Greetings all,

Welcome to this ongoing message thread. Once again, the previous part of this continuing series, It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 18, is becoming rather long and slow to load or read, so we are continuing the series here for yet another fresh start.

The same guidelines apply here. Anything remotely related to zinnias is fine. As always, you are invited to post your pictures, but as a courtesy to readers with smaller monitors, try to keep the pictures posted from being huge. Before they started showing all those advertisements in the right-hand part of the screen, a picture that was 986 pixels would not create a scroll-bar under the messages, but that is no longer the case. I still limit myself to 986 pixels, but use your own judgement on that. I won't mind if you post wider pictures. My Nikon D3200 camera takes pictures with 6016 x 4000 pixels, so I downsize them in a software editor for use on the Web.

If you upload large pictures using GardenWeb's software, they will be automatically downsized to 640 pixels wide. In my opinion, that is smaller than need be. That subject was discussed here in the Zinnia art message thread. Fortunately GardenWeb allows you to embed enough HTML in your messages to insert pictures wider than 640 pixels.

This picture is 986 pixels wide, and it shows a recent snapshot of part of my zinnia patch of Whirligig zinnias.

After the recent killing freezes here, I have since pulled up all of those zinnias and bagged them in trash bags to be sent to the landfill. Previously I made compost piles with my zinnia discards, but I quit doing that several years ago because my compost piles didn't get "hot" enough to kill transmitted zinnia diseases.

As always, I look forward to your participation in this message thread, to ask questions, answer questions, post pictures, or just make any kind of comment.

ZM

Martha

"So, if I replant seeds collected from the plants I had, they may have better color than the parents. It will be fun to see what kind of offspring these plants produce."

I think you find that the seeds you save from the Zaharas will come very true to type. All of the Zinnia marylandicas are very stable from seed which, depending on your viewpoint, is very good or kind of uninteresting. I prefer to grow Zinnia elegans (violacea) because they tend to vary quite a lot, and are full of surprises.

ZM

Martha

"PetaWHAToids???"

In the case of zinnias, petaloids are florets that have approximated the form and/or function of petals. Their presence is usually a sign of scabiosa flowered ancestry in a recombinant zinnia. I usually like zinnias that have petaloids, because they can have an unusual or exotic look. The literal meaning is probably something like "false petals".

ZM

"Are there Zinnia elegans that stay under 12 inches?"

The ultimate low-growing zinnia strain is the Thumbelina strain. Thumbelinas start blooming when only about 3 inches high and they reach an ultimate height of about 6 inches with a plant spread of about 8 to 10 inches. They come in a good color range.

ZM

Martha

Hi all,

I saw several Whirligig specimens this year that "struck my fancy" and motivated me to grow an even bigger patch of them next Spring. This is one specimen that I liked.

Most of the Whirligigs have an approximately equal amount of the two colors on each petal, but this one has the second color on just the petal tips, which gives it a "different" look.

The amazing diversity of the Whirligig strain offers the opportunity to select out many different special strains, and this "tipped petal color" effect is an example of one such possibility. It would be nice to have a strain that had many different colors, but all of them showing this "tipped color" effect.

ZM

Hi NC,

You are never a pest, and I welcome your participation and questions. This is one of my recent favorites that had petaloids.

The petaloids in that one are the central floral parts with orange-rust tips. That bloom is a scabious recombinant. This next zinnia also has petaloids.

Those petaloids also occur in the central part of the flower. This is essentially an echinacea flowered recombinant that presented petaloids instead of scabious-type petal-colored florets. That bloom is not one of my favorites, but it is an unusual zinnia that you couldn't get in a commercial seed packet. One of the rewards of breeding your own zinnias is that you can grow lots of unusual zinnias that aren't available in seed packets.

ZM

Alex

Martha

"Do you think this will be too rich an environment for zinnias to bloom well, or do you see any other problems I'm not identifying?"

Zinnias enjoy rich soil, so that shouldn't be a problem. I notice several large trees in your picture. Excess shade could be a problem. Is your mailbox facing toward the South? That would probably be the best orientation, lightwise. With no trees directly in the street, your zinnias could "see the sun" better than if the sun were behind some of those trees. Zinnias need 6 hours or more of direct sun per day.

ZM

I did read that overhead watering is not recommended for the Thumbelina Zinnias. I don't have much other options up by the road. If I stick to morning hand sprinkling, will that be OK? I guess I'll find out.

Martha

" If I stick to morning hand sprinkling, will that be OK?"

That will be OK. During the Spring and Summer I don't hesitate to foliar-feed my zinnias in the evening. However, zinnias become more disease prone in the Fall when the days shorten and temperatures drop. But it is an urban myth that water causes powdery mildew in zinnias. Notice that this article actually says "In the case of powdery mildew, you can actually inhibit infection with frequent sprays of water."

ZM

Hi all,

So far I have yet to get any obvious payoffs from the tubular-petaled crosses, but I have had several specimens with probable tubular male parentage that had unusually full flowers, like this one:

This was another specimen with possible tubular parentage, that also had extra full scabious florets.

Next year I will be growing a lot of seeds saved from zinnias with possible tubular parentage, which will offer the possibility of reappearance of the tubular petals in modified forms. But there is also the possibility of other traits that are influenced by the tubular genes.

ZM

Martha

"But, I don't see any pollen producing "parts"."

That is the "glory" of the scabiosa flowered genes. Their pollen producing parts usually take on the color scheme of the flower. In that last picture, everything that you can see is a pollen producing part. And, in the picture above it, those tangled toothy-looking parts in the center are the pollen producing parts.

"Are you able to reach in somehow and find them for use in your crossing with other flowers?"

I am. I use Kelly forceps or tweezers to get the pollen. There is some trial-and-error involved in that. An anther bundle is only "good" for one day, and most of the anther bundles have already pollinated the internal style/stigmas. Sometimes the fresh ones are in the parts that haven't "opened" yet. And the "ready" ones vary in appearance from one scabious specimen to another. Basically the "good" pollen is where you find it, and you do have to explore a scabious recombinant to find it.

Sometimes you will see a bee sticking his tongue down into the florets for pollen, and that can give you a good clue as to where to find the "today's" pollen. Apparently the bees can "smell" or otherwise sense where the good pollen is.

