The stripes in the zinnia are most likely hybridized. If the solid color one is coming from the same stem/plant it is because it is converting back to one of the original strains they crossed to hybridize it.
Sarah

hmmm .........that will be interesting to see if subsequent flowers on that stem are also mono-colored :)

oxmyx,

That is a very unusual zinnia. Which raises some interesting questions. If you saved seeds from the solid colored bloom, would they all be solid colored? And if you saved seeds from a striped bloom, would they be all striped? And if you took pollen from the striped bloom and put it on the stigmas of the solid colored bloom, would you be creating a hybrid, or merely selfing that zinnia?

I am an amateur zinnia breeder, just as a hobby, and I have seen significant differences in the blooms on a single plant, although none as dramatic as what you have shown here. It makes me wonder if the different branches of a zinnia plant are genetically the same, or somewhat genetically different.

Thanks for showing us the picture.

MM

maineman, can you tell me if it is posible that the branch has mutated? Do you Know if it is posible for it to revert, as suggested by sarahbarah?

Will keep an eye on it and update :)

oxmyx,

Several well known rose varieties originated as "bud sports". I wouldn't rule out the possibility that your solid color zinnia branch is a vegetative mutation. As I mentioned above, I have seen a lot of zinnia plants that made me doubt that all the branches were genetically identical.

I don't think that striped zinnias are that way because they were hybridized. As far as I know, all of the striped zinnias available today, Peppermint Stick, Candy Cane, and Candy Stripe, are all open pollinated. I have done hundreds of crosses between different kinds of zinnias and, so far, not one of those crosses has produced striped zinnias.

Many years ago, I did cross some Peppermint Stick zinnias with some light colored cactus flowered zinnias and got some cactus flowered striped zinnias that were kind of interesting. Maybe I will incorporate striped zinnias in my zinnia breeding activities next year. I like multicolored zinnias, but I prefer the zoned patterns like on Whirligigs, Carousel, and Zig Zag.

MM

Thanks maineman........
I would be very interested to know how you go about hand pollination of these zinnias. I have never seen any sexual parts, since the flowers last forever producing more petals, and then fade. do you have to shear them a bit, or bag them until way late in there development, where they show pistal and stemem?

oxmyx,

It's actually quite easy to cross one zinnia with another. The pollen is produced in the disk florets. They are the little yellow star-like objects in the center of the zinnia. You can see them in this picture.
{{gwi:23019}}
With tweezers or some other convenient tool pinch out a pollen-bearing disk floret and rub it on the stigmas of another zinnia flower. The stigmas are little Y-shaped forked tendrils at the base of each petal. You can see them clearly in this photo.
{{gwi:23020}}
Actually, that wouldn't be a bad cross for me to make. A spider flowered zinnia with white tips on the petals might look good. This link has some illustrative information about the anatomy of a zinnia flower. If you have any more questions about crossing your own zinnias, please ask. I may start a separate message thread in a day or two here in this forum on the subject breeding your own zinnias. I certainly enjoy doing it myself, as an interesting hobby. Growing zinnias from your own crosses can be full of surprises.

MM

That is a fantastic explantion. I might give it a try, depending on what my specimen does :)

Thanks for all the info, and I hope you do start a thread.

Hello Oxmyx and others: this photo is the flower that the zinnia (called Whirlygig, I believe) produced in my garden in July 2005 {{gwi:23021}}">

One flower, half striped, half solid colour. This variety, Whirlygig, is very changeable! Some flowers are white and red, others yellow and red, and some can't make up their minds!

shapiro, thats a real beauty! gotta try whirlygig next year!

Actually, I think that one is also a Peppermint Stick. Peppermints, like the Candy Canes are striped. On the other hand, Whirligigs are bi-colored, but not striped.

Last year I grew a small patch of Whirligigs and crossed them with several other kinds of zinnias. This year I also grew some Vesey's Zig Zags, which also are a bicolor that is not striped. Next year, I plan to grow more Whirligigs, Carrousels, and Zig Zags to expand my bi-colored zinnia gene pool.

MM

Maineman: Yes, you are right! My mistake - it is Peppermint Stick. This year, we grew Benarys and I also threw in a few seeds from an old Cactus Flowered package. Here is one I thought was really nice! {{gwi:23022}}">

Not bad for an "old seed"!

Shapiro,

Not bad at all! That's a great pink color and the petals have a nice textured "corrugated" look that I really like. I really like an informal flower form like the cactus flowered zinnias have.

I grew some white Benary's Giants last year. I'm not too wild about the classic dahlia flowered flower form of the Benary's Giants, but they do have very strong stems and I suspect stronger plant branches as well. I definitely plan to grow some Benary's Giants next year, with the idea of crossing them with some of my other zinnias to get stronger plant frameworks.

I recently experienced a lot of wind damage on some of my plants that had a "candelabra" plant form. The branches that grow straight out from the central stem, particularly those down near the ground, seem very susceptible to breaking off. I think that is partly because they are cantilevered and perhaps partly because the stem structure isn't as strong as it could be.

