and there is no blue zinnia that I know of

Hi Rose,

I agree with what dowlinggram said. Giant Dahlia Flowered Violet is pretty close to lavender. Benary's Giant Lilac is understandably more lilac than lavender.

Lavender Queen purports to be lavender, but misses the mark rather badly in my opinion. Likewise, Giant Lavender Gem seems to be more of a pale pastel magenta.

Zinnias are capable of a true lavender (but, as dowllinggram said, not a true blue), but several of the true lavender commercial strains have apparently been discontinued. True lavender can occur in some of the mixed color offerings. If you grew a mixture of colors and found a lavender that you liked, you could save seeds from it. Then, by repeatedly saving seeds from your best lavenders, you could probably get your own strain of good lavender zinnias. I have had lavenders appear in my zinnia breeding program, but I haven't been trying to create a lavender strain of zinnias.

To me, the Violet Dahlia Flowered zinnia looks like the best commercial approximation to lavender right now. I am not a big fan of the dahlia flowered flower form, so I would probably grow a bunch of Burpeeana Giants and look for a lavender in it. Many years ago, they had separate colors available in the "old" Burpeeana Giants. But all of those, and the Burpeeana Giant strain itself, went "extinct" and in recent years it has been revived after a fashion. In my opinion, the original version was better.

ZM
(not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

Hi Rose,

"It just seems to me that years ago I used to plant mixed zinnias & there was a true lavender color in there."

It is very likely that many different mixtures of zinnia colors, large, medium, and small, may contain some lavender zinnias. And, although lavender may exist at a fairly precise point on the color wheel between red and blue, there can be light and dark variations of lavender. And there can be colors that are closely related to lavender, like lilac, orchid, and light purple as examples. In a paint store you could probably find several paint chips of colors that are similar to lavender. This is a picture of a zinnia from my garden last year. It was fairly close to lavender.

It was interesting to me not so much for its color, but for its large bloom size and very high petal count, which caused its large flower to be about as deep as it was wide. I have had other home-hybridized zinnias that were both unusual and lavender-like in color. This 2003 specimen was magenta with white "toothy" petal tips. Magenta harmonizes with lavender, but is much pinker.

I have several zinnia breeding objectives, and a "toothy" strain is one of my goals that I am working toward. This zinnia, also from last year has a color that I might call orchid.

This one has a light pastel "paint chip" color that lies somewhere in this color family.

I can envisage a zinnia garden with a harmonious mixture of lavender-related colors, both dark and light, that would make a nice carpet composition of a wide variety of related colors and hues and shades. In past years I have had many interesting zinnia specimens that could fit in such a garden. I think I would throw in a few whites and dark purples for accents. And some rose colors, too. (grin)

ZM

The names of colors can be a bit confusing. I grew Uproar, and to me they seemed to be a medium light purple dahlia flowered zinnia. The advantage of their being F1 hybrids was that they were quite uniform -- no significant variation from one plant or flower to another. They definitely didn't seem rose colored to me.

One of my breeding projects is to find a large very dark purple zinnia, and so far I haven't found one. I will continue the search this year. Zinnias are capable of very dark purple. Many decades ago there was a small flowered zinnia named Black Ruby, and it was a very dark cerise color that looked almost black in yellowish incandescent light. It hasn't been available for a long time. The small Persian Carpet zinnias have some specimens with very dark purples tipped with cream or white.

I have noticed that many zinnias come in as medium purple, but their petals lighten with age. This is an example from last year.

There is a zinnia variety called Purple Prince and I agree that it is more of a magenta than a purple. I don't know of a true purple commercial zinnia variety, and I will be on the lookout again for a good purple in my zinnia garden this year.

ZM

Anyway, I wonder if my Magenta Uproars would be more purple further north? I guess I'd have to move to find out. Oh, well. I'll take your word for it. :)