ZM

Hi JG,

I want to "tie up" a few loose ends from the previous Part 18. Back on Sun, Sep 30, 12 at 11:02 you showed a picture of a zinnia whose new "coming in" petals were white. That was quite unusual and interesting, and at some time later I also had a zinnia whose new petals were near white for a few days.

If you look really closely at that picture, I think you can spot the head of the Nine Spotted Cucumber Beetle that had been snacking on those petals.

Back on Fri, Sep 21, 12 at 15:40, you showed an X-roll descendent with white on the reverse side of the petals, and that effect was sensational. I haven't had anything that good, but I did have a specimen with petal up-roll near the tips and white on the backsides.

That whets my appetite for full extreme up-roll and white-backed petals. I think that would be a novel new strain of zinnias. I'll be looking for comparable specimens next year. And I hope you get some too. I continue to be impressed by the novel zinnias in your gene pool.

ZM

Responding to more "loose end" back on Part 18. Back on Thu, Jul 12, 12 at 21:23 you showed a picture of your first-of-the-season extreme rolls. On this laptop computer that I am using until I get my desktop computer working, the uprolled zinnia on the right looks bluish enough to be called a "blue zinnia" in a seed catalog. I realize that this monitor might be affecting that a little and that blue-sky lighting can make lavender zinnias look bluish. But some flowers might consider that to be "blue". In that same picture, the extreme roll on the left looks scrumptious with almost tendril-like petals.

ZM

Hi JG,

Responding to more "loose ends" back in Part 18. On Wed, Oct 10, 12 at 9:17 you said:

"I guess you will be maintaining cuttings of your tubular flowers through the winter."

I took some cuttings and they are in the process of rooting right now.

I need to be vigilant for the appearance of any outside pests on the cuttings.

"On the side, did you get a good yield of melons this year?"

We got a few good melons, but the yield was poor because of the drought. Incidentally, that drought is still very much in effect for us, with no near term end to it projected.

ZM

I checked in on Part 18 several times and thought maybe folks were slowing down with the zinnia season as I have, as I saw no link there. But I have returned here, and was glad to see everyone's entries.

I like your rolled-up flower with the white underside that you showed on Tue, Oct 23, 12 at 1:07. After seeing that zinnias could produce the white-backed petals, I decided that that was one feature I wanted to try and hold on to!

Your cuttings look great--nice and healthy! I have cut down most of my zinnia beds with our lawn tractor. I hope for some dry days before the ground freezes, and I will try and till up the gardens. Leaves will fall on them and I will then till everything back into the gardens in the spring. I think most of the water that we lost with the drought this past summer has been replaced, but the region in general is still suffering from the effects of the drought.

I got my orange X-roll plant as an afterthought following several heavy frosts (although I have several hundred seeds from it--who knows what kind of plants they will turn into?) The leaves of the original plant were dead, but it looked to me like the stem was still alive, so I tried the below:

The roots made a nice ball that I put in a sterile soil mix. I will put the whole thing in a transparent covering and see if any leaves will appear, just using the brightest light from the windows here. I'll see if I can keep this thing alive until next summer.

JG

Hi Alex,

That is a nice clear closeup picture of your Lilliput zinnia. It is a single, which isn't the true double flower form for Lilliput zinnias. That happens for lots of zinnias. I usually cull my singles. However, single flowers aren't always "genetic" and a normally double zinnia can produce branches that have single blooms in response to harsh environmental factors.

One of the reasons I like the scabiosa flowered zinnias, and the scabious recombinants that result from crossing them with larger zinnias, is that florets have a color the same as the petal color, or at least related to the petal color. And the scabious florets remain attractive for the life of the bloom, in contrast to the "regular" fuzzy yellow florets, which shrivel and die in a day or two. This is a scabious recombinant that I had this year.

It is a "single" zinnia, because it has a single row of "guard" petals, and a center composed of scabious florets. The scabious florets are usually fully functional florets, with pollen for the bees and nectar for the butterflies. And they usually produce viable floret seeds.

However, because scabiosa flowered zinnias are essentially "single", a lot of their scabious recombinants (progeny from hybrids) frequently appear as conventional single zinnias. I usually cull those.

Single zinnias usually produce more pollen florets, which is nice for the butterflies. Pollen florets normally produce selfed seeds. If I open a zinnia seed packet and see a lot of floret seeds, I am a little disappointed, because I anticipate that they will produce a preponderance of single or semi-double zinnia blooms. Butterflies happy. Me, not so much.

So, what about zinnia seed availability in Cape Verde? How are your mail services, and what seed companies can you shop from?

ZM

Hi Rose,

" Do you sell your creations? The tubular flowers are lovely. "

Zinnias are strictly a hobby with me, so I have no plans to sell zinnia seeds in the immediate future. For the more distant future, who knows?

Most of my tubular petaled zinnias are little more than a novelty, but I want to experiment with them at length to determine if they have potential for recombining with other zinnia genes to produce something worthwhile. I will be raising a lot of tubular recombinants next year, and something interesting may show up then. Most of my tubular-petaled zinnias this year were unimpressive. A few showed some promise as ornamentals, like this one.

But a lot of the tubular-petaled specimens have an awkward look, with very little petal color showing. They have a long way to go. But I am kind of optimistic about them.

ZM

I'm glad you found your way over here. I have never done anything like you did with that frost-killed zinnia. I have noticed during Fall cleanup that the frost-killed "dead" zinnias that I am pulling up have some very "live" root systems.

I did bring in one live zinnia as a transplant, but I haven't potted it yet. In past years, I have always accidentally brought in a variety of pests along with every zinnia plant or cutting that I brought in. This year I used Physan 20 for most of my cuttings, but I am also experimenting with Chlorine Dioxide as a disinfectant. A while back, we purchased a gallon of Oxine to treat the drinking water for our poultry, so I thought I would experiment with it for disinfecting zinnia explants and cuttings. According to the label, Oxine is two percent ClO₂.

So far, I think I like Oxine better than Chlorox, but I need to get more experience with it on my zinnias before forming an opinion. I don't know how well Chlorine Dioxide compares with Hydrogen Peroxide or Physan 20 as a disinfectant for zinnia cuttings or explants. I am still experimenting with dilution strength for the Chlorine Dioxide.

It would be very exciting if your zinnia stem did put out a shoot. Keep us posted.