A lot of my zinnias with a more upward oriented stem structure survived the wind storm just fine, even though they also had a lot of branches. So zinnias can be wind resistant. With that knowledge, I am definitely going to be paying more attention to plant structure next year. Despite our forested tree protection here in Maine, we do get several strong wind storms a year here.

Next year I am also going to experiment with increasing my zinnia plant strength with nutrition. I recently purchased a quart of Pro-TeKt® from Dyna-Gro, which may help my plants to grow stronger. I'll give it a try next year, and experiment with it a little this fall.

Thanks for posting that pink cactus zinnia picture. I like the little date stamp. I don't know how to use my wife's Sony Cyber-Shot digital camera very well (like dependably focus it) but I will read its manual to see if I can figure out how to get it to include date stamps (and focus where I want it to.) There is also the possibility of embedded EXIF data that can contain details about a picture that I need to learn about.

Sometime before next year's growing season I hope to get a good digital camera of my own. Right now I am thinking about a Nikon D300 when it comes out. It's kind of expensive, but as the TV hair product commercials say, "I'm worth it." I've never had a good camera before, and I think it's about time that I did.

MM

Sometimes in the DNA of the cells that form the flower, there are transpoable elements of DNA or viruses that somehow interrupt a gene that may be responsible at least in part for the color of that flower.. when the element interrupts the gene, there is no color. Sometimes environmental conditions are right and these cause the element to move out of the gene in some or all of the flower's cells, so that the gene is expressed and then color can be restored--this is one way that color variegation happens in flowers.

To Mainman an anyone who cares, the stem that had the anomalous plain flower, frost hit before the other buds on that stem were able to bloom

oxmyx,

Thanks for the information update. Frost killed all of my zinnias in the early morning hours on the 29th of October. A killing frost was actually overdue about three weeks in this part of Maine.

Jackier_gardener's explanation about unstable alleles affecting zinnia petal pigmentation probably applied to your now departed zinnia.

I have a lot more to learn about erratic gene expression in zinnias. It seems to me that it is very common for one branch of a zinnia to display significant differences from another branch on the same plant, with respect to doubleness of the flowers, the amount of pollen produced, and sometimes even the shape of the petals. For that reason, I have had doubts about the genetic uniformity of zinnia plants in general.

That has relevance when you are choosing which flower on a plant to take pollen from and which flower on a plant to place the pollen on. It could even have relevance on which flowers you should save seeds from.

I am sure there are people who, based on the assumption of genetic uniformity, would say it doesn't matter where on the plant you take the pollen from, or where on a plant you place the pollen, or where you save seeds from. They may even be right, but I'm not so certain of it. It's an open question in my mind. At this point, I don't know whether your freaky zinnia was a chimera or not.

Here's to more and better zinnias next year. And more enlightenment.

MM

It's hard to assume that when genes in the somatic cells of the flower (allowing pigments to form or not to form in the petals) are being expressed in one or more manners that the germ cells of the same flower giving rise to pollen and/or eggs to form embryos in new seeds will have exactly the same genetic content. When elements or viruses are actively moving in and out of the chromosomes, predictions for breeding purposes are hard to make! You may indeed have chimeric flowers here. Of course, there may be other factors at play here. I guess that is one of the things that makes it all so interesting.

JG,

"Of course, there may be other factors at play here. I guess that is one of the things that makes it all so interesting."

Yes, indeed. Zinnias can be surprising and hard to understand. I haven't made any crosses with striped zinnias in recent times, because I don't particularly like the effect. I have seen Four 'o Clocks with wildly striped flowers, and after I got over the novelty, I didn't want to grow them either. And I got the impression somewhere that the striped tulips were actually affected by a virus disease.

If I found a zinnia mutant with a single stripe down the center of each petal, I would be attracted by that, and I would treat it as a "breeder". I understand there is a Zinnia species that has such a stripe. But random, chaotic stripes and spots make me wonder if some sort of virus disease is involved. I wouldn't want my entire zinnia patch to be affected by something like that.

MM

Yes, I know the breaks in the "Rembrandt" tulips are caused by a virus. Transposable elements can cause much of the same effect. And not necessarily just in the flowers but elsewhere in the plant. I am thinking that it may be wise to keep the peppermint and similar zinnias out of the patch if you don't want some of those features coming up in the offspring of the other kinds of zinnias that are growing there.

JG,

I wouldn't want broken color features to spread through my zinnia gene pool. I think I will not grow any more striped and spotted zinnias. I will continue with the bi-colors and tri-colors of the Whirligigs, Carrousels, and Zig-Zags, because I like those blended effects and they don't seem to be associated with unstable alleles.

MM

âÂÂYes, I know the breaks in the "Rembrandt" tulips are caused by a virus. Transposable elements can cause much of the same effect. And not necessarily just in the flowers but elsewhere in the plant. I am thinking that it may be wise to keep the peppermint and similar zinnias out of the patch if you don't want some of those features coming up in the offspring of the other kinds of zinnias that are growing there.âÂÂ

The original tulips of the Dutch tulip-mania were caused by virus. The modern color break tulips are not virused and IâÂÂm certain none of the color break zinnias are.