ZM

Hi all,

Every time I grow Whirligig zinnias, which is every year now, I see a small but consistent percentage of "twisty" looking mutants. Frequently those mutant blooms are very small and pathetic and not ornamental, but some of those mutants have decent sized blooms and "marbled" two-color petals. This is an example of one that appeared this year.

This marbled-blended coloration is somewhat similar to some of the specimens that you can see in the Peppermint zinnias, but the effect here is actually somewhat different. The Peppermints frequently have a freckled look with a lot of little dots and spots and lines and stripes. They have a variety of patterns, but I quit growing them and crossing them because I wasn't attracted to that look. But this Whirligig marbled-blended look does look kind of interesting to me. I think I am going to select and intercross these marbled Whirligig specimens next year, aiming for a Marbled strain.

And I may just change my mind about the Peppermints (and the similar Candy Canes and Candy Stripes). Partly because I am curious about what a cross between the Marbled Whirligigs and the Peppermint types might look like. I never cease to be amazed by how many different "looks" that zinnias can have. And the mind-boggling number of different crosses that you could make between them.

ZM

My flowers are gone now, but thought I would post some flowers that are a little unusual that I have had in my garden this and past years. Since I keep as many seeds as I can from one year to the next, I hope to still have some of these characteristics in future flowers.

ZM, I like the marbled look, too, and like the amount I see in the flower you have just shown. It's really nice! I first saw a similar trait in my original July Bonnet flower as in many of its descendents, changed as they were from the original.

That last one has more of the characteristics of a peppermint-type flower, but nonetheless, is a descendent of the orange July Bonnet plant.

I also have had the tubular flowers here in the garden, but not nearly as full as yours!

I had a red scabious hybrid with white-backed petals.

The scabious hybrids also can show some two-tones in the florets(is rather common here).

JG

Martha

None of those scabious flowers came from a planned cross. They were all surprises coming from planting lots of kinds of zinnias in the garden, collecting the seeds, and then watching the next years' plants bloom!

JG

Hi JG,

I have been off the Internet for a while. I think my HughesNet may have been affected by "Superstorm Sandy".

Your marbled specimens look like what I have been seeing in the commercial Whirligigs. My favorite is your lavender and white marble. Your red scabious hybrid with white-backed petals is great, and the white on florets is a new touch. I still think the white-backed petal thing has a lot of potential, and I will be on the lookout for it next year.

Your tubulars have a lot of potential, and they look similar to the tubulars I saw in Maine. I did find anther bundles in them, but so far no anther bundles in my current mutant progeny. I have split over a hundred petals looking for them. I guess you can't prove the non-existence of a thing, but I have established that anther bundles in my current tubulars are at least not common. How my tubular petals were able to get pollinated is still a mystery. I did find small insects in a few of the tubular petals that I split. I guess they could be pollen vectors. And your theory about wind-borne zinnia pollination is still a possibility. It seems plausible that pollen grains could move in the air for the short distances needed to pollinate a petal of a flower.

I was planning to show this picture of a petal-seeded tubular progeny.

I noticed something on one of the petals, and did this "blow up".

I didn't notice that little ant when I took the shot. That happens to me fairly often -- find an insect in a picture after the fact. More later.

ZM

Your closeup of the tubular flower is great! I'm not sure if the photo could be recognized as that of a flower
when shown alone! The presence of the ant may indicate that at least some pollination occurs with insects. It seems, though, that it would be long distance to go from one flower to the next for an ant, and the ant doesn't have the hairy legs that the bee does.

I think ladyrose has an interesting thought that possibly hummingbirds could be involved!

JG

JG,

"It seems, though, that it would be a long distance to go from one flower to the next for an ant..."

Actually, it wouldn't have to go from one flower to the next. It would just have to go from near the entrance to the petal down into the tube. I say that, because when my zinnias are in bloom, the bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds are working the zinnias in great abundance, and the pollen is pretty much everywhere. I haven't seen a hummingbird probe a tubular petal, but I have seen bumblebees and carpenter bees land on tubular petaled flowers to get some pollen from one of the conventional yellow florets. In many cases there is pollen available less than an inch from the mouth of a tubular petal.

When there are swarms of pollen-carrying insects about, airborne pollination could occur over very short distances of less than an inch. And bees will frequently land on a flower that doesn't have any open pollen florets, then notice that there isn't any available pollen, and fly off to a nearby zinnia flower. But, in that brief landing, pollen grains could be dislodged from the balls of pollen that the bee is carrying.

Sound vibrations could provide a novel short-distance mechanism for moving pollen grains around in a zinnia flowerhead. Some of the tubular petals are a bit like little organ pipes, capable of quarter-wavelength resonance, rapidly pumping a bit of air in and out. Other tubular petals are shaped like little trumpets, also capable of sonic excitation. The bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds provide a variety of acoustic wavelengths with their wing-beats. In the microcosm of a zinnia flowerhead, there are all manner of possible pollen transfer mechanisms.

I noticed that some tubular seedheads don't have any viable petal seeds, and other tubular seedheads have many viable petal seeds. Perhaps next year I will understand better how the tubular petals can have their concealed stigmas pollinated, or fail to have them pollinated.

Next year, I am hoping that I will get some tubular petal variants with accessible stigmas, so that I can have the opportunity to cross-pollinate them, without resorting to petal splitting. And I will watch to see if hummingbirds are visiting the tubular flowers.

ZM

Martha

Hi Martha,

"What is the difference, if any, between the petal seeds and the other seeds that are found more centrally."

The floret seeds are almost certainly self-pollinated, because they form at the base of pollen producing florets. The petals don't produce pollen, but accept it on their exposed stigmas. So there is a good chance that the petal seeds could be cross-pollinated with different zinnias, either by bees or by deliberate cross-pollination by a human.

When I am saving seeds from a selected zinnia, I save the petal seeds and the floret seeds in separate packages if there are a significant number of each. If there are only a few of one or the other, I just put them all in the same package.

I have been crossing and re-crossing zinnias for several years now, and I see a lot of interesting variations in the seeds themselves, so shucking and packaging the seeds is an interesting activity in itself. I have noticed some correlations between seed shape and petal shape. Long slender seeds tend to produce zinnias with long slender petals, whereas short wide seeds tend to produce shorter wider petals. And larger seeds produce larger petals and hence larger flowers.

When you have the contents of a seedhead spread out on a sheet of white petal under a good light, you can hand select seeds, which puts you at a considerable advantage over the seed companies, which must rely on machines to process their seeds. I am able to save and grow oddball and large seeds that would be rejected or broken by automated machinery. This picture shows a comparison of some of my zinnia seeds with some commercial zinnia seeds.

The graph paper in that picture has one-inch squares, divided into tenths of an inch. That lets you make semi-quantitative estimates of the individual seed sizes. I have seen a great variety of different seed forms in my zinnias, some with really strange shapes, which adds to the interest in saving and growing your own zinnia seeds.

ZM

I should, but haven't, separated my collections of floret (disc flower) and petal (ray flower) seeds. But I believe the same as ZM, and that is, the central floret seeds will tend to result from self-pollination, just because they are derived from the perfect disc flowers (that have both male and female parts). There are some breeders who believe that there is an incompatibility in zinnia flowers where flowers of the same plant cannot cross, but both ZM and I seemed to have noticed differently! The seeds from the "petal" or ray flowers with only female parts necessarily are pollinated by the pollen of the central florets of the same or other plants. I find that the central florets give rise to short, fat seeds while the petal flowers yield flat, larger seeds. Often my floret seeds are yellow in color! ZM, I don't know if you've seen this yellow color of seed in your garden. Below is a photo (not so detailed as ZM's) of some seeds I collected from one of my Extreme Roll zinnias, and now just separated out.

The difference is even more noticeable when harvesting the seeds. I should do the same as you, ZM, and grow them out separately to see what sorts of difference I get. Every tiny seed coming from one hybrid zinnia can give rise to a different type of plant.....the variation you can potentially get could be pretty extreme!

JG

Hi JG,

"Often my floret seeds are yellow in color! ZM, I don't know if you've seen this yellow color of seed in your garden."

I have seen a great variety of floret seeds, but none that I would call yellow. I have seen them in colors that range from very light gray to nearly black, with some earth colors in between. I have seen strange shapes in both floret seeds and petal seeds, as well as the rarer petaloid seeds.

The pastime of pulling zinnia seedheads apart and picking out the "good" seeds introduces you to a lot of details about zinnias that you might not otherwise experience. One thing that I have started to pay more attention to is the central cone, to which the petals, florets, and "chaffy scales" are attached. I notice a lot of differences in the central cones of the seedheads that I process. The diameter of the base of the cone seems to be the same as the diameter of the stem that is attached to the seedhead.

On a different subject, I noticed several instances of three-armed stigmas in my Whirligigs this year.

Only a few feet from that Whirligig there was another one with 3-armed stigmas.

My original tubular petaled mutant had some 3-armed stigmas and some of its progeny also had them. I wonder if the three-armed stigmas will be associated with other unusual traits in my zinnias. I will be growing a lot of F2's from F1 crosses between tubulars and other breeders. Because of the extensive recombination of genetic factors that occurs in F2's, I look forward to some interesting things in those F2 zinnia beds next year.

ZM

What do you all have planned for next summer?

Hi Rose,

That's a pretty red zinnia. Did you save seeds from it? Maybe you meant your response to Ken to appear in a different message thread. But I can respond to your same question:

"What do you all have planned for next summer?"

I am planning my biggest zinnia garden ever for next year. I have some commercial zinnia seeds left over from previous years, and I have been saving quite a few of my own seed as well. I am going to skip growing corn, melons, and okra next year, and zinnias will get that space, too.

It was quite cold and windy today, so I spent some time inside "shucking" some zinnia seeds. I gather my zinnia heads in plastic grocery bags and, at some later time, remove the seeds from the seedheads and package them in Ziploc bags. Today was one of those "later times". I found one zinnia head that had some very large, long seeds.

Some of those seeds had waved or ruffled edges, which kind of appealed to me. I packaged all the seeds in that picture separately. I may try growing a few of them indoors this Winter, because they look rather unusual.

ZM

The seeds were bought when i was in Brazil from this company http://www.isla.com.br . They claim to be one of the biggest seed companies in latin america.

This is a Californian giant salmon grown near some collards , it also came in more of a single form. Maybe its the hot and dry weather , but the majority are singles.

Neolax, that is a pretty pink.

Hi Alex,

"They claim to be one of the biggest seed companies in latin america."

ISLA has a rather limited zinnia selection. Brazil is a rather advanced country, and I would be surprised if they didn't have a seed company with a larger selection of zinnias. Have you tried buying zinnia seeds from an international seed company like eSeeds.com?

Your single salmon California Giant has some interesting wide petals. I had a zinnia with fairly wide petals a few years ago.

I think it would be interesting to develop zinnias with much wider petals, nearly as wide as they are long. They might look something like roses.

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

Hi Rose,

Thanks for the offer of Sombrero, but I won't need them next year. I will be growing out most of my seeds that I have on hand, and I will be growing some more old Whirligig seeds that I have left over from previous years. This was one of my Whirligigs this Summer.

I don't remember whether I saved seeds from it, but it looks a little misshapen. I had better ones. Actually, I cull my Whirligigs quite a bit because they tend to produce a fairly high percentage of not-so-good zinnias. But some of the good ones make it worthwhile to grow Whirligigs.

ZM

Hi Alex,

This is another zinnia that I had with wider-than-usual petals.

I think that one had scabiosa flowered parentage, because it is showing some petaloids in the center. Next year, among other things, I will be on the lookout for wide-petaled zinnias, with the intent of using them as breeders to begin a wide-petaled strain.

ZM

I somehow forgot to respond to your question,

"Will the tubular zinnia's attract hummer's?"

It is too early to tell for sure. So far I haven't seen hummingbirds visiting tubular blooms, but I haven't had a lot of tubular blooms or spent a lot of time observing them. Next year I may have a larger number of tubular blooms and have more opportunity to observe hummingbirds around them.

I have seen a lot of hummingbird activity on my "regular" zinnias, including on many of my F1 hybrids between the original tubular "mutant" and other breeder zinnias. But, to my surprise, none of those F1 hybrids had tubular petals, although it was highly probable that the male parent was tubular for many of them.

The good news is that I got a fairly good yield of F2 seeds from them, and I will be planting several beds of those F2s next year. I don't know for sure, but I think that at least some of those F2's will exhibit a re-emergence of the tubular petals, possibly a few of them in an improved form. Next year I will feel more than the usual amount of suspense as the new zinnia buds open into flowers.

ZM

Hi Rose,

"I would like to read a post on showing you how you can cross pollinate zinnias and coreopsis."

I haven't worked with coreopsis, but the zinnia methods might work with them. If you meant to say cross pollinate a zinnia with a coreopsis, I doubt that would work. In the unlikely event that it did work, that would be very interesting.

You can use an artist's brush to transfer zinnia pollen to another zinnia. Just touch the tip of the brush to a floret that is spilling pollen.

Then touch the tip to the stigmas of the female zinnia that you wish to pollinate. Reload the brush after touching a few stigmas.

Instead of a paintbrush, you can use tweezers, twissors, or forceps to "pick" a pollen-producing floret.

Then you can use the floret as a "loaded" brush to apply pollen to the stigmas of a female zinnia.

Zinnias release their pollen in the morning, so you need to be there at about the right time to beat the bees and butterflies to the pollen. Zinnia pollen is good for only a few hours, so you can't store zinnia pollen for later use. I prefer the forceps or tweezers method outside and the artist brush for indoors cross pollinations, but either method can work either place.

"When you start your zinnias, do you start them inside a container with potting soil, or do you rake them in the ground. What I'm asking how do you get high percentage of germination from your seeds? I find I get better germination if I sow them in containers before I plant them."

Commercial seeds usually germinate about 80%. I probably average about 50% with my hand-saved seeds. I do get better germination with the ones I start in containers. I use a soilless mix consisting of Premier ProMix BX with extra added Perlite to make it more "airy".

However, I have room for only a rather limited number of zinnias inside, so the vast majority of my zinnias are planted directly in-ground in the Spring. I have planted them closer together in the past, but I currently plant them about 4 to 6 inches apart in rows spaced 16 inches apart in beds of 4 rows separated by 6-foot walkways. That separation of only 4 to 6 inches is obviously too close, but that allows for less than 100% germination and for a rather severe first-bloom culling. Zinnias "like" to be 2 or 3 feet apart, but make nice beds when growing much closer together.

ZM

Hi all,

I was looking at some of my pictures of scabious recombinants and studying them up close before I reduce them in size for display here. A lot of today's digital cameras take pictures with a lot more pixels than can be shown here. My Nikon D3200 camera takes 6016 x 4000 pixels, so it can get a lot of detail if I manage to hold the camera reasonably still and the wind isn't bobbing the zinnias around a lot.

I frequently notice details later that I didn't see at the time I snapped the shutter. Some small insect or baby spider is the most common accidentally captured detail.

But in this picture I was studying the scabious florets and noticed that one of the open florets had a three-armed stigma available for pollination. Then, in that magnified view, I realized that the scabious florets in this zinnia were similar in structure to some of my tubular petaled zinnias.

This is a magnified view of that part of the picture that is inside the black rectangle. Actually, the first picture is greatly reduced in size, and this "magnified" view is just a small part of the original picture that was not downsized. It looks magnified here, but it is just the original size that was neither downsized nor upsized.

Because both the scabious zinnias and the tubular petaled ones have such similar flower parts, I intend to pay particular attention to crosses that are hybrids between tubular petaled zinnias and zinnias that have some scabiosa flowered ancestors. Some of the scabious florets are like small tubular flowers with interesting structures. I would be happy if I could get some new zinnias with really big scabious florets. The tubular petaled zinnias might be one way that could happen. More later. I am really looking forward to growing a lot of home hybridized zinnias next Spring. I hope this drouth will be over by then.

ZM

Hi Dave,

"...does the receiving flower need to be protected/netted before and after pollination?"

If the female zinnia or the male zinnia is very rare or unusual, I do use zinnia "hairnets" to keep pollinator insects away from the flower. These same nets can serve to protect the seedhead from seed eating birds. I have lost more than a few zinnia seeds to seed eating birds like finches. This is a picture of my original design of a zinnia net.

I will be working on an improved design this Winter. I also protect many of my breeder zinnias in zinnia cages, which protect them from wind damage, damage from dogs just "passing through", and give birds a less damaging place to perch than onto a zinnia flower whose stem isn't strong enough to support the bird. These zinnia cages are smaller versions of the tomato cages that I make from concrete re-mesh wire. They also make it easy to protect an entire zinnia plant with nylon screening, like in this picture.

"Otherwise how do we know that the flower has not been pollinated by bees, say a day before?"

For most of my zinnia cross pollinations it isn't highly critical to absolutely prevent some intervention by bees. For example, when I am trying to get the multi-colored petal colors from Whirligig zinnias into Burpeeana cactus flowered zinnias, I will put pollen from many choice Whirligigs onto many choice Burpeeanas, and if I do quite a bit of pollen applications, I will probably get at least an 80% success rate with no protective measures at all. When I grow the hybrids it will usually be obvious which ones were "mine" and which ones were done by the bees, and I can cull and remove the plants that I don't like. Occasionally the bees will make a good cross and I am happy to keep it.

ZM

"...how is that seed companies can sell seeds that will give you the hybrid plant?"

First of all, unfortunately a lot of seeds that are labeled as hybrid are actually open pollinated, although early in their development actual hybridization was done. However, if a seed is labeled as an "F1 hybrid" it is an actual hybrid. The F1 denotes a first generation hybrid. Some seed is labeled as F2 hybrid, and it is open pollinated from F1 hybrids.

Seed companies have various ways to produce true F1 hybrid seeds. For example with corn, the two parent varieties are grown in alternate rows, the plants of the seed row are de-tasseled so that only pollen from the tassels of the plants in the other rows can get on the silks of the seed plants. The F1 seeds are harvested only from the ears on the de-tasseled rows.

In the case of zinnias, there wasn't an economic way to create F1 seeds until John Mondry of W. Atlee Burpee Company discovered a petal-less (apetalous) male sterile mutant zinnia in 1948 which eventually led to introduction of the first commercial F1 hybrid zinnia, named "Trail Blazer". It used male sterility for seed production, in which the male sterile "femina" zinnias played a role analogous to the de-tasseled corn. The male pollen producing zinnias were carefully selected and re-selected to produce a uniform F1 hybrid.

As amateur zinnia breeders we are free to cross any zinnia in our patch with any other zinnia. The commercial zinnia seed producers simply can't afford to pay people to manually cross-pollinate zinnias.

"I understand if you take what's been open pollinated on a hybrid you will get a parent or potluck?"

A self-pollinated F1 produces F2 recombinations of the traits of the two parents of the F1. Because there are many ways in which the genetic traits can be recombined, there are many possible new traits in the F2s. You can get even more varieties of recombinations by crossing one F1 zinnia with a different F1 zinnia. I cross hybrids with hybrids and then cross those hybrid-hybrids with other hybrid-hybrids to produce hybrid-hybrid-hybrids, and so on. Sure, you get a lot of culls that way, but you also get some remarkable interesting new zinnias as well. Incidentally, that same technique is used by rose breeders. You can see the results much quicker with zinnias.

ZM

Hi Julianna,

Thanks for the compliment. Only 2 hours of sun would be very limiting, not just for zinnias, but for many ornamentals. When they say a plant needs "full sun", they usually mean 6 hours or more of direct sun per day, and zinnias need that.

I have grown zinnias under trees in as little as 4 hours of sun, but they tend to grow spindly and weak in that much shade. I have on occasions foliar fed zinnias with a weak solution of sugar to help them when they haven't been getting enough light for good photosynthesis, and that seems to help. Sugar feeding can help during periods of prolonged sunless weather, or even in sunny weather when the zinnias are growing so fast that they are actually limited by how fast they can photosynthesize sugar.

I notice you are in Arkansas, and trees can be very plentiful there. When we lived in Maine on a six-acre property that was nearly fully wooded, gardening was severely limited by the shade from trees. I purchased a good chain saw and wood chipper and "opened up the sky" for our garden. In the process I created a lot of firewood, wood chips for mulch and garden paths, and retaining walls for garden terraces on the sloping terrain.

I put several brush piles through the shredder-chipper to fill many compost piles. The forest floor was littered with "deadfall" and rotting leaves, which were already partly decomposed. I had several different sized screens for the hammermill part of shredder-chipper, and the finest screen had one-quarter inch holes which would produce a very finely pulverized product with enormous surface area for rapid composting.

When we moved here to Kansas, I didn't expect to use the chainsaw or the shredder-chipper much, but I was surprised at how frequently they come in handy here. The wind breaks big limbs off the trees here and brush piles are common. I have four compost piles going now.

ZM

Happy New Year! And I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

May 2013 be the best gardening year ever!

ZM, I love your zinnia greetings for the season!

It's officially now time to give the catalogs serious attention! ;-)

JG

Hi Rose,

"...what is the difference between the scabiosa, Candy Stripe, Peppermint, and Whirlygig zinnia's? I noticed they look a lot alike (except scabiosa's are puffy)."

There is quite a bit of similarity between zinnias, until you look at them closer. The more you look at them, the more differences you will see.

The Scabiosa flowered zinnias don't have the yellow "starfish" shaped pollen florets like most zinnias do. Instead, their florets have petal colors, which makes them very interesting to me from the standpoint of zinnia breeding. They have medium-small flowers (1.5 to 2.5 inches in diameter) and medium tall (24 to 30 inches) well branched plants.

An important feature, from the standpoint of structural integrity, is that the scabiosa flowered plant's branches angle upwards from the main stem, somewhat like a tumbleweed. An acute angle of attachment is inherently stronger than a right angle attachment, and I look for acute branching in my breeders. Our Kansas winds tend to "stress test" my zinnias.

Branches on some Burpeanna Giants zinnias tend to grow straight out from the "trunk" and give the plant a candelabra look. They tend to break off easily. Those lower candelabra branches tend to be in contact with the soil, and can even strike roots of their own. Years ago when I first noticed zinnias branches developing roots I realized that it should be possible to grow zinnias from cuttings, and began the experiments that eventually led to a successful method of growing zinnias from cuttings.

Candy Cane zinnias (a Burpee origination) are striped, and have larger flowers (4 inches across) than Peppermint Striped zinnias, which are only about 2 inches across, but come in a wider range of color combinations.

Whirligig zinnias were derived from an inter-species cross between Zinnia violacea (elegans) and Zinnia haageana, and they show an entertaining wide variation in bicolor, tricolor, and monocolor petals in a variety of flower forms. I still grow the commercial Whirligigs as an ongoing source of new genetic material for my amateur plant breeding.

I personally don't care for the Candy Cane/Peppermint striped and spotted patterns, and quit growing them when that effect started showing up in some of my breeding projects, like on this scabious specimen.

To me, some striped patterns look like some kind of zinnia chicken pox. I have seen striped patterns in Whirligigs that I liked (like the one pictured above on Sun, Oct 28, 12 at 11:30), and I will pursue that look.

Which zinnias you prefer to grow, and which specimens you choose to save seeds from, is entirely up to your own personal preferences. But as you look closer, you will see that most zinnias are a little bit like snowflakes, in that no two of them are exactly alike.

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

Do you have any idea of how long the avg viability of a zinnia seed if you keep it in the frig? That will be a major deciding factor in what stays and what goes.

I don't care for the Zahara singles, blooms are too small for me. I gave them away as goodies in my recent seed trades.

Benary's Giants are too tall, the blooms are beautiful. However, they can grow up to 5 ft or more. Giant Red Zinnia's are a keeper because they are butterfly magnets.

Purple Prince is a goodie. "Hot Crayons" are dazzling.

I might try my hand at pollinating this summer. It looks tedious, but fun.

"I found several lost pack of zinnias. (I put them in the freezer and forgot about them)"

"Do you have any idea of how long the avg viability of a zinnia seed if you keep it in the frig?"

It might make a difference whether it was the freezer or the fridge. I store my zinnias seeds on a shelf in the basement, which I know is not the best way. I plan to get a small refrigerator for my zinnia seed storage in the future. There was a message thread a few years ago that you might be interested in, Containers for long term seed storage. In particular, notice zeedman's comment, "Remember that if seed is frozen, it must remain sealed in its container after removal from the freezer, until the seeds (and the container) reach room temperature. Failure to do this can cause condensation on the seeds, which will quickly destroy them."

This Seed Longevity Table indicates that zinnia seeds are good for 5 to 6 years under "ideal" storage conditions. I have done that well with my room temperature storage of zinnia seeds, if 50% germination is "well" enough.

ZM

Hi Viking,

The Whirligigs will show you a side of zinnias that you probably haven't seen before. There is some Whirligig "blood" in the majority of my breeding stock zinnias. Frequently the two-tone effect shows up in a rather subtle form, like in this bloom.

Frequently I will notice some unintended insect or small spider in one of my photos, and this shows a magnified example of that.

I don't know if that little guy was doing any harm, but the magnified view showed me something that I missed in the normal view -- namely that the petal ends of that specimen had vestigial "toothiness". You can see barely formed three teeth on the petal ends. I think that most, if not all, of my toothy strain got their toothiness from Whirligig ancestors.

Incidentally, there seems to be more than one "strain" of Whirligigs. Some, like those from Parks, feature more single and nearly single blooms, while others, like those from Stokes, have a much higher percentage of double blooms. It isn't so much the name on the seed packet that determines what you will get. It is the particular seed grower's field from which the zinnia seeds came. And nowadays the seed catalog companies don't grow very many (if any) of their own seeds, but purchase bulk seeds from specialist seed growers and package them in their own packets. The "factory" and the retail store are very much part of the structure of the garden seed industry.

That may be why it isn't unusual to see more than one seed catalog list the same variety as an "exclusive". They don't keep track of who their seed suppliers are selling to.

ZM

Hi Viking,

Last year, and particularly last Fall, I had a fairly extensive influx of Nine Spotted Cucumbers from the surrounding area.

I just now noticed, they seem to have more than nine spots. Anyhow, at first they did just a little cosmetic damage, but I started seeing them hiding in my zinnia blooms more and more.

As their numbers increased later in the season, their minor cosmetic damage became more extensive, and I started hand picking them. Not a very effective method of control, but it didn't involve applying insecticide. I am not an organic gardener, but I use some of their methods, including compost piles. And I try to minimize my use of insecticides and fungicides. This coming garden year, I have decided not to grow any cucumbers or melons that might "attract" the cucumber beetles. It remains to be seen if they continue to be a problem in my zinnias.

ZM

Hi Julianna,

I wish you well in your zinnia experiments in your low sunlight conditions. By coincidence, you have picked three different species of zinnias. Crystal White is Z. angustifolia, Profusion is Z. marylandica, and Magellan is Z. violacea (elegans). I am not sure, but I don't think any of those can be successfully crossed with the other. I have stayed with Z. violacea (elegans) primarily, because cross-pollinating them is easy and successful. And they have a lot of different forms and colors.

If your zinnias start to "pine away" because of a lack of sunlight, you might experiment with spraying them with a weak sugar solution to supplement their limited photosynthesis. I have had some success doing that. I use anywhere from one teaspoon sugar per gallon of water to one tablespoon of sugar per gallon. I wouldn't go too much richer than that, because you might attract flies, and you don't want your zinnias to be dripping syrup.

Sometimes I add a touch of soluble plant food to the spray for more complete nutrition. Foliar feeding is effective on zinnias. The blooms themselves can be sensitive to strong foliar feeding and could be burned, so if my zinnias are in bloom, I cut the foliar feeding to one-quarter strength or less. A half teaspoon per gallon should be safe for zinnia blooms. And at any given time, a zinnia plant doesn't need a huge amount of nutrients. Several weak applications are better than one strong application.

ZM

Hi all,

Well, it is February already. I expanded my garden before the really cold weather hit, so I am beginning to plan my zinnia projects for this Spring. I hope to get an earlier start on some zinnias by several weeks. I am contemplating some in-ground seeding in April, which, in this location, may expose my seedlings to danger from a late freeze. I will use what they call a "low tunnel" to make it feasible to put a cover over them if frost threatens. I have already made some hoops for a low tunnel out of some one-half inch electrical conduit. I have never done this before, so it will be a learning experience for me. Some market gardeners routinely use low tunnels to get an early start on their crops. Maybe, on a smaller scale, that will work for my zinnias.

I guess my biggest single zinnia project this year will be an attempt to get useful new variations of the tubular-petaled zinnias. If I don't make significant progress in that area this year, I will de-emphasize that project. But I won't abandon it altogether.

I am going to grow another large planting of Whirligigs looking for, among other things, something comparable to JG's Extreme Roll strain.

I hope to make some more progress with my "toothy" strain. This was one of my later toothy specimens last year.

It has obvious Whirligig heritage, with near-white toothy petal tips. This next toothy specimen reversed the location of the white, by having it near the base of the petals.

I hope to grow enough toothies this year to find some better, more extreme, examples of toothiness, and inter-cross them. I also need to expand their color range.

In previous years, I "over bought" zinnia seeds. I am going to plant out all of my old Burpee Burpeeana Giants seeds and Burpee Hybrids seeds, looking for good examples to serve as females for various out-crosses from any interesting specimens that come out of my current breeder seeds. Hopefully there will be some new tubular forms in those "interesting specimens." And I will try to diversify my scabious strains. And grow some green zinnias, and some of the mottled and streaked forms. And some other zinnia projects as well. I think I now have enough garden space to pretty much deplete my inventory of saved zinnia seeds. It should be an interesting zinnia year.

ZM

Oh well. At least we can still post pictures of a sort. I won't even link this one in. I will just upload it. It was one of my recombinants from scabiosa flowered x cactus flowered x Whirligig, and it has a hint of two-tone, extra long guard petals, and a conventional scabiosa flowered center.

What I like about that one is that the white color is confined mostly to the tips of the petals. I plan to plant a bunch more Whirligigs this year.

ZM

Yes, I find a lot of variability in the white trait in the Whirligig zinnias, and in zinnias in general. The color itself can range from a cool pure snow white to a warm white to an ivory to a pale cream. And it can continue in an apparent continuum into pale yellow, yellow, dark yellow, golden yellow, and through a range of yellow-oranges into oranges. And from there through red oranges, tangerine, and to the warm reds like scarlet. It seems like a continuum of color, although I know it must not be, because discrete genetic codes on the DNA are at work.

And the white can be just barely brushed on the tips or it can occupy a large percentage of the petal, like in this specimen, where the white is more of an ivory.

Zinnia petals have many forms and colorations, and it must be a very multi-genic situation. I notice you have done some good work with morning glories. Maybe some day genetic engineering techniques will get some of those beautiful blues from morning glories into zinnias. We could trade you a whole range of yellows. (grin)

ZM

We would certainly do a trade of the genes for blue color for yellow. What a wild dream to see a blue Zinnia like the blue in this flower:

Those are great pictures. I have seen some of your morning glory pictures in other message threads, and they are marvelous. I particularly like it that you are growing some of your morning glories indoors during the Winter. That gives you the ability to accelerate your breeding activities by getting more generations per year. This is another Whirligig and it has even more of the petal having the tip color.

In this case, the tip color is a light cream color. Considering just the different arrangements of color on the petals, several different "genes" seem to be involved, which gives a greater opportunity for recombinations in subsequent hybrid generations.

ZM

ZM

Zenman sent me here.

Zinnias are my favorite flowers, and I'm interested in learning how to breed them. I love looking at your pictures. I'm going to attach a picture of some of my zinnias. they are just "basic" zinnias but I love them just the same!! Over the winter I've been collecting different flavors of zinnias through seed trading, including "peppermint" and "striped" and "Cactus" zinnias. I've never had these kinds of zinnias before. I even found a green zinnia, I can't wait to grow it!!! :)

I hope to learn how to breed zinnias because I want to make new colors and share them with my daddy. I inherited his green thumb and his zinnias. He can't really garden as much anymore because he is disabled, but he gardens out of pots now.

Hi MandyRose and Desirai,

Welcome to this forum. This should be an interesting zinnia year for all of us.

Desirai, I will answer your email question here, because the question and the answer might be of interest to other readers here.

"...how do you tell the difference between male and female zinnias, and how do you get the pollen in the right place on the female zinnia?"

With respect to how you tell the difference between a male and a female zinnia, a typical zinnia bloom has both male and female flower parts. The male parts are the fuzzy yellow "starfish" shaped florets that appear toward the center of the flower. They usually have 5 or 6 "arms". In the morning, yellow pollen grains will spill from the center of the florets, and some of the pollen grains will lodge temporarily in the "fur" on the floret arms. The female parts on the zinnia flower are called stigma, and they are the slender yellow Y-shaped "forked tongues" that appear at the base of the petals. When a zinnia pollen grain sticks to a stigma, it can grow a long thin extension down inside the stigma to the egg cell inside the green seed cover at the base of the petal, which fertilizes the egg and starts the growth of the new embryo inside the seed cover. Some florets will also fertilize themselves and form a seed at the base of the floret.

You can cross pollinate a zinnia with another zinnia by taking pollen from one zinnia and placing it on the stigmas of another zinnia. There are several ways of doing that, and photographs showing how were included back on Tuesday, December 4th, 2012, in this message thread.

If you want to save seed from a favorite zinnia without crossing it with another zinnia, you can take pollen from its florets and apply that pollen to the stigmas of that same zinnia. That could occur naturally by pollen grains just falling luckily onto the stigma, or a pollen-gathering bee accidentally jostling some pollen, but you can increase the seed yield, and reduce the amount of accidental unknown pollination, by transferring the pollen yourself. That is sometimes called "selfing" the zinnia.

ZM

Hi Desirai,

Yes. The stigmas show up rather clearly in this picture because they are yellow, and the purple petal color contrasts well with them.

There are very rare instances when the stigma will have three or more "arms" and I think there are a couple of examples of that shown in pictures earlier in this message thread. But almost all of the time they will be like the ones in this picture. Depending on the size of the flower, and its genetics, the size and length of the stigmas can vary considerably. Occasionally some of my breeder zinnias have very large very long stigmas, which makes it quite easy to pollinate them. Some of the scabiosa flowered zinnias can have stigmas that are partially concealed inside their florets. I think there is a picture of that earlier in this message thread, too.

When a stigma is fertilized by a pollen grain, that stigma will shrivel and die within a day or two. But until it gets fertilized, it will remain yellow and normal looking for over a week. So you actually have well over a week of opportunities to fertilize each seed in your zinnia flower head. When you apply some zinnia pollen to a zinnia stigma, it almost always "takes" that day, and that stigma will be beginning to shrivel the next day, and obviously no longer "receptive".

ZM

Hi all,

Last year I had a lot of butterflies in my zinnia patch, but for some reason this was the most common of the large butterflies.

I am no butterfly expert, but I think that they were one of the Fritillaries. I have no idea what their food plant was, but I don't think they laid eggs on my zinnias. I hope to see more of them, and lots of other butterflies on my zinnias again this year.

ZM

I was standing right at the flower aiming nearly straight down, so I was maybe 2 feet from the butterfly. There were several dozen butterflies in the zinnia patch, and you could just stand near a flower and wait a minute or two for one to come to you. However, they would give you only a few seconds to get a picture, and even then, they tended to move about and the wind moved them some, too. I took quite a few "bad" shots of butterflies that day. I'll spend a little more time taking butterfly pictures this year.

ZM

That's an unusual source of zinnia seeds. Both packets are heirloom varieties. Polar Bear is a good white, and Luminosa is a good pink. Butterflies should like them.

I plan to have a separate patch of several different varieties of white zinnias this year, with the idea of intercrossing them for some hopefully improved white zinnias. That patch will include some white cactus flowered zinnias, Benary's Giants White, and Oklahoma White. Hopefully I will get some diversity in their progeny. I have had a few good whites, like this one last year.

But I want more different flower forms in white, like toothy, tubular, and spider,.

ZM

You put the different white flower varieties of together and then let the pollinators do the crossings or do you have a more active role? I think the latter is the answer.

I grew a pure white Impatiens balsamina recently and enjoyed it. I look forward to the white zinnia.

You have gotten a really big head start on the rest of us. My tiny zinnia seedlings are just beginning to get their first set of true leaves. Your seedlings in the white pot are stretched up much too far. Zinnia seedlings need quite a bit of light when they first come up.

Our safe no-frost date here is debatable, but I am planning to put some stuff out the first of April, or a little later, (hopefully I will not be the April fool) with the idea of giving it some frost protection if it needs it. Which it probably will. The first of May would be less risky, but I want to push for an earlier zinnia bloom this year. I am preparing to provide some frost protection to the early entrants into my garden.

ZM

This thread is getting kind of long and possibly slow to load for some people, so we are continuing this over at "It can be fun to breed your own zinnias - Part 20". See you all over there.

ZM